It's hardly going to be paraglid . . . is it? 
Or paraglode ;-) After all, we don't say someone rided a horse. I
love our language.
=====
The Marchhesa sounds like a monster, but I could instantly picture her. That was some rich and quite precise writing.
=====
Kids and language: I've told it before and will doubtless tell it again.
We had the Health Visitor at our house one day and Allison, two years old, was running back and forth between kitchen and living room, chattering away playing a game with two groups of dolls. (This was a child who talked in her sleep because there wasn't enough time in the day for all the words she wanted to say.)
"She has an excellent vocabulary for her age." The Health Visitor commented.
Allison stopped dead in her tracks, swung back around the door, and grinned proudly at her.
"I do know rather a lot of words, don't I?" Then she was back into her game.
It's not every day you see someone's jaw
truly drop.
"How?" she asked eventually.
"We just talk to her. She soaks up words like a sponge."
"But she
knew what vocabulary
meant."
"We explain things when she asks."
I will admit there were times when we thought we'd spawned a monster, but...
Allison now talks to her new baby, convinced that children learn sounds and speech patterns long before it makes complete sense. There's some basic sign language going into the mix as well which Allison used with deaf kids at the nursery. Alma makes the 'milk' sign when she wants feeding. But she still falls back on a good traditional cry if her mum's a bit slow on the uptake ;-)
Gyppo