The Spanish Police

Mateo always likes it when you SPEAK and only sometimes enjoys "cuando hablas". He is the funkiest of all three kids when it comes to speaking Spanish. It's like a deep dark skeleton that we hide in the closet. According to Mateo, we can only speak Spanish when he decides it's going to be cool. Or when he just wants to be a smarty pants and tease his abuela/grandma in Utah that doesn't understand ONE WORD he is saying when he speaks to her in Spanish. Every now and then he will come up to me and say "mami hable espanol". So then we proceed to speak in Spanish for the next hour or until he gets bored of the Spanish game. When abruptly he will announce MAMI, IT'S TIME TO SPEAK (translation: Speak English). We have just been playing the Spanish game. He also likes to quiz me to see if I really do know Spanish. It goes something like this:

Mateo: Mami do you know how you says "star" in Spanish?
Mami: Estrella.
Mateo: Very good. O.K. How do you says telescope?
Mami: I have NO IDEA. How do you say telescope in Spanish?
Mateo: It's called "te-le-sco-pi-o" telescopio like that mami. Now you say it.
Mami: Telescopio. (Rolling my eyes and thinking, yeah whatever Mateo.) Muy bien Mateo.

I wondered if he was just adding an "o" ending to make it sound Spanish. I just rushed to my Spanish-English dictionary. Guess what? If you are ever stargazing in a Spanish speaking country and you need to know how to say telescope in Spanish, it is indeed telescopio.