At the start of the series, Yotsuba is shown as having very little knowledge of the world around her, even for a young child. Things such as swings, doorbells, cicadas, air conditioners, and recycling all fascinate and confuse her, although she is not perturbed by her ignorance. She occasionally mispronounces new words and creates neologisms, such as the name for her a portmanteau of "Yotsuba's Box" that she uses to keep special things and her "scapbuk" (scrapbook). She often repeats, in incongruous ways, phrases spoken by adult characters around her without fully knowing the meaning, so she sometimes says vulgar words. A famous example of this is when Yotsuba learned the phrase "what the hell, man!” from her father's friend Takeshi Takeda, who Yostuba calls Jumbo. Yotsuba is able to slowly sound out writing in hiragana, and is praised for this by Jumbo, but she cannot correctly read a clock. She is frequently shown drawing, though she is not as good an artist as she thinks she is, and she is an excellent swimmer.