Language & Other Strange Things

One of the great things about teaching a language is that there can be a wonderful exchange of cultures; teaching should never be a one-way street.  Some examples of the interesting, and often hilarious, exchanges in my classes are the inadvertent miscommunications of my students.

For example, while teaching my beginning class of students, I walked around looking at the sentences which they had written using new vocabulary of colors and objects in the classroom.  Trying hard not to laugh, I pointed out the missing "r" in one woman's sentence, "My shit is black."  Near the end of the lesson I had to correct my student's spelling of pencil in the sentence, "My penis is yellow."  These types of errors are common in English language classes everywhere.

There are also the new vocabulary words I have learned:  “styggi” -- Somali for “calm down,” “tamaam” which in Farsi means “finished” and in Somali means “exactly” and, best of all, “barf” which is “snow” in both Farsi and Somali.  When Brittney and I explained what it meant in English and why we were laughing so hard at the idea of making a “barf”man in winter, our students joined in.

Finally there are times when teaching someone the meaning of an English word can shine a very clear light on our culture and the disparities between our Western lifestyle and that of most of the world.  Having to explain what a Mediterranean cruise is to students who fled their homeland on a crappy boat which ended up sinking with a captain who left them for dead, is not a normal part of an English teacher's day.  "It's a very large boat with lots of people...They eat a lot.. and dance and play games...They pay a lot of money to do this for fun."  I was co-teaching this lesson with another American instructor and we both became more and more uncomfortable with the explanation.  Finally, we moved on to the next question.