pronunciation

Too busy to blog

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Yearstricken is a whiner. I love her and all that (I’m her beloved iPhone), but seriously, she is a whiner.

We talk a lot, so I know all about her schedule this semester: six different classes plus student event scheduling. In fact, I know it by heart because I’ve heard her say it a hundred times or more. Yes, two of her classes are in the evening, so she has some long days, but, people, I am on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week! You don’t hear me whining about it, do you? I have to hear her repeat the same things over and over, day after day, and do I complain? No, I do not. And do you want to know why? Because I am not a whiner.

She said this morning that she was tired and didn’t have time to write on her blog, so I thought I’d do it for her. Right now it’s 9:37 a.m., and we’re in the classroom. She’s at the board writing and I’m in her pocket. It’s a lower level English class and they’re working on pronunciation, one of her favorite subjects.

She’s had them practice saying “Good morning, y’all” and “howdy” for the last 10 minutes, so they’re pretty good at it now. On the board she just wrote three of the possessive adjectives: his, her, your. Next to those she wrote: “Bless _____ heart.” The students can say “Bless his heart” and “Bless her heart” without much problem. She’s careful to tell them not to pronounce the “h,” so in unison they repeat several times “Blesses heart” and “Blesser heart.” It’s taking a bit longer to get them to pronounce “your” correctly. She writes on the board “Bless yer heart” and underlines “yer.” Then she blabs on about how people in Wisconsin speak a dialect; it is not Standard English, which is the correct way to speak and which happens to be spoken in Texas, where she is from. It’s warm there most of the times, she says, as the students watch her mouth move. Then she whines about how people in Wisconsin say “You wanna come with?” and then leave you hanging because they don’t finish the question, so you don’t know if the person wants you to come with you or me or her or him or them, and if you don’t know who you are going with, how can you know if you want to go. This way of talking, she says, has something to do with the weather; it’s cold, too cold to even finish your sentences. Her students, of course, only hear and understand two words of what she said: Wisconsin and cold. They all nod and smile, some of them even repeat the word “cold” out loud, so she’s satisfied they understand. She loves her students for that.

She prides herself on teaching her students proper pronunciation, or as she calls it “talking purty.” When her students have classes with the other instructors, those teachers have to try to break the students of talking “purty.” Yearstricken feels like she’s doing a great job and even thinks the other instructors are complementing her by calling her “Miss Pronunciation.” I love her for that.

Celebrate the holidays

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The English language learners I teach struggle with pronunciation for several reasons. Often it’s because English has sounds, like “th,” not found in their first language.  Other times they cannot hear or distinguish between two similar sounds, such as “b” and “v.” And there are times they simply mishear. For example, after hearing a short speech by a native speaker, one of my students asked me why the young woman was advocating for hippos. In fact, she was talking about pit bulls.

 

 

Native English speakers also mispronounce and mishear. Children learn “Silent Night” and then ask you why baby Jesus has to “sleep in heavenly peas.” (This is called a mondegreen.) These language errors can cause English teachers who have to grade papers to howl in horror or howl in laughter.

 

 

Language is verbal clay and there’s nothing more fun than grabbing a handful to play with. That’s one reason we read and write, isn’t it? The delight in words.

 

Yesterday at our Thanksgiving brunch, as one of the students left, she said, “Happy Tanksgiving, teacher.” I thought about that all the way home. What if we had a holiday for that?

 

 

Tanksgiving: Day of gifts from the Pentagon to the military

 

Angstgiving:  Yearlong gift-giving from teenagers to their parents

 

Spanksgiving: Day to give to the naughty  (You know who you are.)

 

Banksgiving: Government day to give bailouts.

 

Franksgiving: National Barbecue Day

 

Pranksgiving: National Tricksters Day

 

Shanksgiving: Inmate to inmate prison celebration

 

Yanksgiving: U.S. Foreign Aid Day

 

Thanksliving: Lifelong celebration of the good things in life

 

 

 

 

Pronunciation is Everything #1

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Have you ever had an out-of-body experience? Me, neither. But I’ve had several out-of-WORLD experiences, in which my body has been lifted high above the WORLD (aka America) and been transported to places far, far away. Oddly, just as in out-of-body experiences, along the way I have been probed by aliens with blank stares, large hands, and wands (aka TSA).

Some of these experiences lasted a long time. Not the probing, the being in places far away. Places where people do not speak English, like Japan. At first, to make myself understood, I tried speaking English slowly. People did not understand me, so I put on my American thinking cap and started shouting in English. LIKE THIS! Finally, in desperation and because I really needed to find a toilet, I learned the language.

Now I can irritate people with puns and wordplay in two languages.

Once upon a time in that land far, far away, some people who publish a small bilingual magazine in Tokyo were filled with desperation over how to fill the back pages of their magazine. I appeared and offered them six cartoons, which they published. Nothing happened after that. And none of us lived happily ever after; they still had back pages to fill, and I continued on my lonely quest to find desperate publishers.

The cartoon below is a play on the English word man. If you use the Roman alphabet, you can write the Japanese word for Y10,000 as man.  The “a”  is pronounced like “ah.” (Ten thousand yen is currently about $128.)

This is my attempt to fill the back pages of my blog.