I asked my seniors (HS) to come up to the board and write one thing they did last night. One girl in particular doesn’t have great English, so she was struggling. She first wrote “I slept at nine,” to which her friend standing next to her (who also doesn’t have great English) said (translated as best I can) “Surely that spells ‘nice.’ Try it again.” The first girl erased it and wrote “nien,” which made me think of German, although it wouldn’t be spelled right. I turned away for a second to help someone else, and when I looked back, she had written “I slept at ten.”
I started laughing right in the middle of class, making everyone (including the Japanese teacher, whose English isn’t fantastic) wonder what the hell I was laughing about.
I’m reminded of the following joke:
A man was walking down the street when he came across a body lying on the sidewalk. He grabbed his cell phone and called 911.
The operator asked him where he was and the man replied, “I’m on Sycamore Drive.”
“How do you spell that?” the operator asked.
“S-i-c-k…” the man began. “No, s-i-c-a…no, s-i-k-a. Oh forget it, let me drag him over to Lake street and I’ll call you back.”
Yeah, sometimes I think they just guess one of the prepositions and hope it’s the right one. It’s even funnier when they run down the whole list that they know trying to find the right answer “by… at! on? in. with? to? at…?”
Heheh, we have the same old joke but here in Glasgow it involves the dead body (or dead horse, 'cos it’s a pretty ancient joke) being dragged from Sauchiehall Street round the corner to Hope Street.
As for the girl in the O.P. well, it’s not a bad way of thinking really, is it? Clearly it’s no use if she *needed *to say nine, but she’s still constructing some sort of sentence in the desired language.
This is the most effective language-class strategy ever. Although the goal is usually not to let the teacher see that you’re just using the words you know instead of bothering to remember the ones you don’t know.
This is definitely adorable. However, I deal with college-admitted native English speakers who claim to feel “disgustion” and ask me if “vocalate” (infinitive: to vocalate) is a word. This is less adorable.
Heck, Spockerel, that is a great deal less adorable. How the hell do they get admitted to any college at all? Grrrrrrrr.
I agree that the girl in the O.P. will probably do all right. If she can work with what she does know, surely she can build on that and improve.
Oh, and welcomisation, Spockerel, and I hope ewe you likificate it hear on the message bored.
(Yes, there is probably a genuine typo in this post. It’s the curse of of **Gaudere **and all that. )
