Girassol

Speaking clearly, or not so much

So the other night I watched this movie called "Feel The Noise." (I thought there would be more fun dancing involved, but instead there was all this stuff about sampling Puerto Rican frog noises into reggaeton music, and how The Man wanted to take out all the flava from the music and then sleep with the main character's girlfriend, causing her to kick him in the cojones and run away and sleep on a park bench, yet wake up the next morning looking strangely fresh-faced and conveniently right along the route of the Puerto Rico Day parade so she could reconcile with her boyfriend before his Very Important Performance.  But that's not really here nor there.)

Anyway, the main character had this annoying habit of using the filler, "You know what I'm sayin'?" in between all the rest of his lines.  Except it sounded like, "Younoamsan'?"  I get that a lot of people really do talk like this, and I get that it was supposed to lend authenticity to his role and all, but you know what, movie character?  I don't know what you're sayin', because you're not really sayin' anything since in between everything you're actually sayin', you keep sayin' "you know what I'm sayin'?"   

I find this to be one of the strangest filled pauses... I get "um" and "uh" and "well" and even "you know," but really, "You know what I'm sayin'?"  If the filler is so long you have to trim it down unto something completely unintelligible, that kind of defeats the purpose of a filled pause in the first place, which is basically to buy you time while you think of what to say next.  I'd be thinking about making my filler sound right instead of thinking about my next point, and then I would need to employ a new filler while I remembered what I was trying to say in the first place.  You know what I'm sayin'?  

ESL Tidbit of the Day: Beef, It's What You Wear On Your Feet

Has anyone ever read the book Number the Stars, by Lois Lowry?  It's a historical fiction novel for kids that tells the story of a Danish family during World War II who helped out their Jewish friends and neighbors.  The book talks about how one of the daughters got really upset that her new shoes were made of fish skin.  This launched a conversation about rationing things during wartime, and I explained that leather was one thing that had to be rationed so the people would make shoes out of other materials.  Someone didn't know what leather was, so I pointed out some leather shoes in the classroom and asked if anyone knew what animal leather usually came from.

One of my normally quiet Japanese students burst out, "STEAK!"

ESL Tidbit of the Day: This $#!+ is batty

Recently my class read the biography of Albert Einstein, and in this biography we learned that Einstein became fascinated by the boomerang as a young boy, and he made one for himself and used it to scare away the bats that hung around the Einstein family's backyard.  So I'm trying to determine how much they know about bats, since they aren't common in some of their countries.  I ask the class, "So why do you think the Einsteins wanted the bats to go away?"

A Mexican student decides to answer.  I love this kid.  Bless his little heart, but he sounds just like Cheech and has a really hard time with possessive pronouns.  He answers, "Because your poo is very bad."

I just stood there and went, "Actually, the BATS' poo is probably what they were worried about.  MY poo hasn't been anywhere near Albert Einstein's house."

ESL Tidbit of the Day: The Joker

I LOVE it when my students start getting good enough at English to try and make jokes!

This conversation happened on Wednesday:

ME [to a Taiwanese student, known here as "TS"]: You look different today.  Did you get a haircut?
TS:  No.
ME:  Is that a new shirt, then?
TS:  No.
ME:  Well, something's different about you today.
TS:  No, I just have Holy Spirit!


The following conversation happened yesterday when someone asked me to explain the difference between "supermarket" and "grocery store."  KS stands for "Korean student," JS is "Japanese student" and TS is apparently the class clown this week.

ME:  Well, a supermarket and a grocery store are pretty much the same thing.  We just say grocery store more often here.
KS:  In Korea, we say "super."  We use English word!
ME:  Oh, really? 
JS:  Yes, in Japan too.
TS:  In Taiwan too.... No, in Taiwan three!

ESL Tidbit of the Day: Bring On The NCMO

This afternoon right as I was trying to get class started, one of my (female!) Japanese students asked me, "Teacher, do you want to play tonsil hockey with me?"

I'd kick her American roommate's butt for teaching her that if I weren't laughing so hard.

ESL Tidbit of the Day: Huckleberry Finn

I teach English as a Second Language (ESL) to students from all over the world, so I hear a lot of funny things at my job.  One thing that happens a lot is that students from different parts of the world have trouble with different pairs of letters in English.  For example, Spanish speakers have a hard time distinguishing between b and v because in Spanish they are essentially the same sound.  I'm sure you're all aware of the dificulties that Asians have with r and l.  Well, it's not just in their pronunciation that they struggle -- it's in their writing, too.

We've been studying The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and I had students working in groups to create a summary of the night's reading.  They did a great job overall, but the last group had a Korean scribe.  When she got up and put their transparency on the projector, I couldn't help laughing out loud at the last sentence, which read, "Tom and Huck play every day in the Mississippi Liver."

Now that would certainly be an interesting sight to see. 

I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy

Not surprising, given that I grew up a mile north of the Mason-Dixon line.  I'm just glad I've stayed true to my roots, even with the nine years of time I've had to start calling a bag a "sack" and a soda a "pop" while living in Utah.  I will not be corrupted!

Your Linguistic Profile:

50% General American English

35% Yankee

15% Dixie

0% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

The Deal Pickle

So I'm sitting there this afternoon, minding my own business, watching Eddie Timanus, former 5-time Jeopardy! champion, who also happens to be blind, win a lot of money on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Then the universe spontaneously combusted, Eddie was stopped at $50,000, and life as I knew it abruptly ended, all because of a TV commercial for The Deal Pickle. 

You see, the announcer on the commercial was pronouncing it EXACTLY like "The Dill Pickle," but there it was, clear as day on my screen: "The Deal Pickle."  Utahns have this simultaneously fascinating and nerve-grating habit of reducing their diphthongs.  (For those not in the linguistic know, a diphthong is a combination of two vowel sounds within the same syllable, as in "oil" or "mine.")  This slack-jawed pronunciation allows one to hear, for instance, will for "wheel," jell for "jail," mell for "mail," sill for "seal," and rill for "real."   This often results in confusion for those unfamiliar with the Utah accent, as will can mean both "wheel" and "will," and well can mean both "whale" and the expected "well."  A most perfect example of this usage came later this afternoon in an e-mail from a friend, announcing that he and his wife are moving so their house is now "for sell."  (Immediately after reading that, my head exploded.)

Hence, The Deal Pickle.  If you're a native Utahn, of COURSE it makes sense!  Well, guess what?  People of Utah, you are WRONG! "DILL" AND "DEAL" ARE NOT HOMOPHONES!!!

There.  I feel better now.