Aren't words awesome? I think we would all concede that they are useful but they are amazing. English vocabulary is huge, much bigger than other language. It's one of its great strengths, if you have a good vocabulary you can be very precise. For example the French make no difference between house and home or brain and mind, I feel I might have typed that before. Spanish vocabulary in the grand scheme of things is quite small, they can't even be arsed to make the difference between toe and finger both are just dedo. This isn't much of a surprise coming from people who brought you the siesta. It can be a pain describing the difference between words which seem essentially the same. Students get very annoyed about the difference between watch/look/see, to them its the same. As the vocabulary is so big every now and again a student brings you an absolute hummer. For example:
Brickbats: Blunt criticism
Macadamize: To lay a path/road with macadam
Exoduster: An African American who fled to Kansas after rumours of the reinstitution of slavery
Oxter: The arm pit
Noodlethatcher: Someone who makes hats and wigs
Bettong: A small kangaroo
Screeve: To draw pictures on the pavement for money
Jargonelle: A pear that ripens early
Noodlethatcher has been obsolete for a very, very long time. I don't know where they come across these words but they do.
There's an excerise in one book that is about words that only exist in certain languages. We need to get these words in English.
Bakkushan (Japanese): A woman who is only attractive from behind
Lampadato (Italian): A person who is tanned too much from a sunbed
Seigneur-terrasse: (French) someone who spends a long time in a bar/cafe but doesn't spend much money
Drachenfutter (German): A gift from a guilty husband to his wife (literally Dragons Food)
The amount of words you have for something does give a small insight into the country, like the old one about the Eskimos having an obscene amount of words for snow. An Italian teacher at school told us about a friend who spent time in Norway and was ashamed to hear that Norwegian has one word for 'a fix' where as Italian has about twenty. Before we judge, do a rough count of all the ways in English we can say someone is drunk.
Its been a good week so far. Yolanda the head of the young learners gave me lots of useful advice and games to play and I got to observe her giving a lesson. It turns out the way to get a class of children to do what you want is to keep them in teams, basically divide and conquer. Also rather than trying to hold back the horde of kids with only your trusty board marker and good old fashioned British grit, throw a ball at them and demand an answer, the terror on their young faces.
For adults it's monthly project time, which means they have to give me a guided tour of their place of work. I'm going on a tour of a car part factory three times this week, and a washing machine factory on Friday. I've had one tour so far where the student offered me coffee and cigars at half eight in the morning.
To put you (Kaylie) out of your misery:
1)In 1990, West and East Germany became Germany and North and South Yemen became the Yemen we know and love today.
2) 1918
3) Armin Tanzarian
4) Boxing
love love love x
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