Raining Words

It's raining, it's pouring...

The monsoon has finally shown up.

And I’m teaching my students about idioms.

Yes, these are related.

I’ve chosen a rain theme, for obvious reasons.  But try teaching the meaning of “I hate to rain on your parade…” to students who you abruptly realize, 20 seconds into the lesson, have no concept of the meaning of the word “parade.”  And then trying to explain–and immediately trying to avoid confusion–by saying, “It’s NOT a bandh.  It’s NOT done to protest the government, or to get money after a car accident.  But it’s when a group of people go into the street and walk down it together.  For fun.  To celebrate a holiday, or a national day…  We have them in the United States on Thanksgiving, and the Fourth of July.”

Eight creased foreheads.  And after a moment’s hesitation, a query of, “Bandh?”

“No, not a bandh.  It’s not against the government.  It’s planned, and people go to stand along the side of the street and watch.”

Blinking.  “They close the road?”

“Well, yes, they do.  But people already know–they aren’t mad.  They go to watch.  The people in the parade wear traditional clothes, or play music, or paint cars.  It’s fun to watch.  We like them.”

Rampant confusion.  Which they all try to hide, because they like me, and they really want to be good students and understand.

And I want to be a good teacher, so I drop it after promising, “I’ll bring pictures.  It’s different–I guess there aren’t many here.  I’ll show you.”

Thus, I’ve been combing google images for pictures of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade and Louisville’s Pegasus Parade.

When you teach English as a Second Language, you realize it’s shockingly easy to spend an entire hour discussing a single word.

And you also conduct lessons that include articles that point out that, by some counts, the English language now has over one million words.

And then you get a panicked understanding of the other, easier idiom you’re trying to teach:  “When it rains, it pours.”

Then again, this is why I like language.  Do you want a topic that never ends?

Me, curious, to some of my students:  “Why do you only use Nepali with each other?  Don’t you all speak Tamang?”

Students:  “Yes, ma’am.”

“And you all learned Tamang first, as a child?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And you learned Nepali later, in school?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, then… in the village, do you speak Nepali?  Or Tamang?”

“Tamang!”

“So…”

And, abruptly, a very confident explanation, with smiling faces and one voice tumbling on another.  “In the village, we speak Tamang.”  “In Kathmandu, Nepali.”  “In the United States, English.”  “In Japan, Japanese!”  “In Korea, Korean!”

I know very well that they’ve never been anywhere other than Kathmandu and their village (at a grueling, but typical for Nepal, journey of one day by bus, followed by two days of walking).  But they’ve quite clearly expressed the concept.  They view Tamang as appropriate while in their village, Nepali appropriate within Kathmandu, and English within the US…   For each place, they view it as perfectly natural and obvious to choose, and use, the most widely-spoken language already used in that place.

It makes perfect sense.  When I studied abroad in Mexico, even, Mexicans were shocked to see me and other Americans speaking with one another in Spanish.  The cousin of one of our Mexican friends even exclaimed, upon meeting us, as we already carried on a side conversation, “You’re all using Spanish!  But… you’re American!  You speak English!”

And we all smiled.  “We’re here to practice Spanish!”

And that was true.  But after that conversation with my students today, I can’t help wondering if we weren’t also grasping at the same concept.  A year earlier, with other friends on an art tour of Spain, we Spanish majors and minors grouped into a separate clique from the art students.  And we decided we should use Spanish with one another.  Because, after all, we were in Spain.

New idiom for next class:  “When in Rome, do as the Romans do.”

But then again… I’ve had other interesting discussions about language lately.  And with a Nepali professor and member of the Linguistic Society of Nepal, I heard first-hand about a story I’d read in the news, about a woman from a distant village recently brought to a university in Kathmandu in order to have her language recorded…  Because she was its last speaker.

If you keep picking the dominant language in a place… well, the fact of choosing implies that there’s another language that is instead viewed as a minority there.  And the less who use it, the more that minority shrinks.

Dozens of languages go extinct a year.  Even within a single language, words enter and drop out; yes, with my advanced ESL class we’ve discussed obsolete terms and neologisms.  But I still like all the words, from whatever language.  Let them pour until they flood!

Nepali of the Day:

Paani paryo:  It’s raining

Chatta:  umbrella

Ek:  One

Dui:  Two

Teen:  Three

Chaar:  Four

Tamang of the Day:

Naam zee:  It’s raining.

Chatta:  umbrella

Gee:  One

Nee:  Two

Sahm:  Three

Blee:  Four