there's no such thing as "dinosauce"

eofdreams.com

Now, I'll be the first to admit that English is a tricky language. Many native speakers can't even do it properly: just look at every single hip-hop "artist" in America, for example. I myself, who modestly claim to be able to write well and be in possession of a prodigious vocabulary, don't know all there is to know about the mother tongue. Why, just the other day Joseph Conrad and H.L. Mencken taught me the words "crepuscular," "adamantine," "rectitude," and "bagnio."

But still, there are some things my students just can't get straight, no matter how much I rant, rave, plead, entreat, yell, scream, harangue, declaim, pontificate or prognosticate.

There is no true r sound in Korean. It comes close a couple times, but in truth it's somewhere in between l and r. Therefore, whenever my students (mostly my young students; the older ones have hurdled this obstacle) say the word "are" they sound like they're saying "all." You would not believe how difficult it is to for them to tell the difference between the indubitably subtle respective pronunciations of the words "flame" and "frame." Half of them still spelled it wrong during a dictation test even though I'd beaten it into their little heads for nigh on three weeks.

I've got one student, Jack, in one of my mid-level classes who keeps pronouncing "dinosaurs" like "dinosauce." He thereby dissolves the entire class, myself included, into helpless gales of laughter. You know how infectious laughter is. It happens nearly every time. He'll say it wrong, we'll all crack up, I'll gently (or not so gently) correct him, he'll resume reading, and then within the next sentence he'll encounter the blasted word again, mispronounce it for the umpteenth time and crack us all up again harder than ever.

So you may imagine my dismay at trying to teach the kids the f, z and v sounds, for which there is no semblance of a counterpart in the Korean tongue. They can't even pronounce the names of the letters themselves precisely, first of all. From their lips, f sounds like ep-pu, z sounds like ji and v sounds like bwee. P, j and b are, phonetically, the nearest Korean consonants to f, z and v, so naturally the young kids pronounce them like that. That's understandable; they learned to say them according to what they already knew. But just you try to train it out of them. It doesn't work. "Frame" becomes plame, "stove" becomes stobe, and "zebra" becomes jeebra.

My initial amusement with this state of affairs rapidly mutated into absolute exasperation; now, under the weight of superior numbers, it is on the verge of collapsing into resigned defeatism. I hardly bother to correct them anymore. You couldn't blame me if you were in my shoes. You try spending ten months trying to teach hundreds of children, in groups of ten, how to pronounce English letters. Just how do you explain to somebody who doesn't speak your language how to say z (especially when you've got a couple of English coworkers and a Canuck friend who all insist on saying zed, for Pete's sake)?

First I tried just demonstrating a prolonged sound for them: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. In reply, I received ten prepubescent voices chorusing jiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii. Then I tried a different tack. I hissed out a prolonged ssssssssssssssssssss. The reply was favorably accurate. Then I hummed a bit at the back of my throat: mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Once again I was favored with a suitably similar repetition. Then I tried to explain that you must combine those two sounds, the sustained note from your vocal chords coupled with the tenuous connection of the upper and lower front teeth necessary to induce the singular z sound. I demonstrated: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Jiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.

Ten months of this have begun to take their toll on my customarily relentless sense of optimism and self-confidence.

Nearly as infuriating and mentally exhausting as the Mystery of the Interchangeable R and L is the Trial of the Vanishing F. I mentioned before that "frame" turns into plame. Likewise, "freeze" turns into preeji, "fly" switches to ply and "price" becomes pliseu. F is nowhere to be found. It just disappears. Ask a Korean student how they're doing and, if they're on the young side, it's an egg to an egg sandwich they'll reply "I'm pine."

The rest of the common grammatical errors are understandable. Korean children tend to polarize into two camps: the "no articles" camp and the "too many articles" camp. Let me give you a hypothetical example. I wrote both of these myself, so I'm not stealing or plagiarizing or violating any contractual privacy. I also omitted most of the customary errors children make concerning past and present tense and subject-verb agreement.

Okay, here's a potential excerpt from the "no articles" camp:

On vacation I go to Seoul. I saw show at hotel. Then I went room and sleep. Next day I go to park. I ride roller coaster, Ferris wheel, Tilt-A-Whirl. After that, we went home. I went to PC room with Jang-Ho and Tae-Eun.

And now check out that same excerpt from the "too many articles" camp:

On the vacation I go to the Seoul. I saw the show at the hotel. Then I went to the room and the sleep. The next day I go to the park. I ride the roller coaster, the Ferris wheel, the Tilt-A-Whirl. After that, we went to the home. I went to the PC room with the Jang-Ho and the Tae-Eun.

See what I mean? Either way it means a lot of work when the time comes to grade diary entries or book reports. I'm either constantly adding in articles or crossing them out. When you factor in those aforementioned tense and S/V agreement errors...well, let's just say I'm not so much correcting as rewriting.

In all seriousness, however, I am not complaining. I still love this job. I think it's the best in the world and I'd recommend it to anybody. (Speaking of which, Reading Town's on the lookout for somebody to replace me...any footloose and fancy-free English speakers, male or female, should apply at once. Check out CareerBuilder.com; that's where I found Reading Town's posting.)

It's fun and fulfilling. Just this afternoon the elementary school students used me for a jungle gym again. I've gotten them hooked on assisted jumps (we hold hands, count to three, they jump and I lift them high in the air). We have lots of fun in class. I was trying to explain what the word "summons" meant to my upper-level students a while back and James raised his hand and said, hesitantly: "Summons talking?"

Say it fast and you'll get the pun.

While we're at it, try to say the words "double bulgogi burger" six times fast. Betcha can't do it.

I suppose I just didn't realize that something you and I as English speakers can do without thinking would be so tricky for Korean children. And so hilariously exasperating.