Vohv

High on my list of "Things I would never have known if I hadn't become an English teacher": computer games give you a fantastically broad (although sporadic) vocabulary.

Really, in every class I've got one or two boys, usually players of "vohv" (WoW, World of Warcraft) who know the most bizarre terms. Their vocab falls into several categories, some you would expect, some you would not. Like ways to die (evisceration, decapitation, mauling, kidney punch, exsanguinate (!)), weapons and fighters (crossbow, sniper) body parts (intestines, guts, radials), nature (cavern, crag, fjord, misty, bog, outland, swarm, typhoon) and clothing (buckle, slipper, wimple). All of these are words I've heard from vohv students, sometimes used correctly, sometimes not (one boy thought that "maul" meant something similar to "hug").

And I can't escape it at home, either: a few days ago I was talking to Tomi, and he was telling me about children whose parent died, "and they had to go to a, you know, that place.... an orphantry."

"An orphantry? You mean an orphanage?" I asked. He got that puzzled look I see so often on my students' faces, when they know they've said something wrong but aren't sure what, and started laughing at himself.

"Yeah, you know, I was thinking like infantry... but I guess not."

I think it's my favorite thing about life here: Hunglish, English-Hungarian, and the way people's brains work... it's like my whole world is one big word-association game.

Hunglish SMS

This is a bit old, but I found it when I was cleaning old SMSs off my phone. It's one of my all-time favorite samples of Hunglish, written with perfect grammar by a woman completely fluent in both languages:

Szia Emily! Thank you a könyvet! You are very aranyos! Elkezdtem to read it, I like it nagyon. Köszi again! Take care :)

Sounds like a joke, but...

nope, instead just another example of how I'm warping the language of today's youth, and vice-versa:

Two Hungarians and an American walk into a hot room.
The American says: "Hüüj de warm van."
Hungarian 1 says: "Oh my god it's very meleg."
Hungarian 2 looks at us both strangely, and shakes his head wordlessly.

Funny students

Language exam? No thanks, I'd rather not talk about it. Ask me again in a couple weeks when the official results are in...

Anyway, to keep both my loyal readers content until I'm ready to actually write something... another edition of Funny Things From Students.

about American politics: "She (Palin) doesn't have enough presidental XP."

about American history: "John Paul Jones was the nasal hero of the Revolutionary War."

about Jesse James, who fought with the Conferderacy: "He fought against the army for the consideration on Western Amerika."

about geography: the state of "Sassachusetts"

a smooth, un-flustered presentation:
presenter: "Jamaica is famous for it's rivers, it's reggae music, reggae museum..."
other student, in Hungarian: "And pot."
presenter, not missing a beat: "Yes, and for it's typical Jamaican atmosphere..."

11.C takes a quiz

With my 11.C classes, I’m currently working, very slowly, through basic America history and culture. Their assignment over the break was to read a measly 5 pages about schools, society, and culture in Colonial America. The five pages contained some pretty advanced vocabulary though, and so I specifically told them, “Make sure you look up all the words you don’t understand, because we’re going to have a vocabulary quiz next lesson.”

No one listened, save one or two girls. Feeling pretty sulky and uninspired, I gave them 35 minutes to look up and study the words, and gave the quiz at the end of class (the 10 words I picked for the quiz were: frontier, deter, be obliged to, thrive, tuition, endeavor, bequeath, vigorous, diffusion, and charter). Although many of them bombed it, they did manage to come up with some entertaining mistakes:

- Everyone was tuited about the schools.
- You can always deter words.
- Towns are obliged to countries.
- Thriving is really dangerous.
- If you’re lost in a town abroad, you can get a tuition from someone in the street.
- Endeavors were in the past, in America history it was present.
- We learned something about diffusion last year from chemistry.
- I have thriven by my sister.
- I put the bequeath under my door, not to move.

and my favorites:
- Endeavors invaded the country.
- Bequeath sounds like french baguette.
- When Soma entered the room he said vigorous.

Nice try, guys.

20 years away

Conversation overheard today between two of my adorable 5th graders. Imagine it in Hungarian, of course:

Ádám: Do you know German?
Balint: What? This is Enlgish class, stupid.
Ádám: No, but do you know German?
Balint: Um, no, why?
Ádám: You know, you have to speak German to get into high school.
Balint: What?
Ádám: You have to speak two languages.
Balint: Ádám, who cares? That’s like 20 years away.
Ádám: You mean 5 years.*
Balint: Whatever, what color are your eyes?**

*Actually, it’s like 3 and a half years.
** What he readlly said, in wonderful Hunglish, was “Mindegy, milyen az eyes-ed?”