Job Discussion Forums

[Celeste]

Let's see. WHen I first started teaching, I had a job at a girls' high school in Korea. On the first day, one of the young English teachers introduced me to my first class. "This is Ms.Munger she is not a virgin, she will be your new English teacher." As no one reacted strangely to this, I thanked him for the introduction and proceeded to field questions from the kids. When I later asked him why he'd introduced me that way, he said that it was normal to tell students whether or not a teacher was married. When I told him what the actual meaning of his sentence was, he almost died of embarrassment.

Second day. A different teacher was taking me around, and she had a much better command of English. We got past the introduction, and then the students were asking me questions. One of the girls, upon having heard that I was married, asked "Ms.Munger, how do you make love to your husband?"
I paused, looked at the Korean teacher, and after asking the girl acouple of questions, she rephrased the question. "She wants to know how you met your husband. Was it an arranged marriage like in Korea, or a love match?"
We never explained the misunderstandings to the classes. I don't think my reputation could have taken it.

[Kent F. Kruhoeffer]

Thank you richard ame, Irish, veiled sentiments and Celeste ... for putting a on my face this morning. Now we're cooking, and thankfully it's not ME in the cooking pot! (see original post for details)

[omar805]

deleted

[Ben Round de Bloc]

[Kent F. Kruhoeffer]

Dear Ben:

I'm sure she'll blow it! She has a reputation to uphold.

Regards,
keNt

PS: Thanks for the PM, Ben.

[Seth]

In my primary classes I regularly tell my students that I'm an 85 year old Korean man named Hu Jintao (Hu Jintao being the pres of China, of course). I'm 26 with blond hair, blue eyes. They usually believe me and some students still call me Hu Jintao.

Once I had a training center class when I first got to China, and I was naive enough to think that I could change their pronunciation. So I had them all practice saying out loud 1333, thirteen hundred and thirty three, making the proper TH sound by slightly sticking out the tongue, all students at the same time like Chinese like to do. The noise they created sounded like 30 people with bad gas. I had to leave the room from laughing so hard.

Another thing we went over was things that you can make, IE make food, make time, etc. One girl said 'make love' thinking it meant to build a relationship. Some of the quicker students knew what it meant and she never heard the end of it.

I also had a student who named himself semen. I never asked how he picked that name. Thinking back, I should have.

[omar805]

Once I took a group of Summer school Korean kids to a zoo in Australia.We were feeding the kangaroos when suddenly, some of the kids started screaming, "Teacher, come quick.The kangaroo is about to have a baby!" Turned out to be the "joey" (baby kangaroo) sticking its head out of the mother's pouch.

[Kent F. Kruhoeffer]

Seth (I mean, Dear Leader Hu Jintao!)

Semen? Now there's a 'catchy' name! Do you think he was dreaming about being a 'sailor' ... or, as Jethro Tull liked to say, "eyeing little girls with bad intent?"

Omar805: I never knew what a "Joey" was until now. Thanks for the cute story!

[Shaman]

When I was in Paris, a colleague of mine related this experience to me. She was explaining the saying "don't make a peep" and her student became somewhat flummoxed. An unexpected homonym had reared its ugly head, and the context of the sentence took on entirely an entirely different connotation. The student mistook "peep" for "pipe" and subsequently explained to my colleague that the latter is actually French slang for Ms. Lewinsky's trademark move.

[Kent F. Kruhoeffer]

Greetings Shaman:

Very funny! As a serious-minded teacher, I would have immediately launched into the "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers" tongue twister.

To French students everywhere: "Put that in your peep and smoke it!"

Regards,
kEnt

PS: Love your cat.

[Shaman]

Greetings Kent,

Yikes! That tongue twister would certainly open a whole new can of worms!

Regards,
Shaman

[Lynn]

[Buck Turgidson]

This isn't exactly a classroom story. When I was in Kyushu I visited the Sapporo brewery and bought a Yebisu beer T-shirt as a souvenir. Later when I wore it in Russia, I got a lot of strange looks and giggles from my students. Yebisu is very close to the obscene Russian word for "copulate."

Buck

[Kent F. Kruhoeffer]

Thanks Buck!

Very funny. I love Yebisu. Both of them!

Reminds me that the Japanese word for 'man's private part' is almost the same as the Korean word for 'friend'. You gotta be careful out there, folks!

[Roger]

There is a German adverb "fast", with a short vowel, meaning "almost". In Hungary many locals speak excellent German. I was entertaining two youngsters with tales of my travelling when I used this adverb. BOth the boy and the girl - aged around 14 - looked at me, then at each other, laughing heartily.
I learnt then that "fast" in Hungarian was a noun denoting the male genital, but w3hat was so unexpected was that the Hungarian noun "fast" seemed to fit perfectly into this German sentence ("I held it for almost one hour' thus became "I held the *beep* for one hour")>