I had another visit with my refugee friends today. I'd managed to get hold of a picture dictionary for the mother of the family, and we had fun going over lots of words and trying to pronounce them correctly. That was a challenge for me too, of course, because I have to try and say things with an American accent. It's no use me teaching her to say teuwna with a lovely British accent. If she ever wants to order a fish sandwich here, toona is the word she needs.
Anyway, we spent a long time studying vocabulary, and she also read to me from a children's book about baby animals. I felt, as I always do, full of admiration for an adult trying to get to grips with the English language. It's so complicated! This a fact I came to appreciate most fully during my six-month stint in Burma, when I tried, and totally failed, to learn Burmese.
I found it fiendishly difficult to learn, because in many ways - even though it looks and sounds quite different - it resembles English.
It has it's own script which to the outsiders' eye is all squiggles and circles. Well, it's not impossible to learn a new alphabet, but the problem comes when you realise that the "letters" have different sounds depending on how they combine with other letters - just like in English (think letter "c" in choose ice-cream). And then - again, like in English - when you reckon you've sussed all the rules, you find out about the exceptions to the rules. Think of the poor learner of English trying to read although the bough was tough I managed to saw through it. Burmese, judging by the small amount I studied, is equally full of such pitfalls - and I fell into every one I came across.
So, my sympathy for learners of English is boundless. My sincere good wishes to all who attempt it, and respect to all who master it.
Underneath the mistletoe bough, there stands a boy with a hacking cough
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