And the punchline is
It was a dream. Julia dreamed that her teacher told her she had to change her name.
I was really pretty sure there had to be some misunderstanding (Dad gets points for having the closest guess), so I wasn't too worried about discussing it with the teacher, but I will admit that I spent some time trying to think of a good counter-example, preferably one where the teacher, Flor (which means flower) gets called Floor in the States. Of course that's how it's pronounced here, too, so it really wasn't a great example.
Maybe I could have worked in something about a guy Alex met recently through one of his clients. The guy, who is Costa Rican, has the unusual name of Níger and let's just say that Alex's client, who is Greek, really really needs to work on pronouncing it the way Níger himself pronounces it, rather than adapting it to suit the phonetics of his own language.
6 comments:
Not Fair! I will comment no more. LOL
Here's your example: Flor would have to be called "Linoleum" in the States. Wait, no, that's not it . . .
So Julia was present at the teacher meeting and 'fessed up, or the teacher said nothing of the sort happened, you asked Julia about it again, and she admitted it was a dream?
Julia!!! You got us all riled up for a dream?
I'm ready for a nice, tame story of Robin's ordinary day at school now.
Well, I asked her about it a couple of times after she first mentioned it and before I had spoken to Flor, and fortunately Julia said something about a dream at some point.
When I did talk to Flor, she said Julia had been saying the same thing at school for a few days, but that of course she, Flor, had never said anything about changing Julia's name.
I explained to Julia that I thought it was something she dreamed, because Flor had no intention of changing the way they pronounce Julia's name, and Julia's reaction was pretty much, "Oh. Okay."
I think it was good that there were a few days in between, so Julia could see for herself that Flor wasn't calling her by a different name. It made it seem less like we were telling her she was wrong, and more like we were just finding an explanation for her experience.
snore
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snort
/
wow. Making issues out of thin air.
g
The guy, who is Costa Rican, has the unusual name of Níger and let's just say that Alex's client, who is Greek, really really needs to work on pronouncing it the way Níger himself pronounces it, rather than adapting it to suit the phonetics of his own language.
I feel your pain. One of the Wallace and Gromit shorts features a doomed robot using a frustrated "Knickers!" as his last word. Our two-year-old thinks it's the funniest thing ever (which, granted, it is) -- but when he repeats it, the "ck" becomes a "g".
And he does it in the middle of Whole Foods.
Ouch.
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