A return to the lost consonant

Sayings and proverbs are one of the last areas that you seem to get to when learning a language. My own experience in this area certainly confirms this. I’ve been learning Dutch for over twenty-five years and I still rarely feel confident enough to casually throw a Dutch proverb into things I’m saying. Having a full and complete understanding of both the phrase itself and when it is appropriate to use it isn’t easy.

Some proverbs are sometimes a little familiar when you come from an English background or are relatively simple to work out the meaning of them. Phrases such as “Er schuilt een addertje onder het gras“, translates easily as “there is an adder hiding in the grass”, something that you should obviously watch out for and avoid the danger if you can.   However, others are confusing or just plainly weird! Maybe they do have a logical history somewhere in the past, but for me, they just feel like a language obstacle waiting to trip me up. A couple of examples of this category could be “Zo gek als een deur zijn” (as mad as a door) and “ik schrik me een hoedje” (actually means, it scared the wits out of me, but literally translates as “you scared me a hat”).

I’m certainly no beginner with the Dutch language anymore, but still, this area of language does feel a bit like a communication minefield that I enter at my peril!

With this in mind, and as a sort of language orientated art teacher I have recently reused for the first time in a while a creative project that gets my pupils to think a bit more about the extensive collection of proverbs that there is in the English language. Many of these are every bit as odd as the Dutch examples I’ve mentioned. But to make my creative activity a bit more fun I combine it with an idea based on artist/designer Graham Rawle’s Guardian column from a while back, “The Lost Consonant”. In it Rawle took a sentence and removed a single consonant from one of the words that resulted in the meaning of the sentence being stood on its head and gaining an often ridiculous or plain silly alternative. This new version of the sentence was then accompanied by an equally silly collage that illustrated the new, twisted version.

My assignment, that I use with the (14-15 year old) pupils works in a similar way. Except I ask them to choose an existing proverb or saying from the English language and make use of that as a starting point. We make use of the many websites that there are that list plenty of possibilities together with their meanings.

Then the challenge is two-fold. Firstly, find one where the removal of a single consonant can stand the meaning on its head. In this way “Barking up the wrong tree” can become “Baking up the wrong tree” or “Caught between two stools” becomes “Caught between two tools”. Whilst doing this it is equally important to keep in mind that an entertaining collage also needs to be made that illustrates the new version. We do this using photo-manipulation software on an iPad, but it could equally be done on a desktop computer or with scissors and glue.

For me the assignment has several interesting elements:

• Developing familiarity with a difficult area of language acquisition
• Playing with language and looking for humourous possibilities
• Creative opportunities for communication through manipulated imagery in the form of collage combined with text

Although I am an art teacher, I certainly don’t see this as an assignment that should be limited to the art room.

For more of Graham Rawle’s work click here.

Playing with language….with a footballing connection

Sharing a joke with a class is one of the best parts of education.  It’s a potentially fun and entertaining moment and it does wonders for the relationship that you as a teacher have with a group.  If it can also include a kind of educational dimension then you have a perhaps unusual but also very valuable combination.

I’ve posted before about the difficult and rather unique place in language acquisition that proverbs and sayings in communication.

Lost Consonants, sayings and proverbs

They are a difficult part to grasp and to dare to use. I like to use them in my teaching as an art teacher in bilingual education. I often find myself pausing to explain what exactly I mean when I use such a phrase or proverb.  Understanding, and daring to use a phrase like ‘that’s a different kettle of fish’ is difficult, but knowing when to use it enriches communication and brings a new level to expression through language.

There is also a kind of flip side to this, and also one that I occasionally encounter in the classroom. A pupil tries to use a translated version of a Dutch proverb.  The translated version can at times sound very odd, bewildering or just plain funny.

It is normally only a diversion at the end of a lesson, but throwing translations of Dutch proverbs, (translated literally and into perfect English of course) can become so entertaining, at home in our bilingual household we do it as well. Someone who complains a lot is a ‘moan sock’, a direct translation from the Dutch ‘zeurkous’.

Or try ‘ik schrik me een hoedje’, it is used when you are very shocked or have someone made you jump. It means, literally translated ‘I shocked myself a hat’!

Or ‘you’re standing with your mouth full of teeth’…you just don’t know what to say, ‘met de mond vol tanden staan’ in Dutch.

Or ‘make someone happy with a dead sparrow’….trying to impress someone with something that is actually pretty valueless, ‘iemand blij maken met een dode mus’ in Dutch.

The comedians in the class seem to like the challenge of trying to have mock conversations that include direct English translations or Dutch sayings.  I’m not sure if this whole exercise has any real language value. Other than encouraging the pupils to play and explore language in unusual and fun ways.  I would hope that it does teach them at least how careful you need to be if to are tempted to try and translate and use a proverb from your own language. It can leave you looking  well, a little daft, which is where the football connection comes in. The current coach (Louis van Gaal) of Manchester United also at times runs into problems in this area as the following two videos show:

If anyone has any examples of strange translations of sayings and proverbs into English I’d be interested to hear them.