oh, English...

Idioms have got be the most difficult part of a language to teach a non-speaker, and that's what today's tutoring consisted of. The theme was "Food Sayings", and it went something like this, given the choice of 5 food phrases or words:
"I know someone who is really crazy. They're _beans__pie__nuts_."

There really is no easy way to even make an educated guess, once you think about it! I mean, whoever decided a piece of cake was "easy", or even pie for that matter? The particular student I was working with, quite the character, decided that English itself was "full of beans" and "nuts".
I assured him there were idioms just as puzzling in his own language...

Norwegian: å gå som katta rundt den varme grauten
to pace around hot porridge like a cat = beat about the bush

Russian: Вешать лапшу на уши (Vešat' lapšu na ušy)
To hang noodles on one's ears = to tell lies / talk nonsense

Tibetan: chang.sa.rgyag
to put up a beer tent = to get married

French: pédaler dans la choucroute
to pedal in the sauerkraut = to spin your wheels - to go nowhere

And the best of all!
Dutch: Ik zweet peentjes
I sweat carrots = I'm sweating like a pig 

(from a fantastic language resource website, omniglot.com) 

understanding Ewoks

I know I'm making progress in my learning Tibetan when I can understand what the Ewoks are saying.

From Wikipedia: Ben Burtt, the sound designer of Star Wars says: "For the Ewoks, I was inspired by a recording on a BBC documentary of an elderly woman speaking Tibetan. It was very high-pitched and sounded like a good basis for Ewokese to me. Eventually then, what evolved was a pidgin, or double talk version of words from Tibetan, Nepali and other Mongolian languages [sic, neither Tibetan nor Nepali are Mongolian languages]."

"Tibetan diaspora was puzzled as many of the phrases they could make out did not correlate to events on screen."                                      

                                                     http://www.tk1336.com/ewok.html

a new language!

I just love learning languages. I always have, at least since I started with French in seventh grade. (Okay, I took a semester of Spanish before that but for some reason never really got attached to it) After seven years of that, I was ready for something new and moved on to Georgian. I did not have much help with this language, because out of 5 million speakers of whom most tend to be located on another continent, it's not very likely you'll run into someone who can help you when you face something like the inevitable grammar question. But, there's always the internet! I've found several sites that have been very helpful over the years, especially unilang.org, which has forums and plenty of people to answer your questions.

After learning the Tibetan alphabet and some useful phrases this spring semester thanks to a student from work, I kept practicing throughout the summer. This was mostly because I spent two hours commuting to and from the museum each day on the trolley, and so I traded off knitting and learning a language to pass the time.  Then on the first day of classes, on Monday, I walked out of the office at work and saw a sign on the bulletin board for the elementary Tibetan class at KU. What fun! I checked enrollment once I got home and coincidentally the class was only two days a week and at a time when I don't have class or work, so of course I signed up. I'm thinking it will be a good mental break from my regular grad school classes.