Friday, June 13
Friday: The end of our first week of teaching.
The novices are excited to share stories of the Feast of St. Anthony, which works its way into naming favourite saints, which in turn morphs into a discussion of rudeness, politeness and finally spelling and culture – why don’t Americans use the letter “u” in words where the rest of the English-speaking world do (colour, favour, etc), and why do Indians love the present continuous with such passion?
Perhaps because of that earlier discussion I found myself thinking about some of the failings of the English language during our “play time” at SEAM in the evening. The children call us “brother” and “sister”, and it would follow that there should be some term for the relationship in the other direction, and yet their isn’t – or at least none that would be natural. And isn’t that strange, given that so many of English’s closely related tongues *do* have such words - “petit(e)” (“little”, used as a name) in French, or “boetie” (“little brother”) in Afrikaans. Of course Victorian (and earlier) literature is full of people saying “Oh, little one”, so perhaps it’s a relationship that’s simply evolved out of being and the acceptability of the term has gone with it. Something to ponder in any case!
Jen
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