Teach Yourself Semi-Modals in Non-Stative Verbs

Hey, I *am* enjoying these Letters from Our Man In Astana.

I have half a degree in languages and I’ll be buggered if I can remember what a modal verb is. Never heard of a stative verb in my life. Just how advanced ARE these learners?

I’d never hear of stative verbs before Thursday either. Modals are things like would, should, can, will, ought. Foreigners tend to shy away from them because they’re confusing for them. ("I think it is better we take the Northern Line” rather than “we should take the Northern Line.") It’s a credit to my year 9’s (i.e., 16-17-year-olds) that they want to get to grips with them. They’re not easy to teach either – especially if you’re going back into teaching after spending a few years out using yourself as an amusement park.

Every subject that I’ve come across, the children here are at least as good as you’d get in a very good English selective school. You should see their Maths books – fecking Nora.

Which language(s) did you do? Or was it Linguistics? I actually went to Uni to do Linguistics at first, then could hardly stay awake in the lectures, and changed to Music and Philosophy and loved it.

I started off doing 50/50 French and Italian but changed after a year to French and Sociology as i couldn’t be arsed to go abroad for a year.

My French is nowhere near as good as it ought to be because I am a lazy twat and mostly chose literature modules where you could just buy the translation.. My best mark in my finals was 74% and I hadn’t even read the book, just parroted back the lectures. I scraped a third in the oral exam.

Hey, at least it was free in the 90s.

I often wish I was doing my degree now; I’d be so much more engaged than I was when it followed straight after 13 years of school.

Ditto; I never think my French is very good until I hear my husband (who did it to O-level) try to stumble through a conversation. It helps, being immersed in it.

I have more problems in Spain because people assume I’m Spanish because of my hair; embarrassingly my stock of ten Catalan/Castilian phrases is quickly exhausted.

I don’t like Spanish. I just really don’t like how it sounds. My second language is Portuguese – I feel more at ease with it than French, and Spanish sounds like baby Portuguese to me, like they haven’t learnt how to move their lips yet. This prejudice has nothing to do with the fact that I lived in Madeira for two years and loved the place and wanted to reject any kind of language interference from Spanish. I do think though that it is Europe’s ugliest language.

This crap about “even a few words of language x will be gratefully appreciated” is shit. No – everyone should set the bar higher. It’s a bit colonialist to expect the host to be grateful for the least effort in his/her language.

Which is all well and good, but Kazakh is fucking hard. The numbers to ten are
1) buh
2) yerki
3) ushh
4) turrt
5) bess
6) alti
7) zhetteh
8) sereez
9) tochlz (I really can’t say this at all, it just sounds like a load of phlegm)
10) on.

HTF are you supposed to remember them?

I would think that life out there, initially, at least, would be nothing but difficulties! Hence the drinking, I suppose. Getting hissed at is ‘hello?’ How is that? Did you announce your departure to many back home or did you just do the aul Irish goodbye?

Fascinating comment thread. If I’m being honest (and since you are a total stranger, I feel at liberty) I’m a little put off by your running-up your credit card and just refusing to pay your debt. That’s a bit unsavory.

No…how would drinking help to deal with my difficulties? I don’t see drinking like that. Drinking’s a pleasure to me, I love it.

My difficulties here will be solved by learning the language, teaching in a way that engages the children and gets good results for the school, and making friends. My drinking will carry on through all of that. It’s unrelated.

The Kazakh for hello, politely, is something along the lines of — salyem suv er rerr it’s iz” but they talk so quitely out here that you only get the sibilants.

The credit card? I could not give less of a shit about it. They (treating credit card companies as a collective demon) had had all the capital back and a wodge of interest too. I can’t find any moral qualm about letting Visa pine over 12 grand.

This post brought back flashbacks of graduate school linguistics class… needless to say those were not pleasant flashbacks…

as for the credit card? fuck the behemoth banks and the fucking bankers, criminals each and every one, fucking pricks had no problem holding out their hand when their schemes went tits up back in 2008, fuck ‘em all!!! i applaud your actions sir…

Yes, anyone who comes out with a decent degree in Linguistics is one bright student. It was just too technical for me. I’m a bit lazy – I don’t stick at anything that needs actual effort, unless I’m enjoying it.

About the credit card – over the years those companies have had hundreds, I’d say more like thousands of pounds off me in interest. So they can do one, and good luck to the bailiff who tries to find me in Kaz.