Southern Night, Y’all

The past two weeks at eikaiwa have been great, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed both classes.  Last week I taught my adults all about the South, and last night I had an American style birthday party for my kids.  Since two of my girls have birthdays in July, plus mine, plus America’s, I figured a birthday party would be well liked by all.  I was right in this assumption!

First, let’s discuss last week. I was super, super, SUPER excited about southern night.  I love the fact that I’m from the South.  I enjoy the fact that I know how to make amazing biscuits and gravy and that when I get really passionate or angry about something, my redneck accent comes out.  Therefore, I was excited about sharing my sub-culture with people who aren’t familiar with it.  Ian was going to come with me, but at the very LAST minute, he received a phone call from work about something that had to be done immediately.  We were literally climbing into the car when his phone rang.  Bummer. 

I had a well rounded southern night planned.  I first explained where the South was, about the accent, and how the South was seen as more friendly and hospitable.  They didn’t quite understand the accent part, so I told them that sometimes people think that people from the South are stupid because the accent sounds unintelligent.  More blank looks.  I then compared it to the redneck accent of Kumamoto, Kuma-bend.  At that point, they were like “OOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.  Gotcha.” and then went on to describe all of the members in their families who speak in Kuma-bend and how they have absolutely no idea what they are saying half the time. 

I had a worksheet that listed the different things that the southern accent does—such as –ing clippings, (goin’ instead of going), combining words (gonna instead of going to), long vowel sounds (cain’t instead of can’t), and adding extra syllables (lay-uf instead of laugh).  However, this worksheet didn’t go over as well as I’d hoped.  While we practiced saying all of these words, they often couldn’t hear the different sounds.  For example, they couldn’t distinguish goin’ from going.  It sounded the same to them.  Planning fail…..

For break time I had made them southern food, biscuits with sweet tea.  Everyone agreed that the biscuits were delicious.  I told them that generally they are breakfast food, and you can put gravy, jelly, honey, or butter on them.  My sweet tea, however, got mixed reviews.  Since sugar in tea isn’t really a thing that you do in Japan, I gave each of them about a swallow’s worth to try.  Hiromi liked it and asked for more, but my older lady in class, Itsuki, made a horrible, horrible face after she swallowed it.  Needless to say, she didn’t ask for more and told me that there was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much sugar in it.  “Sugar,” she said and patted her belly with one hand while pointing at mine, “makes fat.”

For the last half of class I had a PowerPoint game for them to play with southern idioms.  I first had to describe what an idiom was and gave them a few examples.  Idioms are difficult to understand in a non-native language, so for them to have to figure out what “I’m walking on air” meant wasn’t exactly the easiest thing.  After they got the basis of idioms, we started playing the game.  I gave them one idiom and three options.  They had to guess which one it was, and if they got it right, they were rewarded with points.  For example:

Bless her heart.

1) She did something nice.

2) She did something evil.

3) She did something dumb.

OR:

I am as full as a tick.

1) I ate too much.

2) I am annoying.

3) I gained weight.

It was a LOT of fun because half the time they were like “UMMMMMM….this makes no sense.” So I would explain why it was that way, and by the end of class, they were already using some of the idioms.  Winning!!

Dang…..I really thought that I was going to get both classes in this blog, but I still have so much more to write about, and this is already pushing long.  No fears, kids!  I’ll write another blog soon!