I just ended one of my intercambios for the summer. I had a whole family: two aunts, three cousins, a grandma, and an uncle. We were a spectacle in the market. I was training three booths in a bustling market how to respond to English-speaking tourists.
We drilled on the difference between fifteen and fifty dollars, between a shirt and a skirt, between wood and wool. We practiced our colors and cordial phrases.
At one of the booths, upon learning the word ugly, the littlest girl shouted it out at an elderly American man. It sounded like a long and loud: uuuuuugleee!
I (as straight-faced and stern as I could muster) reminded her that he could understand her.
I confided to her patient mother that English can be dangerous.
Still I helped the girl write a composition about a “friend” although the child felt compelled to write that the friend has a long mouth and dirty ears. I had to inquire how the recipient would know, from the note, she is truly friend.
The tiny terrorizer decided to add that though the frenemy has greasy hair, she has clean teeth.
- Wordplay can be fun. Here’s Eminem on what rhymes with orange: https://genius.com/videos/Eminem-rhyming-with-orange?utm_source=recirculated_content (Links to an external site.)Listen to the feature once for the overall effect.Listen to it again jotting down some of Eminem’s rhymes with orange. Write your own piece with at least eight uses of orange in a rhyme.
