Over here in France the kids learn British English, mostly. This is not a bad thing; it's geographically logical. When I was learning Spanish in Pennsylvania, it was Latin American Spanish rather than Spanish Spanish. And that's why I can't get my head around that Castillian lithp. But I digress.
Sometimes I stop my lesson and say "Open parentheses." Then I explain whatever quirk has come to mind. Mostly my parentheses have cultural overtones, but sometimes they are lingustic. When I revise the alphabet with the 6th graders, I tell them that I learned to say the last letter differently than they did. And so they shouldn't be surprised if it pops out of my mouth that way. It's a reflex. (But let's be honest. Does "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXY and Zed" sound good to you?)
This afternoon with my "second language" 7th graders (they started learning German last year; it is their "first language") I worked on naming classroom objects. I peeked into one kid's pencil case, asked if I could take something out, and pulled out an eraser. "What's this?" I asked. Lloyd, whose real name is really Lloyd, blurted out "Der Gummi!" (or die or das, I don't know). I smiled. Lloyd is what the French call un branleur, and I was surprised (yet pleased) by his participation. The French word for eraser is une gomme, which resembles the German Gummi, of course, and tell me you're NOT thinking of fruity little bears right now.
I shook my head at Lloyd, all the while marvelling at linguistic interconnectedness. Another pupil pulled out her eraser, which happened to have the word "eraser" printed on it in many languages. She figured out which one was the American word for it, and I nodded. In the meantime, another pupil had racked his brain and had found the word he'd learned in elementary school.
"It's a rubber," he said.
I'm so juvenile.
I managed to keep from chortling.
"Yes," I said, and explained that the Americans and the British used a different word for der Gummi.
Close parentheses.
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