Well, I missed my v.p. diary taking a long nap in the hot afternoon after work today. I taught English to tenth graders, so I thought I'd share an anecdote about what I learned in school today.
We started out with silent reading and some writing practice, then I gave the students some notes on figurative language. After I had defined various terms and given examples, they had a bunch of worksheets to do, so I went over the directions with them and set them to work on that, telling them to ask me or the teacher's aide if they had any questions.
I got up again to point out that many (if not most) common literary figures of speech they would encounter in speaking or reading could be traced back in some form either to the Bible, Shakespeare or Cervantes.
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Realizing that about half the class was made up of students who speak Spanish along with English, if not as their first language, I was trying to think of a good Spanish idiom I could use as an example, when I remembered a rhyming statement and response I had heard some kids use last year in an ESL class. Two girls were gossiping about something, then one said, "¿Qué te importa?" and the other answered, "Como una torta," which means "What does it matter to you?" and "Like cake."
So I wrote these on the board and explained that the comparison made was between the item of gossip and cake, i.e., it's not really that important to know an item of gossip or not, or to eat cake or bread or something else.
Then a girl at the back of the class said something rapid-fire in Spanish which was clearly some kind of memorized rhyme related to this phrase. So I had her write it down for me. It went, "¿Qué te importa? / Come torta / con tu hermana / la gordota / si te parchas no me importa," which, roughly, means, "What does it matter to you? / You eat cake / with your sister / the fat one / and if you feel better [or get sick] I don't care."
So I hope they had fun and learned something about metaphors. I definitely learned enough to make me laugh, expand my knowledge of idiomatic Spanish a bit and justify the day.
Alex
Choose Our President 2008