small differences (linguistic - neurological edition)

I'm very interested in how the brain "translates" accent into understandable speech. Are Engilsh speakers, with its infinite accents, better at this? Furthermore, is the way we learn our first language reflective of our general way of thinking?

In Egypt, people were often baffled by the slightest mistake in accent. I lived near a street called tram street, which in Egyptian Arabic should be pronounced ahhh- taahh-rehhm. There is a very slight rolling of the R in there. Although my general arabic accent is quite good, this one word was impossible for me.

One time, I sat in a taxi and tried to explain to the driver what street I wanted. We agreed that there are three main streets that run across Alexandria. We agreed that we were at the moment on one of them, and it was not the one that i wanted. We agreed that I didn't want to be on the sea. In my mind, this alone should have been enough, but he began to rattle off all of the smaller streets, until finally i was able to pronounce tram street correctly.

Another time i was in McDonald's, and said i wanted my meal a cahm - bow. (As in Combo. With fries and a drink. I actually forget what they call it in America now, but in Korea its called a "set.") I was met with a blank stare. What i meant to say was cum-bow. There was no mental training to search for similar words, to do internal interpretations of meaning. The language was an all or nothing deal, where you either hit a bullseye of meaning, or grazed the target as gibberish. The fact that there was literally no other similar word i could have been trying to say in that situation was entirely besides the point.

While I was in Egypt and bitter and angry, I interpreted this as a clear sign that Egyptians were retarded. Now I'm beginning to realize that it has a whole lot more to do with how we are taught to learn language.

So now in Korea...

i sort of lost it yesterday. I was teaching little Bennie and Angie phonics stuff out of there phonics book, and there's a page that has

P + ark = Park.

That's it though. The book doesn't follow through with the whole Electric Company thing, it just moves on.
However, i have about 20 minutes of material that i have to stretch to fit a 45 minute class, so i thought i'd build on it.

wasn't going to happen.

They could read "ark"
and they could read "park", because they already knew it. But when i switched to an "M", i met blank stares. It's not that the kids didn't know what sound an M makes. (And furthermore, its not like there written language isn't phonetic either.) It's just that they're trained to memorize, not to problem solve.

I wrote "ark" "Mark" "Park" and "Hark" on the board, and had them repeat the pronunciations of each.

Then i added "Gark." (again, meaning isn't important here, this is a phonics class.)

One of the girls said "gorilla."

She knew the letter g, but the way her brain was wired to learn, she had to say a word that she already knew.

I was ready to cry.