Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Foul Languages
Foul Languages
May 2006
It was brought to the attention of all staff that the perceived innocence of our
Catholic female students is under threat. Some how, some where, some one has exposed the poor lambs to the nastiness of foul languages. This was not exactly made clear to us until a very urgent, yet mysterious, staff meeting was called.
When all the staff were gathered together in one of the larger rooms we were then allocated a table. This had been thought about as we were ‘grouped’ according to language. That meant the non Chinese speakers had a table of their own. The nine of us huddled together not knowing what to expect.
Then the bombshell came. ‘Someone’ had phoned the school to complain about hearing our students using ‘foul languages’ while they were traveling home on the train, or was it bus – and who was it anyway? And who phoned? That part of the detective story is missing so we have to believe it to be true.
I use the phrase ‘foul languages’ as that is how it is used in school. It was all I could do to blurt out that foul language is an uncountable noun and, therefore, does not require the ‘s’ to make it plural. I thought better of it and kept my gob shut.
As predictable as ever the management made us discuss this serious issue in our groups with some points to keep us on track. The amount of times I have done this over the last four years is uncountable and I must send a note to myself not to make my students do it very often as I appreciate just how tedious it is! Discuss in groups, share, feedback….help me please!
To make us extra conscientious one of the top brass management sat on the English speaking table so we had to take it seriously. I felt I made a valuable contribution which probably meant I spoke too much while everyone else sighed with relief that I took up all the time so they could snooze the ‘sharing’ time away. So ended up with blather about respect, responsibility, reputation. Now this seems like I was taking it rather too seriously doesn’t it? I couldn’t help trying to give a good impression to the top brass, it made no difference to my own reputation, naturally!
Then the meeting started to get interesting. Us English speakers found that we would be expected to stop the use of swearing by our good students if and when we heard it in use. Now this stumped us. How would we recognize a Chinese swear word as between us the only words we have involve getting a taxi to stop at the right place or greetings to others in the morning (no one knew what to say in the afternoon or evening!) so identifying swear words and stopping students from using them would prove rather difficult.
We explained this and after a hushed conversation with the Big Sister a male member of staff was allocated to give the none Chinese speakers a quick lesson in swearing in Chinese. What fun! We were all moved into a smaller room. He started the lesson. He did it as if we were very young children in a systematic way. First of all he wrote a word on the board, then said it, we repeated. He corrected our pronunciation and then we tried again, in unison. When he was satisfied with that he gave us the translation (many blushes especially from him and lots of laughter especially from us) then he went on with the same system for other words and eventually progressed to sentences. We were very good students and repeated the words dutifully, trying our very best to get it right.
At the end of the lesson I was able to say ‘Go and f*** your mothers dirty c****’ which I was told was the most commonly used ‘foul languages’. Our teacher then erased the words from the whiteboard being very careful not to leave any trace of the lesson. Imagine the students using that same room and being able to still read the words!
