Teresa Derr, 134 YinD
As a kid, I had the bad habit of mixing up my ‘b’s and ‘d’s. One such instance is forever memorialized in my grandparents’ home, where they proudly hung up a plate I made (by drawing on a circle and sending it in to get turned into a plastic plate) which boldly declares: “When bad caut a nothern PiKe”.
I’m sure I am not the only one with a story like this, and right now, I’m going through a very similar thing learning to write in Thai, where I consistently mix up ด and ค, or ภ and ถ. So, it comes as no surprise to me when I see Thai students having similar problems with English, though I am surprised the more common mistake is turning a ‘g’ into an ‘e’. Sometimes with eyebrow-raising results.
Fellow volunteer and Sticky Rice writer Bianca sent this into our volunteer group chat with this caption: “Little Satang is one of my most energetic first graders and I love her. She wrote her g backwards and it looked like she had a choice word for me.” Service in Peace Corps certainly has lots of opportunities to practice not being offended – or perhaps just to ton your ab muscles so you can hold your laughs in while gently correcting mistakes so you don’t send these kids out into the English world thinking insults are pigs.
This is one of my students, who in general can write fairly well, but sometimes even the best of us can fall into the trap of our eyes crossing. This at least makes her look like a Shakespearean-esque poet as she reflects on herself, “O Favourite, Thine name is Nothing.”
My grandma and older sister love to write beautiful letters in cursive, so I have some practice reading it, and yet when Libby sent me this picture asking if I could make heads or tails of it, I was stumped. There seem to be many letters that perhaps are not quite what they’re supposed to be, and some of the letters I think I can read don’t form a word I know. (is that one circle supposed to be an ‘o’? An ‘e’? A ‘c’? An ‘a’? Does that second word say holtr? What does that trying to mean?) Honestly, though, I can’t fault the writer of this! It probably looks like how my current spelling attempts in Thai are going.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Improving our spelling is a never-ending process. I can’t fault any of these people for their mistakes, especially when spelling in English is just…. So ridikyulus. And diphikult. And illojikal. I have to credit them for their attempts and hope that my presence here helps them do better in the future!
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