Last term, I was teaching the first grade the English terms for family members. Many Japanese households - especially in rural areas like this one - contain grandparents and the occasional aunt and/or uncle, in addition to the nuclear family common in America. So while in another country I may have let the seven year-olds off with only having to learn "father, mother, (younger/older) sister and (younger/older) brother" that day, I tacked grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins onto this particular lesson. Now, some of you may recall that I asked for many of your photographs a few months ago. That request was to help out with this very lesson. Thank you all again for your responses, your pictures were of great aid to a classroom full of visual learners.
So anyway, after we'd covered parents, siblings, and grandparents, here I was holding this picture...
... before this group of kids...
... and loudly repeating the word "uncle!"
Now at the time I had heard once or twice before, but could not recall, that the Japanese word for "pile of turds" is unko, pronounced oohn-koh. The Japanese have a difficult time distinguishing betweem vowels like the "u" in "uncle" and their う, which sounds more like "ooh". Additionally, they don't have the consonant "l", and every syllable ends in a vowel (or occasionally "n"), so by the time the kids were done mangling the world "uncle", it did unfortunately sound a bit like unko, which they thought was hilarious. So there I was, fairly red in the face, as 9 first-graders essentially screamed "turd! turd!" at a picture of Fran.
I'm sorry, Peanut.
