The complexity of the English Language…

Saturday night, Mari and I were having a conversation with Jay & Martha Swinney and Matthew and Sheila Nasekos.

The conversation revolved around the complexity of the English language and how we are collectively trying to communicate with our Ukrainian children. The children’s grasp of the language is adequate. However there are so many little things that provide so much confusion that we periodically get the proverbial “deer in the headlights” look from them (‘I don’t understand’).

Take for example: “Today”, “Tuesday”, “two days” and “tomorrow”. The sounds are so much alike and the children’s comprehension of our language is still in work; it’s easy to get them confused because of the “to” sound at the beginning of the word. They don’t hear much after the first syllable…

How about: ‘Two’ (the number), ‘to’ (directional ‘point A to point B), and ‘too’ (also). Enough said…

We are also having issues with: “By” (beside), “buy” (to purchase) and “bye” (good-bye, I’m leaving, see you later). We wish to buy something, but Vera is thinking “bye-bye” so we have to tell her we are going shopping (THAT she understands)…

The beat goes on… The language barrier works both ways… One thing I have learned is that portions of the Cyrillic (Russian/Ukrainian) alphabet is derived from the Greek alphabet. Letters/symbols that we are unaccustomed to have a place here; the symbols resembling letters of the English alphabet do not always sound like what we are used to. While I may have some of the letters figured out, I still don’t have a clue on all of the sounds.

The letter ‘C’ in the English alphabet has either a hard (‘K’) or a soft (‘S’) sound… Here it is always the soft sound. What appears to be the English letter ‘P’ actually comes from the Greek letter ‘Rho’ and makes what we know as the “R” sound... These are the simple ones I have figured out… Their “P” sound/symbol is derived from the Greek letter “Pi”, and what we know as “y” actually is the “oo” sound.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg... We have so much to learn, and so little time!

Back to McDonalds: Ice Cream (McFlurry) and some hot tea (I couldn’t remember the word)… The young lady behind the counter was doing her best to try to understand; all the while smiling in that “deer in the headlights / I don’t understand” kind of way… Pictures helped with the McFlurry, but, trying to convey “tea”, was a bit more challenging… I was thinking about the people who ordered tea before us, and was motioning to where a tray was sitting not 30 seconds earlier hoping she would get the picture. Then it dawned on me…

‘Kava’ (coffee), then ‘tea’… “Kava, nyet”…
“Ahhh… Kai (chai)”…
"Da, kai!"

We got hot tea.

As for the McFlurry? We settled for chocolate…