I was teaching some of my 5th grade boys last week when a certain English phrase I said set them to laughing. I give them a lot of credit--they hid it at first; they attempted to be polite. But, boys being boys, they couldn't hold it in, especially as the situation demanded that I repeat the phrase several times.
It turns out that the sound of this phrase--one quarter, as in 1/4-- is close to the sound of a Korean term for an impolite body word--bugger, as in nose trash. (Looking back, the students asked me to repeat and to pronounce the phrase in different ways--I am not sure if this was for language learning or merely for their pleasure . . .).
It's not the first time this has happened, and probably not the last. Sometimes sounds in different languages meet at a crossroads, the meanings going in opposite directions.
Ah, the unexpected joys of teaching ESL . . .
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