Stop Trying To Translate.

TEACHERS and STUDENTS...

I am going to go straight to the point due to the fact that I woke up a little bit mad about this topic. If you are teacher here in Brazil, probably, at sometime in your life as a teacher, you told your student that translation will NOT help them learn the second language they are applying for. I know that it is a long and tough discussion, but I had to come over here and express what I have been feeling about it. 

ESL TEACHERS have to keep in mind that the students' first language is the basis for everything they do: dreams, communication, meaning, how they read and understand the world, how they express their deepest fear and feelings, and so forth. That is, for things to start to make sense, they automatically connect the objects to their first language and then they translate into the foreign language. The only problem is that they forget about PRAGMATICS (the use of the language) and SEMANTICS (the meaning). And the outcome is usually something that does not make sense in English. Our job is to help them see through WORDS, read between the lines. Teachers, show your students that WORDS ARE NOT LANGUAGE, they are only a really small part of the language. 

ESL STUDENTS, you cannot translate from your mother tongue to English by ONLY translating the words. You have to keep in mind that English has a different structure itself and, most importantly, it's impossible to translate different cultures by using the same words. 

Google Translator, Dictionaries, Thesaurus, or any other thing you use to help you understand are welcome, but you cannot use it to make sentences or translate things literally because they do not make any sense.

i.e.:

- Preciso tirar agua do joelho. (Preciso fazer xixi)

- Need take out water of the knee. (IT IS NOT ENGLISH) - The correct translation is - I need to go pee, I need to go to toilet, I need to use it, I need to take a piss.

The point I'm trying to get across with is that there is NO LITERAL TRANSLATION.

Teachers of Elementary Levels, it is your job to show your students from the get-go that translating will not help them learn the foreign language. As a matter of fact, it will make their lives more difficult because when they come across PHRASAL VERBS, IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS, COLLOCATIONS, AND SLANG TERMS, they will try to understand by basing them on their mother tongue and unfortunately it will not be possible. 

Alright, I am out. TRY TO UNDERSTAND ENGLISH IN ENGLISH. USE THE LANGUAGE. STOP ASKING ABOUT THE LANGUAGE ITSELF. 

Lil' Dawg

How To Beat Your Kids - Jamaican English (PATOIS)

This video was posted in order to make you more familiar with PATOIS. It's a really funny video. Hope you have fun watching my Jamaican boy.

Me gaan!

Grandma - WTF

Sometimes I wonder what happened to our grandmothers. That's why I made this video. Check me out!

Rexy Gives Patois Lesson: Speak Like a Jamaican!

What gwan? Whap'am?

As y'all already know, the English language is as rich as Bill Gates. There are a plethora of words, expressions, slang terms, and dialects. My intention with this post is to promote one of the zillions of ethnolects/dialects of the English language. 

PATOIS is the dialect spoken in much of Jamaican territory. It is a combination of English, Creole, French and some other languages spoken in the Carribean Islands. This dialect has been widespread because of raggae music and movies with Jamaican people. Unfortunately, Patois, African American Vernacular English, and some other ethnolects spoken by black people are still looked down upon, but this is another problem.

Hope you enjoy the accent and the vocabulary. Leave a comment, share it, and subscribe.

Me gaan!

GARDEN SNAKES CAN BE DANGEROUS - HAVE FUN!

Snakes also known as Garter Snakes (Thamnophissirtalis) can be dangerous. Yes, grass snakes, not rattlesnakes. Here's why.

A couple in Sweetwater, Texas , had a lot of potted plants. During recent cold spell, the wife was bringing a lot of them indoors to protect them from a possible freeze.

It turned out that a little green garden grass snake was hidden in one of the plants. When it had warmed up, it slithered out and the wife saw it go under the sofa. She let out a very loud scream.

The husband (who was taking a shower) ran out into the living room naked to see what the problem was. She told him there was a snake under the sofa.


He got down on the floor on his hands and knees to look for it. About that time the family dog came and cold-nosed him in his behind. He thought the snake had bitten him, so he screamed and fell over on the floor.
His wife thought he had had a heart attack, so she covered him up, told him to lie still and called an ambulance.The attendants rushed in, would not listen to his protests, loaded him on the stretcher, and started carrying him out.


About that time, the snake came out from under the sofa and the Emergency Medical Technician saw it and dropped his end of the stretcher. That's when the man broke his leg and why he is still in the hospital.


The wife still had the problem of the snake in the house, so she called on a neighbor who volunteered to capture the snake. He armed himself with a rolled-up newspaper and began poking under the couch.. Soon he decided it was gone and told the woman, who sat down on the sofa in relief.


But while relaxing, her hand dangled in between the cushions, where she felt the snake wriggling around. She screamed and fainted, the snake rushed back under the sofa. The neighbor man, seeing her lying there passed out, tried to use CPR to revive her.The neighbor's wife, who had just returned from shopping at the grocery

store, saw her husband's mouth on the woman's mouth and slammed her husband in the back of the head with a bag of canned goods, knocking him out and cutting his scalp to a point where it needed stitches.

The noise woke the woman from her dead faint and she saw her neighbor lying on the floor with his wife bending over him, so she assumed that the snake had bitten him. She went to the kitchen and got a small bottle of whiskey, and began pouring it down the man's throat.


By now, the police had arrived. Breathe here...They saw the unconscious man, smelled the whiskey, and assumed that a drunken fight had occurred. They were about to arrest them all, when the women tried to explain how it all happened over a little garden snake! The police called an ambulance, which took away the neighbor and his sobbing wife.


Now, the little snake again crawled out from under the sofa and one of the policemen drew his gun and fired at it. He missed the snake and hit the leg of the end table. The table fell over, the lamp on it shattered and, as the bulb broke, it started a fire in the drapes.


The other policeman tried to beat out the flames, and fell through the window into the yard on top of the family dog that, startled, jumped out and raced into the street, where an oncoming car swerved to avoid it and smashed into the parked police car.


Meanwhile, neighbors saw the burning drapes and called in the fire department. The firemen had started raising the fire ladder when they were halfway down the street. The rising ladder tore out the overhead wires, put out the power, and disconnected the telephones in a ten-square city block area (but they did get the house fire out).


Time passed! Both men were discharged from the hospital, the house was repaired, the dog came home, the police acquired a new car and all was right with their world.


A while later they were watching TV and the weatherman announced a cold snap for that night. The wife asked her husband if he thought they should bring in their plants for the night.


And that's when he shot her.