Games We Play

Had my German class tonight. I am completely blown away by the 3 most advanced students in our class (of the 6 of us there tonight, I was the least advanced), for whom this is not just their 2nd language. One guy, Sita, was looking up words in his German-English dictionary, then in his English-Cambodian (I don’t think that’s really the language’s name, but it is what he called it) dictionary. Wow. As I’ve just done a quick web search about the Cambodian languages, it says that the main language has no tone. The exercise we’re doing in class is this:

There are 3 adjective cards on the table. (for example, happy, jealous, tired)
You draw a card with an unrelated sentence on it, and then have to read the sentence in a way that illustrates the adjective. The other players guess which adjective you are using.

It’s a really fun game because it keeps you from over-focusing on the German words, and forces you to try to evoke some emotion rather than just spewing stilted sentences. Anyway, I’ve had such a hard time figuring out what Sita and Kim’s adjectives were, because they just don’t use as much facial expression and inflection as the other American students do. (I’ll literally guess like “angry” when their adjective was “friendly.” It’s honestly that hard to tell.) The info I’ve acquired tonight about their language sheds an interesting light on that.