My Favorite Drink is … Wait, What?!

Last night, an ESL student came up to the front desk of my job and asked me if he could interview me. He specified that he needed a “real live American” to talk to. Well, who can pass up a chance like that?

The interview consisted of several questions asking about my name, favorite restaurants, foods and drinks. While one might assume that this means the student is perhaps studying foods and related items to expand their vocabulary, I think that these questions show what kind of image we Americans are giving off to the rest of the world. We have no other interests than food, and maybe our own names. Maybe.

Anyway, we get to question number 5 with no real problem (a few spelling errors here and there, nothing big), and the student reads the following:

“What is your favorite drink?”

I attempted to answer with water, but was informed that water did not count.

“Ok…um, how about coke?”

The student nodded in approval, and wrote down what I assumed was my answer. However, when I glanced at his notepad, I was met with the following :

“5. What is your favorite drink?”

“Cock.”

…

But it somehow got worse on question number 6, when I was asked “What did you have for lunch today?” to which I responded, “A turkey sandwich.” The student then told me that in his country, Turkey was a boys’ name, and that his younger brother was named Turkey. “Ha-ha, do you eat little boy sandwiches?”

I can’t tell you much more because at this point my head exploded, but it was an interesting experience. More importantly, it made me remember all the other ESL students that had come by the front desk in the past and raised a very important question. What the FUCK are they teaching them, anyway?

One student asked me to explain to him what was meant by the phrase, “Hey! I found another stiff over here.” (Cop A to Cop B). Another had asked me where the most “hip happenin’ cool” on campus was. And now here was a student innocently (or so we assume) writing down my favorite drink as being “cock” and concluding that I eat little boys for breakfast.

I realize that idioms and colloquialisms are hard to grasp, but if they’re going to try and teach them anyway, why not teach some useful ones? How likely is an ESL student to hear “I found another stiff over here”? Unless they plan on being the murdered corpse or one of the cops, I don’t see that knowledge being particularly useful. I haven’t actually even heard of some of these idioms that are being taught. Consider the following (Bill Nyeee the science guy style):

1. A Doubting Thomas (Fuck you Thomas.)

2. A Drop in the Bucket (Poo?)

3. Can’t Cut The Mustard (It’s a liquid)

4. Get Down to Brass Tacks (Yes…yes, we.. should?)

5. No Room to Swing a Cat (And I like to swing cats as frequently as possible, so this will not do at all.)

6. Pig In A Poke (WHAT?)

7. Queer the pitch (This sounds like a gay baseball joke, but I know it’s not. But it sounds like it.)

8. Use Your Loaf (…of bread.)

So, did you know what any of those meant? Because I don’t. All I know is, don’t say number 7 downtown unless you want to be beaten to death by the most stylish purses imaginable. Just sayin.

I guess I’m just starting to understand why every foreign student looks perpetually confused when they find that we’re not all wearing platform disco shoes, and using words like “groovy” and “far out”. Why does everyone keep saying how cold everything is?! WHY?! Let’s help them out a little bit. Teach them the worst first, so they know what shouldn’t be used (although they can, if they want). This will avoid that whole “Oh shit, I know that that’s a bad word, but you seem completely unaware of this fact” situation. C’mon. Give them a break already. No need to burden them more in their efforts to learn a foreign language, right?

Fortunately for me though, everything worked out in my story. We fixed the …problems in the spelling of coke, and my ESL student was apparently smart enough to be cracking jokes with me in English. After the turkey comment, at my horrified expression, he replied, “Ha-ha, no, no, don’t worry, I joke. That joke, I know that, the turkey, the name turkey, here is type of chicken.”

Is type of chicken is right, mother fucker. And don’t you forget it.

(My coworker is still insisting that I should have “corrected” c-o-c-k to s-e-m-e-n for the question and answer to really make any sense, but I refused.)