Our funny GE experience

Our son brought home his English GE worksheet. On it was the title "Beg, Borrow or Steal".

Eye catching title but it left us totally clueless what it is all about. Upon reading the introductory paragraph, we realised that the worksheet aims to find out what are some of the words in our English vocabulary that actually came from another language origin. An example will be "deck" as in the ship deck. We didn't even know it was not an English word actually. It came from a Dutch word.

Sounds interesting... but still clueless how to complete the worksheet. Then Jiaheng showed us another piece of paper that contains the "borrowed or stolen" words.

OMG....as we scanned through the list, our responses were "Ah, you mean this is not an English word?" (e.g. piano)

OR the other extreme "Eh, what word is this? How to pronounce? What is the meaning har?" (e.g. schlemozzel)

Hope you are getting an idea how "panicky" we were.... of course, if we could not complete the worksheet, we are sure his teacher will shed some light for him. But parents are parents, sure panic one.

As my wife ran through the list again, she declared "Ah.. this one Italian, this one also Italian, ok this one Indian". Can you imagine the look of admiration on my face as she announced the answers? Wow, my wife is a born linguist.

Just then, she shoved the paper into my arms. She pointed to the word "Spaghetti" then announced "this one Italian". Next she runs her finger a few rows down to "Ravioli" and said "this one also Italian". Followed by the word "Chapatti" and concluded "this one Indian".

What! All food names?? Like that, I also can be a linguist!!!

Don't ask me how the worksheet was completed... but we eventually did. It was indeed a great learning experience for all of us. And not forgetting the good laugh we had over the "food trail discovery".