Saudi is trying to industrialise. Specifically, it's trying to move from a nomadic, tribal, semi-agrarian culture to an urban, technological, capitalist one.
It wants to do this while remaining an absolute monarchy, which means the ruling class has to change from a royal family to a band of mutually hostile businessmen who happen to be closely related - and who collectively form a one-party state. I'm not sure they fully understand this themselves.
Capitalism doesn't need a lot of capitalists. It doesn't necessarily need high technology. But it does need a lot of workers. So who does the work in Saudi Arabia?
The owner of the building where I work is a Saudi businessman. All the two dozen who work for him are Sudani or Indian. Outside sweeping the streets, working in the auto-repair shop, and serving in the restaurants opposite, Pakistanis and Lebanese. Operating the hotels and shisha-houses, Bangladeshis and Philipinos.
There's a lot of building work, which means not just builders but plumbers, electricians, carpenters etc. Of those I've met, none were Saudis, and of the remainder I've seen, none looked to be from this country.
You see almost no Iraqis or Afgans. Saudi welcomes economic migrants, but refugees are kept in camps for several months, before being repatriated.
I've met a lot of teachers - a few are Jordanian or Syrian, a few are South African or even American, most are Egyptian. Apparently there's one other Brit around somewhere.
In other skilled trades - engineering and medicine mainly in this town - maybe half are Saudi nationals. If you want to see a workplace full of saudis, visit the vast but largely inert bureaucracy.
The government knows all this, and they know they can't rely on migrant work forever. They've passed a law forcing businesses to employ saudi nationals - a law which has proven easy to avoid and difficult to enforce, on account of that achingly slow and incompetent bureaucracy, and the simple lack of saudis who want the jobs.
Now the government is trying to run a kind of giant job agency, which I imagine could only work if they make registration compulsory.
At the moment, the Saudi economy is flying high, in spite of it's precarious reliance on transient and migrant labour. So what happens when it falls? The people here know the west is in recession, but have difficulty grasping that the same could happen here - or more likely, they don't want to understand that Arab capitalism isn't immune to crashes.
A recession would mean the supply of foreign workers would dry up, so there would need to be a supply of replacement native workers. Which there isn't. And isn't likely to be soon.
Look Back in Arabia
In a few days I'll have been here for six months.
The first three crawled by like a depressed snail on barbituates stuck in treacle. The last three trundled past amiably enough, and I've no idea what the last six will be like.
A twelve month contract - no compelling reason to cut it short, and the option of renewing it at the end. So, what's good and what's bad about where I am?
What's good:
Money.
I'm getting UKP1000 a month, which elsewhere wouldn't be great, but there's no tax and I can save 95%.
Food and drink is cheap - the 5% of wages goes on little luxuries like biscuits and squash. I get a small but adequate hotel room effectively free - in exchange for teaching the owner's sons.
So after a year, I should have 10,000 - enough to invest in something or other, so if I live to be an octogenarian, I might not be a destitute octogenarian.
Food.
British food is rubbish. You don't realise that until you go elsewhere.
The Lebanese can make an excellent three course meal out of little more than herb leaves, bread and a slice of meat. That, plus vast amounts of every variation you could imagine on milk, yoghurt and cheese.
If you're lactose intolerant, don't go near a Lebanese resteraunt. Your mouth will love you but your stomach will want a divorce.
A simple Jordanian salad will leave you wondering exactly what alchemy transformes tomatoes, olives and various chopped greenery, sprinkled with lemon and/or lime juice, into something you could happily eat all night.
The same for the bowl of humus next to it, topped with olive oil and served with bread to mop it up with. The bread itself is a pleasure to eat on it's own - which is not something you'd ever say of even the best bread in a western restaurant.
Shauerma is grilled strips of chicken, wrapped in a very thin, oily bread, served with pickles and chopped vegetables. Potatoes when they appear are generally in the form of french fries, wrapped up with the chicken.
Most of this is, I admit, basically carbohydrates swimming in too much oil. And all the drinks are astonishingly sugery - I get looks of surprise when I ask for tea without sugar.
Not a good diet for an overweight diabetic, you'd think. But I've been living on this stuff for nearly six months - and I've gone from morbidly obese to almost thin. With no more exercise than climbing a few stairs.
People.
Hospitality is important in Arab culture, but behind the obligation to be nice there's...actual genuine niceness.
I haven't once felt threatened or unwelcome here - and this is a small town monoculture backwater, not a cosmopolitan metropolis.
The equivalent of a small town in Iowa, I'm the first British person - and the first atheist - most of the denizens have ever met. Culture shock has yet to occur, on either side.
What's bad:
The weather.
Winter is three or four months of the year, starting November, and the rest of the year is Summer. Yes, there's no need for more seasons in this part of the world.
Winter isn't just cold, it's bloody freezing - sub-zero and snow is common. Summer starts hot and gets hotter - up to 45 celsius in June.
Health.
I wake up every morning with a new insect bite, and spend most of the day with the dry scratchy feeling in the lungs that's my common reaction to it. There's raised red itchy lumps coming up and going down all the time, all over.
I haven't had a normal bowel movement since arriving. A combination of constant low-level fever and the incredibly oily food mean constipation is not something I ever expect to have here.
Bureaucracy.
The government doesn't get its money through tax. Instead, it charges extortionate amounts to do anything for you besides providing electricity and water.
If you want to run a business, employ someone, rent a room, travel outside the country, have a medical, own a mobile phone, drive a car, open a bank account or anything else involving paperwork...there's a mountain of paperwork, and a row of bureaucrats to stamp it, once you've written the cheque.
If you want to start a business in two years, go through the system, paying the fees. If you want to start it in three months, bribe the bureaucrats and call in all family favours. If you want to start it tomorrow, make sure you're a millionaire.
What's next?
The general plan is: Stay another six months, have a little holiday back home, and select another country.
The first three crawled by like a depressed snail on barbituates stuck in treacle. The last three trundled past amiably enough, and I've no idea what the last six will be like.
A twelve month contract - no compelling reason to cut it short, and the option of renewing it at the end. So, what's good and what's bad about where I am?
What's good:
I'm getting UKP1000 a month, which elsewhere wouldn't be great, but there's no tax and I can save 95%.
Food and drink is cheap - the 5% of wages goes on little luxuries like biscuits and squash. I get a small but adequate hotel room effectively free - in exchange for teaching the owner's sons.
So after a year, I should have 10,000 - enough to invest in something or other, so if I live to be an octogenarian, I might not be a destitute octogenarian.
British food is rubbish. You don't realise that until you go elsewhere.
The Lebanese can make an excellent three course meal out of little more than herb leaves, bread and a slice of meat. That, plus vast amounts of every variation you could imagine on milk, yoghurt and cheese.
If you're lactose intolerant, don't go near a Lebanese resteraunt. Your mouth will love you but your stomach will want a divorce.
A simple Jordanian salad will leave you wondering exactly what alchemy transformes tomatoes, olives and various chopped greenery, sprinkled with lemon and/or lime juice, into something you could happily eat all night.
The same for the bowl of humus next to it, topped with olive oil and served with bread to mop it up with. The bread itself is a pleasure to eat on it's own - which is not something you'd ever say of even the best bread in a western restaurant.
Shauerma is grilled strips of chicken, wrapped in a very thin, oily bread, served with pickles and chopped vegetables. Potatoes when they appear are generally in the form of french fries, wrapped up with the chicken.
Most of this is, I admit, basically carbohydrates swimming in too much oil. And all the drinks are astonishingly sugery - I get looks of surprise when I ask for tea without sugar.
Not a good diet for an overweight diabetic, you'd think. But I've been living on this stuff for nearly six months - and I've gone from morbidly obese to almost thin. With no more exercise than climbing a few stairs.
Hospitality is important in Arab culture, but behind the obligation to be nice there's...actual genuine niceness.
I haven't once felt threatened or unwelcome here - and this is a small town monoculture backwater, not a cosmopolitan metropolis.
The equivalent of a small town in Iowa, I'm the first British person - and the first atheist - most of the denizens have ever met. Culture shock has yet to occur, on either side.
What's bad:
Winter is three or four months of the year, starting November, and the rest of the year is Summer. Yes, there's no need for more seasons in this part of the world.
Winter isn't just cold, it's bloody freezing - sub-zero and snow is common. Summer starts hot and gets hotter - up to 45 celsius in June.
I wake up every morning with a new insect bite, and spend most of the day with the dry scratchy feeling in the lungs that's my common reaction to it. There's raised red itchy lumps coming up and going down all the time, all over.
I haven't had a normal bowel movement since arriving. A combination of constant low-level fever and the incredibly oily food mean constipation is not something I ever expect to have here.
The government doesn't get its money through tax. Instead, it charges extortionate amounts to do anything for you besides providing electricity and water.
If you want to run a business, employ someone, rent a room, travel outside the country, have a medical, own a mobile phone, drive a car, open a bank account or anything else involving paperwork...there's a mountain of paperwork, and a row of bureaucrats to stamp it, once you've written the cheque.
If you want to start a business in two years, go through the system, paying the fees. If you want to start it in three months, bribe the bureaucrats and call in all family favours. If you want to start it tomorrow, make sure you're a millionaire.
What's next?
The general plan is: Stay another six months, have a little holiday back home, and select another country.
Gnobody Gknows
There is an atheist movement in America.
We know it's a genuine movement, because it's developed it's own fashionable nonsense.
They speak of a four-way distinction:
Gnostic Theist - One who 'knows' that a deity or deities exist.
Agnostic Theist - One who only 'believes'.
Gnostic Atheist - One who 'knows' there is no god.
Gnostic Theist - One who only 'believes' it.
The terms are not exactly clear, and not consistently used, but it seems to come down to this:
Gnostic Theist - One who believes, and can't imagine disproof.
Agnostic Theist - One who believes, but is prepared to imagine that they might be wrong.
Gnostic Atheist - One who doesn't believe, and can't imagine that there might one day appear some good evidence or argument for god.
Agnostic Atheist - One who doesn't believe, but doesn't dismiss the possibility they might be wrong.
It's an incredibly unhelpful distinction. Because 99.9% of atheists are 'agnostic' in this sense, and so are 99.9% of believers.
This 'gnostic'/'agnostic' distinction doesn't describe the belief itself, but an attitude towards hypothetical future evidence.
This makes no more sense than dividing vegetarians and meat-eaters according to whether they think they might change their eating habits if the nature of meat were to change.
We know it's a genuine movement, because it's developed it's own fashionable nonsense.
They speak of a four-way distinction:
The terms are not exactly clear, and not consistently used, but it seems to come down to this:
It's an incredibly unhelpful distinction. Because 99.9% of atheists are 'agnostic' in this sense, and so are 99.9% of believers.
This 'gnostic'/'agnostic' distinction doesn't describe the belief itself, but an attitude towards hypothetical future evidence.
This makes no more sense than dividing vegetarians and meat-eaters according to whether they think they might change their eating habits if the nature of meat were to change.
German...y
I like the sound of German.
But what is the sound of German? Short vowels, devoiced terminal consonants, rolled rhotics and lots of sibilent clusters - sure, but can we be a bit more precise than that?
I mean, precise enough to generate fake German utterances plausible enough to fool someone who knows the sound of the language and a hundred or so words, but can't string a sentence together in it? Someone like, er, well, me.
With written German we're quite lucky, in that the written form is a good guide to the spoken sound - though not so much vice versa. There's also a lot of written German around to be analysed.
The Guttenberg Project has ten works by Franz Kafka, which I took as my raw data. I ran it through some word frequency counting software, which gave me a vocabulary of a little over 10,000 words.
Here's the first 1000, together with rough translations courtesy of Google. I've taken out personal names, and words which Google couldn't translate. Might be useful if you're thinking of learning German - or studying the obsessions of Franz Kafka.
So how to break this down into sounds? Well, I took the list of words, and broke each word into alternating clusters of consonants and vowels. Each cluster is one or more phoneme in length, eg. /s/, /ts/, /Sp/, /Spl/ etc.
For instance, "gespitzten" becomes: g + e + sp + i + tzt + e + n
Half an hour of search-and-replacing later, and each phonetic 'cluster' is represented by just one string of characters - so for example, every instance of 'ee' becomes 'ie', because they represent the same vowel.
And I can make a frequency list of which sounds occur at the start of words, which at the end, and which in the middle.
Here are the word-initial vowels. The second column is the number of words in the 10,000 word frequency list which start with that vowel.
And here's the list of word-initial consonant-clusters. I've left out the 13 which occur in less than 10 words.
Medial vowels.
And medial consonants. The 589(!) that occur less than ten times are omitted.
The termial vowels.
And the terminal consonants. Again, I've left out the 78 which end less than 10 words.
Words can now be produced by the following algorithm:
The probability of any consonant or vowel is given by the second column in the lists.
And so, our first line of fake German:
Now I just need to, erm, get good enough in a programming language a little more recent than QBasic...to start making pseudo-Goethe.
But what is the sound of German? Short vowels, devoiced terminal consonants, rolled rhotics and lots of sibilent clusters - sure, but can we be a bit more precise than that?
I mean, precise enough to generate fake German utterances plausible enough to fool someone who knows the sound of the language and a hundred or so words, but can't string a sentence together in it? Someone like, er, well, me.
With written German we're quite lucky, in that the written form is a good guide to the spoken sound - though not so much vice versa. There's also a lot of written German around to be analysed.
The Guttenberg Project has ten works by Franz Kafka, which I took as my raw data. I ran it through some word frequency counting software, which gave me a vocabulary of a little over 10,000 words.
Here's the first 1000, together with rough translations courtesy of Google. I've taken out personal names, and words which Google couldn't translate. Might be useful if you're thinking of learning German - or studying the obsessions of Franz Kafka.
| und | and |
| der | the |
| die | the |
| er | he |
| zu | to |
| sie | they |
| in | in |
| den | the |
| nicht | not |
| ich | I |
| sich | itself |
| es | it |
| das | the |
| mit | with |
| dem | the |
| aber | but |
| war | was |
| auf | on |
| ein | a |
| ist | is |
| dass | that |
| an | to |
| so | so |
| als | as |
| wie | as |
| von | of |
| auch | also |
| nur | only |
| im | in the |
| hatte | had |
| des | of |
| ihn | him |
| noch | more |
| man | you |
| ihm | him |
| aus | from |
| schon | already |
| eine | a |
| um | at |
| wenn | when |
| mir | me |
| fuer | for |
| sagte | said |
| doch | but |
| dann | then |
| einen | one |
| vor | before |
| mich | me |
| zum | to |
| denn | because |
| einem | one |
| sein | be |
| jetzt | now |
| nun | now |
| da | because |
| nach | after |
| du | you |
| ueber | about |
| ihr | her |
| was | what |
| durch | by |
| wir | we |
| ja | yes |
| wieder | back |
| haben | have |
| seine | his |
| vater | father |
| bei | at |
| hat | has |
| immer | always |
| alles | everything |
| ganz | all |
| mehr | more |
| einer | one |
| dieser | this |
| diese | this |
| haette | would have |
| sah | saw |
| seinem | his |
| konnte | could |
| kann | can |
| wird | shall |
| selbst | itself |
| alle | all |
| mutter | mother |
| habe | have |
| ohne | without |
| schwester | sister |
| vielleicht | maybe |
| hier | here |
| werden | will |
| seiner | his |
| gar | indeed |
| wollte | wanted |
| sind | are |
| seinen | his |
| sehr | very |
| nichts | nothing |
| ihnen | them |
| unter | under |
| zimmer | room |
| offizier | officer |
| zeit | time |
| am | at the |
| waren | were |
| oder | or |
| ihre | their |
| waehrend | while |
| uns | us |
| kopf | head |
| einmal | once |
| zur | to |
| bis | to |
| fast | almost |
| hand | hand |
| keine | no |
| reisende | traveler |
| also | so |
| mein | my |
| vom | from |
| etwas | something |
| augen | eyes |
| waere | would be |
| mann | man |
| wurde | was |
| ins | in the |
| wohl | probably |
| koennen | can |
| diesem | this |
| heizer | stoker |
| wuerde | would |
| musste | had |
| bin | am |
| meine | my |
| wenig | little |
| bett | bed |
| gerade | just |
| viel | much |
| dieses | this |
| gegen | against |
| gleich | equal |
| zwei | two |
| herr | Mr. |
| hin | down |
| machen | make |
| allerdings | though |
| ihrer | of her |
| kaum | hardly |
| gesicht | face |
| kein | no |
| wo | where |
| fenster | window |
| natuerlich | course |
| schien | seemed |
| dort | there |
| sagen | say |
| sollte | should |
| herren | Gentlemen |
| sogar | even |
| lange | long |
| ging | went |
| muss | must |
| gut | good |
| lassen | let |
| sei | was |
| muessen | must |
| eines | one |
| allen | all |
| warum | why |
| kleinen | small |
| bald | soon |
| diesen | this |
| rief | cried |
| anderen | other |
| beim | when |
| hatten | had |
| seines | his |
| dich | you |
| weiss | white |
| erst | only |
| sehen | see |
| sondern | but |
| fragte | asked |
| niemand | no one |
| wirklich | really |
| werde | will |
| will | wants |
| sofort | immediately |
| zurueck | back |
| damit | so |
| hielt | held |
| gewesen | been |
| ihren | their |
| weil | because |
| reisenden | traveling |
| ob | whether |
| stand | stand |
| ab | from |
| kommen | come |
| leicht | slightly |
| familie | family |
| kam | came |
| hinter | behind |
| ersten | first |
| endlich | finally |
| ganze | all |
| kapitaen | Captain |
| zwar | indeed |
| verurteilte | sentenced |
| augenblick | moment |
| ganzen | all |
| trotzdem | nevertheless |
| eltern | parents |
| kleine | small |
| kommt | comes |
| grossen | large |
| zwischen | between |
| weg | away |
| heute | today |
| liess | let |
| keinen | no |
| dessen | its |
| weiter | more |
| ihrem | her |
| machte | made |
| dachte | thought |
| wollen | want |
| daran | it |
| allein | alone |
| frueher | earlier |
| egge | harrow |
| recht | right |
| koennte | could |
| gewiss | certainly |
| nacht | night |
| dir | you |
| meinen | mean |
| welche | which |
| kommandanten | commander |
| seite | page |
| anblick | sight |
| zuerst | first |
| weit | far |
| leben | live |
| blieb | remained |
| langsam | slowly |
| freund | friend |
| meiner | mine |
| gab | were |
| boden | ground |
| meinem | my |
| sonst | otherwise |
| hause | home |
| manchmal | sometimes |
| grosse | large |
| tisch | table |
| soll | shall |
| her | here |
| eigentlich | actually |
| wenigstens | at least |
| soldat | soldier |
| menschen | people |
| begann | began |
| besonders | particularly |
| arbeit | work |
| hoerte | heard |
| genug | enough |
| sessel | chair |
| wort | word |
| mund | mouth |
| lag | was |
| solchen | such |
| offenbar | apparently |
| hoeren | listen |
| hast | have |
| neben | next |
| geht | goes |
| wahrscheinlich | probably |
| ueberhaupt | at all |
| alten | old |
| gehen | go |
| dies | this |
| blick | view |
| koffer | case |
| tun | do |
| nehmen | take |
| uebrigens | by the way |
| oft | often |
| besser | better |
| darueber | about it |
| bleiben | remain |
| darauf | thereon |
| ende | end |
| zog | moved |
| leute | people |
| andere | other |
| verstand | mind |
| scheint | seems |
| stimme | agree |
| arm | poor |
| einander | each other |
| lieber | rather |
| jeder | each |
| fest | fixed |
| trotz | despite |
| fuehlte | felt |
| schliesslich | finally |
| schwer | difficult |
| verurteilten | sentenced |
| drei | three |
| worden | been |
| tatsaechlich | actually |
| vollstaendig | completely |
| langen | long |
| geschehen | happen |
| statt | instead of |
| niemals | never |
| letzten | last |
| stehen | stand |
| ruhig | quiet |
| samuel | samuel |
| sache | thing |
| maschine | machine |
| macht | power |
| aller | all |
| wissen | know |
| seit | since |
| grund | reason |
| essen | eat |
| zeigte | showed |
| reden | talk |
| davon | thereof |
| luft | aerial |
| fahrt | ride |
| exekution | execution |
| glauben | believe |
| hob | lifted |
| etwa | about |
| diener | servant |
| ruhe | rest |
| geworden | become |
| gemacht | made |
| gegenueber | opposite |
| kraft | by virtue of |
| neue | new |
| paar | pair |
| abend | evening |
| nahm | took |
| oben | above |
| wohnung | apartment |
| morgen | tomorrow |
| bist | are |
| sehe | see |
| bedienerin | charwoman |
| apparat | apparatus |
| sohn | son |
| hungern | hunger |
| ehe | before |
| nein | no |
| unsere | our |
| welcher | which |
| soldaten | soldiers |
| senator | senator |
| still | silent |
| kurz | short |
| vielen | many |
| teil | part |
| viele | many |
| urteil | judgment |
| damals | then |
| genau | exactly |
| solche | such |
| gleichzeitig | simultaneously |
| eben | just |
| meinung | opinion |
| fiel | fell |
| glaube | think |
| bewegung | movement |
| gasse | alley |
| wer | who |
| haenden | hands |
| vaters | father |
| haetten | had |
| einige | some |
| wusste | knew |
| wagen | venture |
| erste | first |
| gehoert | heard |
| tag | day |
| frauen | women |
| kommandant | commander |
| meines | mine |
| herrn | mr |
| hilfe | help |
| welt | world |
| tage | days |
| trat | entered |
| deshalb | therefore |
| fasste | summarized |
| beiden | two |
| hals | neck |
| schloss | castle |
| warf | threw |
| onkel | uncle |
| dadurch | thereby |
| jahren | years |
| andern | other |
| gehabt | had |
| verloren | lost |
| bloss | just |
| grete | grete |
| schlug | beat |
| wuerden | would |
| schlaf | sleep |
| alte | old |
| zimmers | room |
| laengst | long ago |
| frau | woman |
| unten | below |
| ueberdies | about this |
| verlassen | leave |
| freunde | friends |
| gesagt | said |
| kanapee | sofa |
| fall | case |
| gekommen | come |
| pferde | horses |
| grosser | large |
| nie | never |
| wolle | wool |
| schiff | ship |
| allem | all |
| ferne | distance |
| namen | name |
| glaubte | believed |
| geben | give |
| erfahren | learn |
| bitte | Please |
| arme | poor |
| worte | words |
| sage | saga |
| dazu | to |
| hoch | high |
| gesehen | seen |
| immerfort | constantly |
| halten | hold |
| muehe | Muehe |
| rede | speech |
| laesst | can |
| anders | otherwise |
| jeden | each |
| sagt | says |
| offen | open |
| hoehe | height |
| bureau | bureau |
| finden | find |
| bringen | bring |
| fand | found |
| platz | space |
| frueheren | former |
| brust | chest |
| junge | young |
| gleichen | equal |
| aufrecht | upright |
| hervor | out |
| sollen | must |
| wand | wall |
| reise | travel |
| kueche | kitchen |
| leib | body |
| wurden | were |
| unserer | our |
| lief | ran |
| einfach | just |
| lang | long |
| uhr | clock |
| zeichner | artist |
| halb | half |
| weise | wise |
| geradezu | almost |
| steht | is |
| suchte | sought |
| kaefig | cage |
| lauter | pure |
| dunkel | dark |
| denen | to those |
| sicher | safe |
| legte | put |
| weilchen | while |
| merkte | noted |
| beine | legs |
| alter | age |
| jener | that |
| helfen | help |
| unser | our |
| vorzimmer | anteroom |
| klang | sound |
| dinge | things |
| setzte | continued |
| gedanken | mind |
| klar | clear |
| irgendwie | somehow |
| bereit | ready |
| grube | pit |
| spaeter | later |
| nieder | down |
| infolge | as a result |
| damen | Ladies |
| frage | question |
| dafuer | for that |
| verfahren | method |
| ploetzlich | suddenly |
| beide | both |
| bestimmt | certainly |
| uebrigen | rest |
| vergessen | forget |
| kind | child |
| stumm | dumb |
| gibt | are |
| zimmerherren | mens room |
| dabei | there |
| stellte | presented |
| zeichen | sign |
| moeglich | possible |
| fuenf | five |
| wollten | wanted |
| hinein | inside |
| gang | gear |
| dagegen | however |
| gelegenheit | opportunity |
| immerhin | after all |
| naemlich | namely |
| leise | quietly |
| pferd | horse |
| erklaerungen | explanations |
| heizers | heater |
| laut | loud |
| riemen | belt |
| absicht | intention |
| wegen | because of |
| muede | tired |
| fremde | foreign |
| jedem | each |
| drueckte | pressured |
| denken | think |
| stunden | hours |
| nebenzimmer | next room |
| ausserdem | also |
| schlafen | sleep |
| daher | hence |
| deine | your |
| duerfen | allowed to |
| liegt | is |
| jahre | years |
| prokuristen | attorney |
| kamen | came |
| aufmerksam | attentively |
| liegen | lie |
| sieht | sees |
| heisst | ie |
| darf | may |
| willen | sake |
| treppe | stairs |
| sorgen | provide |
| leider | unfortunately |
| beugte | bent |
| draussen | out |
| standen | were |
| sinn | sense |
| unmoeglich | impossible |
| frei | free |
| mensch | man |
| guten | good |
| tief | deep |
| sahen | saw |
| spaet | late |
| fragen | ask |
| ausweg | way out |
| rasch | rapidly |
| nahe | near |
| laecheln | smile |
| zeigen | show |
| irgendeine | some |
| armen | poor |
| geoeffnet | Opened |
| drehte | turned |
| manche | some |
| offiziers | officer |
| ohr | ear |
| neuen | new |
| lachen | laugh |
| naehe | close |
| bekam | got |
| herein | in |
| keiner | none |
| jedenfalls | anyhow |
| trug | contributed |
| tiere | animals |
| chef | chief |
| schwach | weak |
| oeffnete | swung open |
| geld | money |
| hemd | shirt |
| abends | in the evening |
| weder | neither |
| neffen | nephew |
| ihres | their |
| konnten | could |
| gehn | go |
| eilte | hurried |
| herum | around |
| seiten | pages |
| getan | done |
| gebracht | brought |
| kasten | box |
| rechte | rights |
| diesmal | this time |
| zug | train |
| angst | fear |
| letzte | last |
| besuch | visit |
| schrecken | scare |
| licht | light |
| menge | quantity |
| flasche | bottle |
| inzwischen | meanwhile |
| antwortete | answered |
| allmaehlich | gradually becoming |
| art | kind |
| erhob | rose |
| anderes | other |
| gute | good |
| verhaeltnisse | conditions |
| darum | therefore |
| sprechen | speak |
| haelt | holds |
| lesen | read |
| durfte | could |
| lust | lust |
| moeglichst | as possible |
| richtig | properly |
| unglueck | misfortune |
| wohin | where |
| muesse | must |
| laune | mood |
| hinauf | up |
| links | left |
| pelz | fur |
| zustand | state |
| bauch | belly |
| zeiten | times |
| gern | gladly |
| gelegt | down |
| arzt | doctor |
| stellung | position |
| hinunter | down |
| ununterbrochen | continuously |
| rechten | right |
| jemand | someone |
| beispiel | example |
| wohnzimmer | living room |
| wasser | water |
| schritte | steps |
| eigenen | own |
| kinder | children |
| brief | letter |
| verstanden | understood |
| finger | finger |
| vergnuegen | strict people |
| grunde | Basically |
| gross | large |
| foermlich | formally |
| stadt | city |
| gesprochen | spoken |
| stiess | joined |
| gefuehl | carcass |
| schuettelte | shook |
| moebel | moebel |
| heraus | out |
| kriechen | crawl |
| schwaeche | weakness |
| lippen | lips |
| folgen | follow |
| hing | hung |
| leuten | people |
| breit | wide |
| zeigt | shows |
| dunklen | dark |
| bekommen | get |
| besten | best |
| fussspitzen | foot peaks |
| kennen | know |
| schuld | responsible |
| hinten | behind |
| oefters | often |
| laufe | run |
| voellig | completely |
| sitzt | sitting |
| zeitung | newspaper |
| sehn | see |
| mag | like |
| krank | ill |
| erinnerung | memory |
| leeren | empty |
| zweifellos | undoubtedly |
| schwere | heavy |
| erstenmal | first |
| natur | nature |
| schrie | cried |
| antwort | answer |
| richtung | direction |
| entschlossen | determined |
| streckte | stretched |
| schreibtisch | desk |
| geringste | least |
| holen | get |
| arbeiten | work |
| sprang | jumped |
| jakob | James |
| fehler | error |
| erklaerung | declaration of compliance |
| bisher | so far |
| angezogen | attracted |
| freiheit | freedom |
| fertig | ready |
| fallen | fall |
| weisst | know |
| blickte | looked |
| freilich | of course |
| knapp | just |
| fruehstueck | breakfast |
| stelle | location |
| erkannte | recognized |
| sitzen | sit |
| vorlaeufig | temporary custody |
| rechts | right |
| besondere | special |
| sprach | said |
| ebenso | as well |
| gegenwaertigen | present |
| blut | blood |
| jedes | each |
| wunde | wound |
| euch | you |
| impresario | impresario |
| bleibt | remains |
| ertragen | endure |
| erklaeren | explain |
| hoffnung | hope |
| geschlossen | closed |
| bekannten | known |
| schliessen | close |
| fuhr | drove |
| spiel | game |
| fing | began |
| bewegungen | movements |
| haus | house |
| schlecht | bad |
| messer | knife |
| stirn | forehead |
| interesse | interest |
| suchen | search |
| erinnerte | remembered |
| stock | stock |
| allzu | all too |
| himmel | Heaven |
| schlagen | beat |
| vergass | forgot |
| kleines | small |
| erde | Earth |
| frisch | fresh |
| vorsichtig | carefully |
| lagen | were |
| gingen | went |
| rad | wheel |
| einzige | single |
| aufs | again |
| nadeln | needles |
| zusammen | together |
| haar | hair |
| ach | oh |
| legen | put |
| freude | joy |
| vorueber | past |
| hinueber | over |
| erhalten | get |
| ansehen | view |
| genuegt | Suffice |
| blicke | look |
| blieben | remained |
| ordnung | order |
| nickte | nod |
| eilig | hastily |
| winkel | angle |
| sieben | seven |
| heimat | home |
| meldung | message |
| hut | hat |
| zukunft | future |
| wirst | will |
| fremden | foreign |
| violine | violin |
| beschaeftigt | busy |
| tagen | meet |
| weinen | cry |
| araber | Arab |
| tasche | |
| naeher | closer |
| groesste | Largest |
| traurig | sad |
| erwartet | expected |
| muesste | would have to |
| schulter | shoulder |
| tages | up |
| je | ever |
| versuchen | try |
| desto | more |
| koerpers | body |
| auge | eye |
| gitter | grid |
| gelaender | binge |
| tat | deed |
| erscheinen | appear |
| glas | glass |
| fremder | foreign |
| freundlich | friendly |
| durchaus | quite |
| tragen | bear |
| fragt | asks |
| entfernung | removal |
| augenblicklich | instantly |
| aneinander | together |
| merken | notice |
| tueren | tueren |
| besonderen | special |
| erreichen | reach |
| pruefen | examine |
| scheinbar | seemingly |
| benehmen | behavior |
| fuss | foot |
| jede | each |
| draengte | urged |
| darin | therein |
| stoeren | disturb |
| vertrauen | trust |
| amerika | America |
| sassen | sat |
| herzlich | cordially |
| kurze | short |
| keinem | no |
| tor | gate |
| stellen | set |
| schreiben | write |
| schrift | font |
| kolonie | colony |
| uebrig | left |
| erschien | appeared |
| eng | closely |
| beinen | legs |
| blicken | look |
| leer | empty |
| zogen | attracted |
| fingern | fumble |
| gluecklich | happy |
| stark | strong |
| anstrengung | effort |
| deren | their |
| decke | ceiling |
| dorthin | there |
| tische | Tables |
| eindruck | impression |
| irgend | some |
| publikum | audience |
| blatt | leaf |
| gefunden | found |
| mannes | mannes |
| gesellschaft | society |
| veraenderung | encourage promotion |
| gewoehnlichen | habitual |
| erhoben | raised |
| nutzlos | useless |
| geschlafen | slept |
| stein | stone |
| geschah | happened |
| vollkommen | completely |
| schoene | nice |
| verstehen | understand |
| verlieren | lose |
| nimmt | takes |
| gelang | succeeded |
| entfernt | distant |
| komm | Come |
| brauchte | needed |
| tritt | occurs |
| nahmen | took |
| laechelnd | smiling |
| ernst | seriously |
| offenen | open |
| quer | crosswise |
| mittlere | average |
| moeglicherweise | possibly |
| ueberall | everywhere |
| deutlich | clearly |
| verlangt | demands |
| meist | mostly |
| schaden | harm |
| vier | four |
| stille | silence |
| ernsthaft | seriously |
| schwarzen | black |
| rosa | pink |
| vorwaerts | vorwaerts |
| bitten | ask |
| hinab | down |
| kuenstler | kuenstler |
| fuehrte | led |
| sonne | Sun |
| nachtmahl | supper |
| schoenen | beautiful |
| spielen | play |
| gewonnen | won |
| gelegen | located |
| fleisch | meat |
| beobachtete | observed |
| stieg | rose |
| eile | hurry |
| vorstellung | idea |
| mehrmals | repeatedly |
| aufmerksamkeit | attention |
| peitsche | whip |
| schrieb | wrote |
| jungen | young |
| leintuch | sheet |
| gespenst | ghost |
| stunde | hour |
| gegeben | given |
| versuchte | tried |
| ausser | except |
| sollten | should |
| eintritt | admission |
| lasse | let |
| setzt | sets |
| gassen | gas |
| aufseher | overseer |
| setzen | set |
| boot | boat |
| unbedingt | necessarily |
| schob | pushed |
| liefen | ran |
| zweck | purpose |
| los | off |
| wange | cheek |
| versteht | understands |
| klopfte | knocked |
| hohen | high |
| laufen | run |
| gelungen | successful |
| watte | wadding |
| gehoben | elevated |
| schmerz | pain |
| lebens | life |
| ans | ans |
| taeglich | daily |
| gerne | gladly |
| kannte | knew |
| ruhigen | quiet |
| schakale | Jackals |
| genuegte | enough |
| hierher | here |
| seien | were |
| bestimmten | certain |
| filz | felt |
| beobachten | watch |
| bemerkte | remarked |
| gesetz | law |
| engen | close |
| solle | should |
| stroh | straw |
| moechte | Ideally |
| voll | fully |
| schmalen | narrow |
| stufe | stage |
| gezwungen | forced |
| heutigen | today |
| traten | were |
| junger | young |
| neffe | nephew |
| frueh | early |
| zwischendeck | steerage |
| befehl | command |
| ausdruck | expression |
| mochte | liked |
| spielte | played |
| kenne | know |
| verlobung | engagement |
| bewundern | admire |
| gefaellt | Like |
| froh | glad |
| peinlich | embarrassing |
| gott | God |
| erkannt | recognized |
So how to break this down into sounds? Well, I took the list of words, and broke each word into alternating clusters of consonants and vowels. Each cluster is one or more phoneme in length, eg. /s/, /ts/, /Sp/, /Spl/ etc.
For instance, "gespitzten" becomes: g + e + sp + i + tzt + e + n
Half an hour of search-and-replacing later, and each phonetic 'cluster' is represented by just one string of characters - so for example, every instance of 'ee' becomes 'ie', because they represent the same vowel.
And I can make a frequency list of which sounds occur at the start of words, which at the end, and which in the middle.
Here are the word-initial vowels. The second column is the number of words in the 10,000 word frequency list which start with that vowel.
| e | 485 |
| a | 472 |
| u | 397 |
| au | 359 |
| ei | 218 |
| ue | 137 |
| i | 100 |
| o | 75 |
| ae | 37 |
| oe | 15 |
And here's the list of word-initial consonant-clusters. I've left out the 13 which occur in less than 10 words.
| f | 985 |
| b | 665 |
| g | 653 |
| h | 589 |
| w | 477 |
| z | 343 |
| l | 331 |
| m | 313 |
| r | 293 |
| s | 286 |
| d | 270 |
| k | 268 |
| n | 266 |
| st | 200 |
| t | 172 |
| sch | 168 |
| fr | 106 |
| p | 89 |
| tr | 89 |
| schw | 85 |
| gr | 82 |
| schl | 77 |
| fl | 69 |
| br | 67 |
| j | 67 |
| str | 65 |
| kl | 64 |
| sp | 64 |
| gl | 58 |
| bl | 57 |
| kr | 55 |
| zw | 46 |
| dr | 45 |
| schr | 42 |
| pr | 37 |
| schn | 23 |
| schm | 23 |
| kn | 22 |
| pl | 20 |
| spr | 18 |
| pf | 14 |
| ch | 10 |
Medial vowels.
| e | 8502 |
| a | 2189 |
| i | 2169 |
| u | 1594 |
| o | 1223 |
| ei | 937 |
| ue | 740 |
| ae | 665 |
| ie | 577 |
| au | 290 |
| oe | 264 |
| eu | 162 |
And medial consonants. The 589(!) that occur less than ten times are omitted.
| r | 818 |
| g | 691 |
| s | 657 |
| t | 646 |
| n | 627 |
| nd | 534 |
| l | 478 |
| b | 436 |
| ng | 406 |
| m | 370 |
| ch | 366 |
| f | 365 |
| d | 320 |
| h | 309 |
| rt | 246 |
| sch | 239 |
| st | 232 |
| k | 230 |
| nt | 191 |
| cht | 186 |
| lt | 184 |
| w | 150 |
| rl | 142 |
| rg | 136 |
| rf | 126 |
| rst | 108 |
| nz | 106 |
| rw | 105 |
| hr | 102 |
| rz | 102 |
| rb | 99 |
| rh | 96 |
| nk | 96 |
| rd | 95 |
| nf | 85 |
| rs | 85 |
| rk | 83 |
| rm | 81 |
| z | 81 |
| nb | 80 |
| nst | 77 |
| tz | 77 |
| sg | 73 |
| kt | 72 |
| gt | 67 |
| nl | 65 |
| tr | 61 |
| rsch | 60 |
| ns | 59 |
| p | 54 |
| ft | 53 |
| gk | 52 |
| nh | 50 |
| ld | 50 |
| nsch | 49 |
| fg | 48 |
| gl | 46 |
| hl | 46 |
| rtr | 45 |
| rn | 45 |
| nr | 44 |
| fr | 43 |
| hm | 42 |
| ndl | 41 |
| gr | 41 |
| pp | 40 |
| hn | 38 |
| bl | 38 |
| kl | 37 |
| bg | 35 |
| tzt | 35 |
| sz | 34 |
| br | 34 |
| nw | 33 |
| schl | 33 |
| dr | 31 |
| ngl | 30 |
| fz | 29 |
| fl | 28 |
| rbr | 28 |
| nm | 28 |
| chk | 28 |
| sp | 27 |
| mt | 26 |
| hrt | 26 |
| lb | 26 |
| tl | 25 |
| lg | 24 |
| mpf | 24 |
| pf | 24 |
| chn | 23 |
| chl | 23 |
| gn | 23 |
| chs | 22 |
| str | 22 |
| bt | 22 |
| ntl | 22 |
| tsch | 22 |
| fn | 21 |
| sf | 21 |
| lz | 20 |
| spr | 19 |
| tw | 19 |
| fs | 19 |
| hnt | 19 |
| rch | 19 |
| chz | 18 |
| lk | 18 |
| schr | 18 |
| sl | 18 |
| rschl | 18 |
| mp | 18 |
| bz | 17 |
| chst | 17 |
| rkl | 17 |
| rschw | 17 |
| lst | 17 |
| ntsch | 17 |
| gg | 16 |
| ntr | 16 |
| nschl | 16 |
| gst | 16 |
| sr | 16 |
| ngst | 15 |
| schw | 15 |
| ht | 15 |
| sh | 15 |
| rsp | 15 |
| ngt | 15 |
| ntw | 15 |
| rnd | 15 |
| lf | 15 |
| ntg | 14 |
| kg | 14 |
| tm | 14 |
| ml | 14 |
| sw | 14 |
| hlt | 13 |
| rfl | 13 |
| nkt | 13 |
| sm | 13 |
| fst | 13 |
| hnl | 13 |
| chtl | 13 |
| rcht | 13 |
| rdr | 13 |
| chg | 13 |
| bs | 12 |
| nft | 12 |
| nstr | 12 |
| ph | 12 |
| lm | 12 |
| ntschl | 12 |
| ftl | 12 |
| rspr | 12 |
| nfl | 12 |
| stg | 12 |
| bh | 12 |
| schn | 12 |
| ls | 12 |
| kn | 12 |
| mg | 12 |
| lch | 12 |
| aa | 11 |
| nspr | 11 |
| fh | 11 |
| hrl | 11 |
| rdn | 11 |
| nbl | 11 |
| rp | 11 |
| kr | 11 |
| ks | 11 |
| nth | 11 |
| rschr | 11 |
| lh | 11 |
| rbl | 10 |
| tzl | 10 |
| zw | 10 |
| bw | 10 |
| mb | 10 |
| eo | 10 |
| mk | 10 |
| fm | 10 |
| ngs | 10 |
| mst | 10 |
The termial vowels.
| e | 1802 |
| ie | 42 |
| ei | 29 |
| a | 27 |
| o | 19 |
| u | 10 |
| au | 12 |
| ue | 12 |
And the terminal consonants. Again, I've left out the 78 which end less than 10 words.
| n | 3130 |
| r | 701 |
| t | 580 |
| s | 431 |
| nk | 354 |
| k | 287 |
| ch | 233 |
| l | 196 |
| m | 170 |
| kt | 163 |
| lt | 135 |
| rt | 129 |
| rn | 115 |
| cht | 105 |
| ft | 74 |
| st | 72 |
| ns | 61 |
| rs | 51 |
| f | 51 |
| nt | 47 |
| nkt | 45 |
| hn | 44 |
| ht | 41 |
| tzt | 41 |
| ln | 40 |
| sch | 39 |
| hrt | 39 |
| tt | 37 |
| p | 36 |
| ls | 32 |
| pt | 31 |
| mt | 30 |
| hr | 28 |
| tz | 24 |
| hl | 20 |
| h | 20 |
| rk | 17 |
| rm | 15 |
| scht | 14 |
| nst | 14 |
| rnt | 13 |
| rst | 13 |
| hnt | 12 |
| rrt | 12 |
| rf | 11 |
| hlt | 11 |
| rkt | 11 |
| ks | 10 |
Words can now be produced by the following algorithm:
Word :==
[initial vowel + [medial consonant + medial vowel]* + terminal consonant]
|
[initial vowel + [medial consonant + medial vowel]* + medial vowel + terminal consonant]
|
[initial consonant + [medial vowel + medial consonant]* + terminal vowel]
|
[initial consonant + [medial vowel + medial consonant]* + medial vowel + terminal consonant]
The probability of any consonant or vowel is given by the second column in the lists.
And so, our first line of fake German:
Fasinde aut Bechank Hiruchtie Geran
Now I just need to, erm, get good enough in a programming language a little more recent than QBasic...to start making pseudo-Goethe.
Advice for Teachers
If you're thinking of working as a teacher, especially an EFL/ESL teacher, this is what I've learned after six years.
Keep reserves.
Always keep a set of spare lessons ready to go, because if an activity fails or it turns out the class already know what you're teaching, you'll need something to replace it with. And if that fails, something else again.
Students can spot a fake.
Whether it's a fake smile, fake enthusiasm or confidence, fake anger or patience...or fake knowledge of the subject, you won't fool them.
Be nice.
If they don't like you, you may as well not try to teach them. If they do, and they still make no progress, you're a lousy teacher.
The good news is: Students who like their teachers tend to believe they've been taught a lot and well - even if they've made no progress at all.
You control what you put in, not what they get out.
Saying "I taught them X" and saying "They learned X" are two completely different statements.
You might find yourself teaching one bit of vocabulary three times, but they only learn it when you say it casually while explaining something else. Whatever you think you're teaching, you're teaching other things too.
Many students just don't want to learn.
It's not your job to make them.
Some want to have learned, but don't want to go through the process. Some are in your class because their parents or employers want them there. And some joined in a moment of madness.
Whatever the reason, you are a resource for those who want to use it, not a drill sargeant.
You are sometimes a counsellor.
But you are not a mother. Or a friend.
Everyone has off-days.
If your student is ill, exhausted, depressed, hungover or stoned, let them take it easy.
If that involves letting them sleep at the back while you revise with their classmates, fine. If it involves the class watching a video - for which you have prepared a vocabulary list, in case the boss looks in - no problem.
Are you a people person?
Be prepared to become fond of your students, tolerant of your colleagues, and spittingly hateful of your boss.
If you have some other configuration of emotions, you're in the wrong job.
Love - don't do it.
We've all seen it happen - sex and/or romance between students and teachers.
Usually it's the student's idea, and it usually doesn't last long. But it takes a degree of emotional maturity from all parties to deal with the aftermath.
Employers, the general public and some colleagues do not have emotional maturity, so just make sure they don't find out about it.
Some slopes are slippery.
Alcohol is the drug of choice among teachers. I don't know why - with the hours and workload, I'd have thought amphetamines. If you don't have a colleague with incipient alcoholism...well, you probably do, but don't know about it yet.
Pace yourself.
You have a certain amount of energy every day. If you can't function without a cup of coffee between each lesson, you have exceeded this amount. This is not heroically giving of yourself, or going above and beyond the call of duty, nor is it everyone admiring you for having boundless energy, This is called running on empty until you crash.
After five years it's called Burnout.
You can't beat the clock.
You are not paid to teach an hour of english. You are paid to be available and ready between (say) 7pm and 8pm. If the student turns up at 7:30, they get half an hour, and they pay the full amount. If they don't turn up at all, and don't have a good reason, they're still contracted to pay.
Make sure this is crystal clear before the first lesson.
The other side is that you're paid to teach the full hour, even if you've finished after 45 minutes. Take up the time with practice, conversation, or games - what seems like ways to fill time can be the most useful part of the lesson, though you can't predict whether it will.
What they need isn't what they want.
Most students want to learn facts, not a skill. And those who don't generally want the skill and are impatient with facts. The latter are the one's who'll get good at the language, but actually they need both.
Teaching grammar is out of fashion, but without it all you can teach is cliched conversation - or the dictionary.
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to measure.
You can teach students the language, or how to pass the exam. Exams don't test for ability in the subject, they test for memory of the syllabus.
This is why, whatever mark they got in the exam which ascertained their level, and thus put them in the class of that level - your class - a large minority will be a lot better or worse than their grade suggests. If you're lucky, this means you'll get one or two very able students who can help teach the others.
Teach what you know.
Use your regional accent, your vocabulary, your habits of speech. Not those of the textbook writers, and not those of whichever prestige group the students regard as 'standard'.
You can teach about how other people speak to some extent, but if you try to teach someone else's dialect, you'll get it wrong.
Find some common ground.
Bored teacher + Interested class = Bored class
Interested teacher + Bored class = Nothing learned
Bored teacher + Bored class = Even more bored teacher and class
Interested teacher + Interested class = Progress
Teach what you care about, provided they like it too.
A school is a business, not a service.
Student fees are the school's source of income - from a business point of view, the actual students are an inconvenience. To the owner, teachers are a necessary evil, not what makes a school possible, and providing resources is a drain on funds.
None of the methods work.
And some of them don't even exist.
The Callan method consists entirely of reciting question and answer pairs like: "Is a banana a vegetable? No, a banana is not a vegetable, but a cabbage is". Suggestopedia in practice means "do whatever you think makes students feel unpressured". Total Physical Response is "mime the words as you say them".
The "communicative" method is simply "get students talking as much as possible, and don't teach grammar". There is no method, just some vague aims. The reasons behind the aims are (1) practice is good and (2) teachers don't know grammar.
You don't need to know what the letters mean.
IELTS, TOEFL, iBT, NNS, VESL, ETS, CAL/CALL....
Usually they mean something that doesn't need an abbreviation, eg. Computer Assisted Learning, Non-Native Speakers, Educational Testing Service.
Otherwise, knowing what the letters stand for doesn't actually tell you anything, eg. Test Of English as a Foreign Language, International English Language Testing System. Almost no one who teaches them knows, and it doesn't help if they do.
There are sometimes hairline differences between TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language), TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) and other names for the same job. But I've never known them to make a practical difference in the classroom.
Most of the textbooks are rubbish.
They're not just boring, badly planned and badly written. Often they're just plain wrong.
Don't be afraid to openly disagree with the book in front of the class - so long as you can give a good reason why. And if you later find you're wrong, admit that too.
Use and develop your own materials if possible.
When you do use textbooks, quality beats quantity - one or two good ones are a blessing - 20 bad ones are a curse. If you find just one that's great, use the hell out of it, and get to know it backwards.
Silence is not bad.
If you need to stop and think, stop and think. Though if you need to think for more than 30 seconds, you probably won't find the answer after a minute.
If a student needs to pause while remembering a word or working out a spelling, saying something encouraging to fill the awkward silence will only distract them.
Know your roles. The real ones.
All the managing that needs to be done, is best done by teachers. All the administration that needs to be done, is best done by the secretary. All the provisioning that needs to be done, is best done by the owner.
Secretaries doing management, teachers doing admin, owners trying to teach - all recepies for disaster.
And finally....
Teaching EFL is a way to see the world, not to make money. Training people who want to be teachers is the reverse.
Most schools run on a shoestring budget. Most go bankrupt - several times.
As with every other profession, incompetence is the norm.
Saul Alinsky was right. If it's no fun at all, you're doing it wrong.
Most advice is wrong.
Keep reserves.
Always keep a set of spare lessons ready to go, because if an activity fails or it turns out the class already know what you're teaching, you'll need something to replace it with. And if that fails, something else again.
Students can spot a fake.
Whether it's a fake smile, fake enthusiasm or confidence, fake anger or patience...or fake knowledge of the subject, you won't fool them.
Be nice.
If they don't like you, you may as well not try to teach them. If they do, and they still make no progress, you're a lousy teacher.
The good news is: Students who like their teachers tend to believe they've been taught a lot and well - even if they've made no progress at all.
You control what you put in, not what they get out.
Saying "I taught them X" and saying "They learned X" are two completely different statements.
You might find yourself teaching one bit of vocabulary three times, but they only learn it when you say it casually while explaining something else. Whatever you think you're teaching, you're teaching other things too.
Many students just don't want to learn.
It's not your job to make them.
Some want to have learned, but don't want to go through the process. Some are in your class because their parents or employers want them there. And some joined in a moment of madness.
Whatever the reason, you are a resource for those who want to use it, not a drill sargeant.
You are sometimes a counsellor.
But you are not a mother. Or a friend.
Everyone has off-days.
If your student is ill, exhausted, depressed, hungover or stoned, let them take it easy.
If that involves letting them sleep at the back while you revise with their classmates, fine. If it involves the class watching a video - for which you have prepared a vocabulary list, in case the boss looks in - no problem.
Are you a people person?
Be prepared to become fond of your students, tolerant of your colleagues, and spittingly hateful of your boss.
If you have some other configuration of emotions, you're in the wrong job.
Love - don't do it.
We've all seen it happen - sex and/or romance between students and teachers.
Usually it's the student's idea, and it usually doesn't last long. But it takes a degree of emotional maturity from all parties to deal with the aftermath.
Employers, the general public and some colleagues do not have emotional maturity, so just make sure they don't find out about it.
Some slopes are slippery.
Alcohol is the drug of choice among teachers. I don't know why - with the hours and workload, I'd have thought amphetamines. If you don't have a colleague with incipient alcoholism...well, you probably do, but don't know about it yet.
Pace yourself.
You have a certain amount of energy every day. If you can't function without a cup of coffee between each lesson, you have exceeded this amount. This is not heroically giving of yourself, or going above and beyond the call of duty, nor is it everyone admiring you for having boundless energy, This is called running on empty until you crash.
After five years it's called Burnout.
You can't beat the clock.
You are not paid to teach an hour of english. You are paid to be available and ready between (say) 7pm and 8pm. If the student turns up at 7:30, they get half an hour, and they pay the full amount. If they don't turn up at all, and don't have a good reason, they're still contracted to pay.
Make sure this is crystal clear before the first lesson.
The other side is that you're paid to teach the full hour, even if you've finished after 45 minutes. Take up the time with practice, conversation, or games - what seems like ways to fill time can be the most useful part of the lesson, though you can't predict whether it will.
What they need isn't what they want.
Most students want to learn facts, not a skill. And those who don't generally want the skill and are impatient with facts. The latter are the one's who'll get good at the language, but actually they need both.
Teaching grammar is out of fashion, but without it all you can teach is cliched conversation - or the dictionary.
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to measure.
You can teach students the language, or how to pass the exam. Exams don't test for ability in the subject, they test for memory of the syllabus.
This is why, whatever mark they got in the exam which ascertained their level, and thus put them in the class of that level - your class - a large minority will be a lot better or worse than their grade suggests. If you're lucky, this means you'll get one or two very able students who can help teach the others.
Teach what you know.
Use your regional accent, your vocabulary, your habits of speech. Not those of the textbook writers, and not those of whichever prestige group the students regard as 'standard'.
You can teach about how other people speak to some extent, but if you try to teach someone else's dialect, you'll get it wrong.
Find some common ground.
Bored teacher + Interested class = Bored class
Interested teacher + Bored class = Nothing learned
Bored teacher + Bored class = Even more bored teacher and class
Interested teacher + Interested class = Progress
Teach what you care about, provided they like it too.
A school is a business, not a service.
Student fees are the school's source of income - from a business point of view, the actual students are an inconvenience. To the owner, teachers are a necessary evil, not what makes a school possible, and providing resources is a drain on funds.
None of the methods work.
And some of them don't even exist.
The Callan method consists entirely of reciting question and answer pairs like: "Is a banana a vegetable? No, a banana is not a vegetable, but a cabbage is". Suggestopedia in practice means "do whatever you think makes students feel unpressured". Total Physical Response is "mime the words as you say them".
The "communicative" method is simply "get students talking as much as possible, and don't teach grammar". There is no method, just some vague aims. The reasons behind the aims are (1) practice is good and (2) teachers don't know grammar.
You don't need to know what the letters mean.
IELTS, TOEFL, iBT, NNS, VESL, ETS, CAL/CALL....
Usually they mean something that doesn't need an abbreviation, eg. Computer Assisted Learning, Non-Native Speakers, Educational Testing Service.
Otherwise, knowing what the letters stand for doesn't actually tell you anything, eg. Test Of English as a Foreign Language, International English Language Testing System. Almost no one who teaches them knows, and it doesn't help if they do.
There are sometimes hairline differences between TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language), TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) and other names for the same job. But I've never known them to make a practical difference in the classroom.
Most of the textbooks are rubbish.
They're not just boring, badly planned and badly written. Often they're just plain wrong.
Don't be afraid to openly disagree with the book in front of the class - so long as you can give a good reason why. And if you later find you're wrong, admit that too.
Use and develop your own materials if possible.
When you do use textbooks, quality beats quantity - one or two good ones are a blessing - 20 bad ones are a curse. If you find just one that's great, use the hell out of it, and get to know it backwards.
Silence is not bad.
If you need to stop and think, stop and think. Though if you need to think for more than 30 seconds, you probably won't find the answer after a minute.
If a student needs to pause while remembering a word or working out a spelling, saying something encouraging to fill the awkward silence will only distract them.
Know your roles. The real ones.
All the managing that needs to be done, is best done by teachers. All the administration that needs to be done, is best done by the secretary. All the provisioning that needs to be done, is best done by the owner.
Secretaries doing management, teachers doing admin, owners trying to teach - all recepies for disaster.
And finally....
Teaching EFL is a way to see the world, not to make money. Training people who want to be teachers is the reverse.
Most schools run on a shoestring budget. Most go bankrupt - several times.
As with every other profession, incompetence is the norm.
Saul Alinsky was right. If it's no fun at all, you're doing it wrong.
Most advice is wrong.
I Meta Man Who Wasn't There
One of the problems inherent in teaching is the difficulty of finding a metalanguage. That is, of inventing or locating a set of terms - and therefore a theory which uses them - which describes what you're trying to teach.
There are dozens of overlapping metalanguages for teaching english, with terms like Noun, Object, Phrasal Verb, Modal Verb, Determiner, Clause and Conditional.
Some of them have more than one meaning, some have confused meanings - in that they mix up issues of grammar with those of semantics, common usage etc. - and some I think refer to things which don't exist in English. But that's a rant for another post.
My problem at the moment is coming up with a metalanguage which describes English...in Arabic.
In english, we think of vocal sound as a concatenation of phonemes - a chain of sounds. The word 'dog' is [d] + [o] + [g], where the vowel [o] might have one sound in West London, England (maybe /o:/ - 'Dorg') and another in Austin, Texas (perhaps /au:/ - 'Dawg'), but in both places it's part of a system of vowels where the relationships between them are (usually) the same.
Arabs...doesn't think of vowels as phonemes at all. In their model, you can think of a word as a train journey between several stations, usually 3. The stations are the consonants, and the vowels are the tracks between them. So the vowels are ways of getting from one fixed point to another, not fixed points themselves.
If you change the line of the track, the base meaning of the word doesn't change, but the detail of the meaning does. This 'detail' is whether you have a verb referring to two women doing the action to something else in the present, a verb for more than two men doing it to each other in the past, a noun naming the place where the verb usually happens, and so on.
It's a complicated, elegant, and very different theory, tying phonetics and semantics together in a way that would make no sense for non-semitic languages.
In English, verbs come in two forms, which I label V1 and V2. Both have many functions, but V1 often refers to the present, and V2 to the past - so most books call them 'past' and 'present' forms. We say verbs 'decline for tense', that is, they change form according to time.
Almost all verbs produce two participles - P1 and P2 - and almost all participles are produced by verbs. P2 is always V1 + 'ing' - thinking, wanting, giving etc. P1 is identical in form to V2 in regular verbs (listen, drag, push etc), and different in about 200 irregular ones (come, wake, eat etc.)
Participles can function as adjectives (eg, the eaten food, the running man), and P2 is also used for gerunds, that is nouns which name the action (eg, eating is done here, running is healthy).
P1 refers to actions which are completed, whether in the past or present. P2 is for actions which are ongoing, past or present. Thus: 'The food is eaten', but 'The family is eating'. So we can say that participles 'decline for completedness', whether the action is finished at the time we're talking about.
In conventional English grammar, completedness is combined with whether or not the focus is on the action or the consequences of the action, in a category called 'aspect'. Thus there are reckoned to be four aspects:
So here's the first problem: Arabic doesn't have participles. It doesn't have anything like them. When arabic textbooks talk about participles, they're taking about nouns which refer to the doer or receiver of an action, eg. payer and payee.
For my students I need to describe an entire lexical category which doesn't have a near-equivalent in their language. An important one, which by the way also has several different functions.
Here's the second problem: Arabic verbs also come in two flavours, but depending on what other words are present, they decline for compledness. Or tense. Or both at the same time.
In English we show the time in the verb itself - the choice of V1 or V2. We show the aspect with the auxiliary verbs 'be' and 'have' - and the time with the V1/V2 choice on the auxiliary if it's the first verb in the sentence.
In Arabic, the completedness and the time of an action are shown ambiguously by the V1/V2 choice in the verb itself, which is only disambiguated by surrounding particle words. The nearest analog in English is words like 'yet' and 'ago'.
It's difficult enough to explain all this to native English speakers. I've got to do it in fragments of a language where the words for past and present (maadhi and mudhaara) also mean completed and not completed.
This is the metalanguage I've come up with so far for talking about English grammar in terms of Arabic grammar:
Double vowels are pronounced long, vowels in italics are emphasised syllables - the two are not the same in words with no long vowels. The '~' indicates the vowel has an emphatic gutteral explosive onset and the throat remains open while it's in progress - say the vowel deep in the back of the throat. In other words, it represents the 'consonant' Ayn. 'u' is as in 'put', 'dh' is 'th' in 'this', 'j' is 'j' in 'jazz', 'H' is a breathy 'h'.
This is of course a work in progress, but so far it's proven useful.
There are dozens of overlapping metalanguages for teaching english, with terms like Noun, Object, Phrasal Verb, Modal Verb, Determiner, Clause and Conditional.
Some of them have more than one meaning, some have confused meanings - in that they mix up issues of grammar with those of semantics, common usage etc. - and some I think refer to things which don't exist in English. But that's a rant for another post.
My problem at the moment is coming up with a metalanguage which describes English...in Arabic.
In english, we think of vocal sound as a concatenation of phonemes - a chain of sounds. The word 'dog' is [d] + [o] + [g], where the vowel [o] might have one sound in West London, England (maybe /o:/ - 'Dorg') and another in Austin, Texas (perhaps /au:/ - 'Dawg'), but in both places it's part of a system of vowels where the relationships between them are (usually) the same.
Arabs...doesn't think of vowels as phonemes at all. In their model, you can think of a word as a train journey between several stations, usually 3. The stations are the consonants, and the vowels are the tracks between them. So the vowels are ways of getting from one fixed point to another, not fixed points themselves.
If you change the line of the track, the base meaning of the word doesn't change, but the detail of the meaning does. This 'detail' is whether you have a verb referring to two women doing the action to something else in the present, a verb for more than two men doing it to each other in the past, a noun naming the place where the verb usually happens, and so on.
It's a complicated, elegant, and very different theory, tying phonetics and semantics together in a way that would make no sense for non-semitic languages.
In English, verbs come in two forms, which I label V1 and V2. Both have many functions, but V1 often refers to the present, and V2 to the past - so most books call them 'past' and 'present' forms. We say verbs 'decline for tense', that is, they change form according to time.
Almost all verbs produce two participles - P1 and P2 - and almost all participles are produced by verbs. P2 is always V1 + 'ing' - thinking, wanting, giving etc. P1 is identical in form to V2 in regular verbs (listen, drag, push etc), and different in about 200 irregular ones (come, wake, eat etc.)
Participles can function as adjectives (eg, the eaten food, the running man), and P2 is also used for gerunds, that is nouns which name the action (eg, eating is done here, running is healthy).
P1 refers to actions which are completed, whether in the past or present. P2 is for actions which are ongoing, past or present. Thus: 'The food is eaten', but 'The family is eating'. So we can say that participles 'decline for completedness', whether the action is finished at the time we're talking about.
In conventional English grammar, completedness is combined with whether or not the focus is on the action or the consequences of the action, in a category called 'aspect'. Thus there are reckoned to be four aspects:
- He eats / He ate - completed, focus on action
- He is eating / He was eating - not completed, focus on action
- He has eaten / He had eaten - completed , focus on result
- He has been eating / He had been eating - not completed, focus on result
So here's the first problem: Arabic doesn't have participles. It doesn't have anything like them. When arabic textbooks talk about participles, they're taking about nouns which refer to the doer or receiver of an action, eg. payer and payee.
For my students I need to describe an entire lexical category which doesn't have a near-equivalent in their language. An important one, which by the way also has several different functions.
Here's the second problem: Arabic verbs also come in two flavours, but depending on what other words are present, they decline for compledness. Or tense. Or both at the same time.
In English we show the time in the verb itself - the choice of V1 or V2. We show the aspect with the auxiliary verbs 'be' and 'have' - and the time with the V1/V2 choice on the auxiliary if it's the first verb in the sentence.
In Arabic, the completedness and the time of an action are shown ambiguously by the V1/V2 choice in the verb itself, which is only disambiguated by surrounding particle words. The nearest analog in English is words like 'yet' and 'ago'.
It's difficult enough to explain all this to native English speakers. I've got to do it in fragments of a language where the words for past and present (maadhi and mudhaara) also mean completed and not completed.
This is the metalanguage I've come up with so far for talking about English grammar in terms of Arabic grammar:
Sentence - Juumla
Statement - Juumla fe~elia
Question - su~al
Command - amr
Noun - ism
Verb - fe~el
Auxiliary Verb: fe~el musa~aad
Adjective - seifa
Particle: haarf
Preposition: haarf al Jaar
Non-prepositional part of prepositional Phrase: ism mejrur
Intensifier - hal al hal [provisional]
Subject - fa~il
Object - maf~ul
Phrase - ibaara
Noun Phrase - ibaara ism
Verb Phrase - ibaara fa~il
Adjective Phrase - ibaara seifa
Adverb Phrase - ibaara hal [possibly]
Prepositional Phrase of Place - dhaarf makaann
Prepositional Phrase of Time - dhaarf zamaan
Prepositional Phrase - [provisionally use ibaara muunharif, translation borrowing of 'Oblique Phrase']
X of Y - mudhaaf [second part of gentive phrase]
X of Y - mudhaaf ileeH [first part of gentive phrase]
Transitive Verb - fe~el mutaad
Intransitive Verb - fe~el mutaad leisa, or fe~el laazim
Ditransitive Verb - [don't know]
In present time - Fii mudhaara
In past time - Fii maadh
With Completion - maa nihaya
Without Completion - beduun nihaya
With Result - maa netizha
Without Result - beduun netizha
Figurative or Metaphorical - majaazi
Double vowels are pronounced long, vowels in italics are emphasised syllables - the two are not the same in words with no long vowels. The '~' indicates the vowel has an emphatic gutteral explosive onset and the throat remains open while it's in progress - say the vowel deep in the back of the throat. In other words, it represents the 'consonant' Ayn. 'u' is as in 'put', 'dh' is 'th' in 'this', 'j' is 'j' in 'jazz', 'H' is a breathy 'h'.
This is of course a work in progress, but so far it's proven useful.
Kapitano's Kash Konverter
I sometimes need to do quick, rough-and-ready currency conversions. But I can't always remember the conversion rates - so I made a table. You might find it useful.
GBP - Great Britain Pounds (Sterling)
USD - United States Dollars
SAR - Saudi Arabian Riyals
EUR - Euros
| From | To | Do |
| GBP | USD | Add half |
| GBP | SAR | Multiply by six |
| GBP | EUR | Add a fifth |
| USD | GBP | Subtract half |
| USD | SAR | Multiply by three and a quarter |
| USD | EUR | Subtract a quarter |
| SAR | GBP | Divide by six |
| SAR | USD | Divide by four |
| SAR | EUR | Divide by five |
| EUR | GBP | Subtract a fifth |
| EUR | USD | Add a third |
| EUR | SAR | Multiply by five |
GBP - Great Britain Pounds (Sterling)
USD - United States Dollars
SAR - Saudi Arabian Riyals
EUR - Euros
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