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How to Teach Children That Addiction Is a Disease, Not a Moral Weakness

01/09/2021 by admin Leave a Comment

Teaching Children about Drug Addiction by Patrick Bailey

Many thanks to Patrick Bailey for this month’s guest post! Photo credits: Pixels.com

Children living in homes where parents or other family members are struggling with addictions need to be taught that addiction is a disease and not a character weakness. Children who are not living around others with addictive personalities also benefit from understanding how addiction can produce mental and physical disorders.

In the same way that educators, parents, friends, and family members teach children about behavior expectations, growth changes, moral choices, and other illnesses, people can educate children on the disease of addiction and the problems it could create.

It is helpful to educate children on the different types of addictions, symptoms of addictions in others, and ways to recognize addiction in themselves. When children have this information, they feel more secure in their environments and in making their own life choices. They don’t grow up stigmatizing addiction, which could create barriers to treatment that could hurt them or others.

Explaining Addiction-Related Changes

Changes in behavior are some of the first signs children may notice in people with addictions. Children might learn that when an adult struggles with alcohol or drugs, they might break promises, not remember appointments, or miss work.

Children can also see changes in people who abuse drugs, which may include slurred speech, extreme fatigue, or extremely high energy levels. If a child is around a person struggling with an addiction, discussing these signs could help children understand how drugs and alcohol could affect the body.

Conversations about addiction are important. They can help children understand that none of an adult’s behavior is the child’s fault and also to help the child avoid personal challenges related to an adult’s behavior.  

To reduce judgment surrounding addiction, educators, parents, family members, and friends can use person-centered language when speaking about addictions. Instead of calling someone an addict, they can refer to him or her as a person with an addiction.

Second, they can explain to children that addictions such as alcohol use disorder are medical diagnoses and refer to people who have a brain disorder, not a moral weakness.

People with addictions do not choose them. Instead, addiction is a disease that changes the way people’s bodies and brains respond to alcohol and drugs, making it difficult for them to stop seeking out the substances.

Third, adults could teach children that not everyone responds the same way to drugs and alcohol. Different people might be more susceptible to addiction and its challenges, and the susceptibility toward addictions might be higher in some families.

Using these approaches can teach children that they do not need to fear for their own future. When they understand addiction is a disease and not a moral weakness, children might understand that there are treatments for the disease.

Discussing Addiction

Teaching Children About Addiction by Patrick Bailey

Adults can discuss treatment options and explain that group or individual therapy, select medications, and family support can all be essential tools to help a person with an addiction.

When discussing the treatment of alcoholism, for example, adults should consider speaking of it in the same terms used for the treatment of other diseases or conditions. Let children know the person with an addiction is seeking treatment for the disease and will be working with a doctor or therapist. This can reassure children that the person with an addiction is getting the help he or she needs.

Once a person begins treatment and the child begins to see healthy behavior, an explanation of the difference between a moral weakness and a disease might be helpful. For example, a moral weakness is typically characterized as knowing the right thing to do, but choosing to do the opposite thing.

In the case of drinking alcohol, many people can drink in moderation. Many people can enjoy a glass of wine with dinner and not drink to excess. For a person with an addiction, one glass of wine has the potential to open the door to a night of excessive drinking.

But a person with an addiction who can’t stop drinking isn’t choosing to do something wrong by continuing to drink. Instead, their body and brain chemistry make it nearly impossible to stop drinking. Their ability to choose is taken over by the body’s response to the substance.

Even children who do not live in homes with people with addictions benefit from understanding that addiction is a disease. Children might grow into teenagers and young adults who could meet people who struggle with alcohol or drugs.

The more people who understand that addiction is not a choice, the better society becomes at supporting people with addictions. Learning about addictive behaviors as a child can help eliminate the stigmas surrounding addictions. Those changes can help people with addictions feel less shame and feel better about finding the help they need sooner rather than later.

About the Author

Patrick Bailey

Patrick Bailey is a professional writer with a focus in the fields of mental health, addiction, and living in recovery. He stays on top of the latest news in the addiction and the mental health world and enjoys writing about these topics to break the stigma associated with them. You can connect with Patrick on his website, Twitter, and Linkedin

XXX

Sources

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov – Personality Profiles of Substance and Behavioral Addictions
adultchildren.org – Welcome to Adult Children of Alcoholics®/ Dysfunctional Families
niaaa.nih.gov – Alcohol Use Disorder
niaaa.nih.gov – Treatment for Alcohol Problems: Finding and Getting Help
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov – Addiction Is a Treatable Disease, Not a Moral Failing

Filed Under: Guest Blog Post Tagged With: addict, addiction, addictive personalities, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, kinney brothers publishing, Kinney Brothers Publishing Blog, substance abuse

Spelling Bees – A Brief History

07/26/2020 by admin Leave a Comment

Though this post was intended to be exclusive to my weekly Fun Facts About English, I feel that, given the events happening in the United States in 2020, this bit of history is quite apropos and a story worth sharing more widely. As Americans, we are being called upon to acknowledge our racist past, join together in solidarity, and move forward with greater efforts to ensure equality and fairness for all Americans — including those seeking asylum on our shores.

Kinney Brothers Publishing Spelling Bees A Brief History

I hate to admit that, even given multiple tries, I probably wouldn’t be able to spell the two dinosaur names above. I sit in awe of people who spell well. I also know I’m not alone when it comes to my spelling disabilities.

The English language has had spelling issues for a very, very long time. In centuries past, there have been compilers and reformers who tried to catalogue and standardize the English language. From Richard Mulcaster’s The first Part of the Elementarie in 1582, Samuel Johnson’s comprehensive and highly influential dictionary of 1755, and Noah Webster’s 19th century American dictionary, we are making strides toward standardization, but the myriad exceptions force us to rely on rote learning and memory to be a good speller.

Blue-backed Speller Kinney Brothers Publishing

First published in 1786, Webster’s spelling books, known colloquially as “The Blue-backed Speller,” were an essential part of the elementary school curriculum in the United States for five generations. These spelling primers were the impetus for the earliest spelling contests; an activity to motivate students to learn standardized spelling. The first such spelling matches were recorded in 1808. From about 1850, local events were referred to as “spelling bees.”

The word bee has been used to describe a get-together or communal work, such as a husking bee, a quilting bee, or an apple bee. The word likely comes from a dialectal been or bean, meaning “help given by neighbors” from the Middle English word bene.

Spelling bees were usually held in individual schools and towns and weren’t yet nationally organized. In 1908, the National Education Association (NEA) held the “first national spelling bee” in Cleveland, Ohio as part of its 46th annual convention. The NEA Spelling Bee was a team-based competition held at the Hippodrome Theater where six thousand people attended, including convention speaker, Booker T. Washington.

NEA Spelling Bee Kinney Brothers Publishing

Even before the competition, some members of the all-White Louisiana team took offense at having to compete on the same stage with Ohio’s racially-integrated teams. Nonetheless, Marie Bolden, a thirteen-year-old Black girl from Cleveland, was named champion and awarded the gold medal. Marie’s victory made national news because it upset the day’s stereotypes about what Black children could or should be allowed to accomplish. Back in New Orleans, the local Black YMCA organized a spelling bee in honor of Miss Bolden’s victory, but the mayor, embarrassed by the upset in Cleveland, withheld the permit and canceled the event due to tensions “over race questions.”

Seventeen years later, in 1925, the first annual United States National Spelling Bee was held in Louisville, Kentucky, and was sponsored by The Courier-Journal, a local Louisville newspaper. The winner was eleven-year-old Frank Neuhauser. In celebration of his victory, Master Neuhauser met President Calvin Coolidge, was awarded five hundred dollars in gold pieces, given a hometown parade, and a bicycle by his school in Louisville.

In 1941, the Scripps Howard News Service acquired sponsorship of the spelling contest, and the name changed to the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee. This was later shortened to the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Today, the organization is administered on a not-for-profit basis by The E.W. Scripps Company from its headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio.  The contest has been held every year except 1943-1945 due to World War II, and 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 1994, the competition has been regularly televised on the cable-television sports channel, ESPN.

Scripps National Spelling Bee

Although most participants are from the U.S., students from countries such as The Bahamas, Canada, the People’s Republic of China, India, Ghana, Japan, Jamaica, Mexico, and New Zealand have competed in recent years.

Spelling matches have come a long way since the early 19th century. Today, we can view the competition from home and watch movies about the fierce competition and gargantuan effort these kids make to reach the grand stage. If you’re a teacher, student, or parent interested in organizing local spelling competitions, visit the Scripps National Spelling Bee website where you can download information booklets and read more about the awesome kids participating in this yearly event.

Filed Under: Kinney Brothers Publishing Tagged With: Booker T Washington, ESL Activities, ESL Drills, ESL Flash cards, esl textbooks, ESL Worksheets, fun facts about english, Kinney Brothers Publishing Blog, Marie Bolden, Spelling Bees

Teaching Pronunciation – A Follow-up

06/15/2020 by admin Leave a Comment

Teaching Pronunciation Kinney Brothers Publishing

As a follow-up to my previous post, Teaching Pronunciation, I wanted to share with you some files I’ve been busily producing. If you missed that post, I offered up some free templates for making minimal pair flash cards and other pronunciation activities, plus some downloadable charts for your classroom. I’ll list them here again and encourage you to give them a try in class.

  • Minimal Pair Flash Card Set
  • Exit Tickets
  • Pronunciation Maze
  • Telephone Activity
  • Pronunciation Pyramid
  • Phonemic Chart

If you aren’t inclined to making your own materials, or you’re not in a space right now for researching vocabulary, I put together a variety of files that you can download from my online store, Donald’s English Classroom. These are print-ready pdf files that you can start using today.

Minimal Pair Flash Card Sets

minimal pair card sets Kinney Brothers Publishing

Each of these Minimal Pair Flash Card sets comes with charts, assessment logs, master cards, pair cards, and individual word cards. With each of these sets you will have a flexible resource for assessments and to utilize in pronunciation activities.

Exit Tickets

Aligned to the Minimal Pair Flash Cards above, these sets of Exit Tickets specifically target speakers of 10 different languages. Exit tickets are a fast and easy way of assessing lessons taught or determining lessons that need to be taught. Use these as a cool-down exercise at the end of class, collect the completed tickets as students leave, and you’ll have a clearer idea where students need the most attention.

Pronunciation Pyramids

These Pronunciation Pyramids are fun for the whole class or in small groups. With a base of 48 minimal pair sets, there are 96 pyramids total. Have these ready for a quick assessment or as a warmup activity to get students focused on pronunciation.

Pronunciation Mazes

Pronunciation Mazes are a fun challenge for students to complete in or outside of class. These 27 puzzles address three areas of pronunciation for ESL learners: past tense, third-person singular verbs, and noun plurals. Each set includes a word bank of 60 common nouns and verbs, nine puzzles for each target (color & black and white), plus answer keys.

  • Past tense verbs: /d/, /t/, and /id/ e.g., called, jumped and lifted
  • Third person singular verbs: /s/, /z/, and /iz/, e.g., helps, draws, and teaches
  • Noun Plurals: /s/, /z/, and /iz/, e.g., books, cows, and wishes

These pronunciation activities can be employed in class with minimal time requirements and without redesigning your whole curriculum. Remember, a little pronunciation practice on a regular basis will go a long way toward improving speaking and listening skills.

As always, best of luck in your classes!

Donald Kinney
Kinney Brothers Publishing

Filed Under: Kinney Brothers Publishing Tagged With: Donald's English Classroom, ESL Activities, ESL Flash cards, ESL Games, esl textbooks, ESL Worksheets, Kinney Brothers Publishing Blog, minimal pairs, pronunciation mazes, pronunciation pyramids

Fun Facts About English #57 – Gender-specific Nouns

06/09/2020 by admin Leave a Comment

Fun Facts About English 57 Kinney Brothers Publishing

Gender-specific nouns, especially titles in professional spheres, have been losing favor in the past few decades. While the effort to be inclusive and gender-neutral is an honorable one, it’s a linguistic one-way street in many cases, a compromise in others, and nearly impossible when moving from originally feminine to masculine-inclusive nouns. With nouns like widow/widower, there appears to be no path to neutrality at all!

Feminine terms like actress, usherette, and comedienne are marked, or divergent, in relation to their masculine forms. Only the masculine forms can serve as gender-neutral terms. For example, ushers can be inclusive of males and females, whereas usherette is exclusively female.

Similar to widow and widower, policeman and policewoman are categorically separate with neither being able to serve as gender-neutral terms. In such cases, proponents of neutralism have opted for officers to reduce and replace the terms to a manageable and inclusive definition.

With the loss of feminine nouns of agency, understood by their suffixes -tress, -trix, -ette, and -enne, it might seem we’re losing lingual diversity; opting for language that does its best to embrace inclusiveness and discard difference for the sake of economy.

On the binary flip side, an interesting thing happens when men move into occupations that have been traditionally female. Solutions for gender neutrality are not so easy, in part, because of the entrenched notions of their feminine exclusivity. Consider the professions of nursing, sewing, childbirth, childcare, housekeeping, or even the role of a lover taken outside of marriage.

Historically, a nurse and seamstress are occupations held by women that excluded men. Though nurse is becoming widely recognized as a gender-neutral title, and the awful murse didn’t stick, it’s still quite common to hear “male nurse” as a distinction. To most people’s way of thinking, a female nurse is redundant. In the clothing industry, seamstress has already been replaced with stitcher or sewer, whereas the masculine tailor is the gender-neutral term for a man or the feminine tailoress.

Consider the word housewife. A male housewife sounds as ridiculous as the 1980s comedy, Mr. Mom. Though “stay-at-home dad” is commonly used, what if he’s not a dad but just a “stay-at-home guy?” Housedude? By definition, “stay-at-home husband” is an oxymoron. Homemaker still has a feminine ring and caregiver, though inclusive, only sits in relation to a dependent. The culture can be quite critical of a male relying on his female partner or parent for support. Bum, lazy, and mooch are some of the colorful words that come to mind for a husband or son who opts not to work outside the home — or work at all. The culture has yet to define a term to address men in such partnerships and points to the idea that traditional marriage brings a man’s labor to the fore (husband) and keeps a woman in her place (housewife).

Husband – from hús ‘house’ + bóndi ‘occupier and tiller of the soil’. The original sense of the verb was ‘till, cultivate’.

What about the male equivalent of a mistress? Is he a kept man? A mister? “He is her mister” sounds like they’re married. A kept man seems too restricting for a dashing gentleman moving among the shadows. Neither of these terms has that mysterious and provocative air of extra-marital naughtiness. While the French paramour is inclusive and neutral, should I find myself in such circumstances, I fancy the Italian term cavalier servente.

Now let’s look at the word midwife. On its surface, the occupation seems to indicate the feminine and it’s a cultural given that the person performing the task will be a woman. The Old English word simply means “with the woman (wife).” Today, a man can be defined as a midwife, though “man midwife” has been used in centuries past. In ancient Greece, any person who had not given birth themselves was restricted from becoming a midwife. In the U.K., the Royal College of Midwives barred men from the profession until 1983. Because of the social and sometimes legal barriers to men, pediatrics emerged in the 1930s as a “modern” medical field and women’s traditional role and knowledge as midwives increasingly came under attack.

Finally, to bring this back to the beginning, because widower is divergent from the feminine, it’s unlikely that widow will become the gender-neutral term for both men and women who have lost a partner. In legal terms, “surviving spouse” seems to be the closest we have to neutrality. Interestingly, whether a heterosexual or homosexual coupling, the gender-specific terms maintain their lingual integrity. For those who object to binary terms, there is the simple and inclusive phrase, “I am widowed.”

If you enjoyed this post, you might also be interested in reading about the amazing legacy of the word dude, what jaywalker actually means, or the surprising history of Hello!

See the previous or next Fun Facts About English

Donald's English Classroom

The complete lineup of full textbooks from Kinney Brothers Publishing are available in color or black and white, ready to download and start using in class today!

Filed Under: Fun Facts About English Tagged With: Donald's English Classroom, esl, ESL Activities, ESL Flashcards, ESL Games, ESL teaching, esl textbooks, fun facts about english, gender, Kinney Brothers Publishing Blog

Back in the U.S.A.

05/18/2020 by admin Leave a Comment

When I moved from Tokyo, Japan, my home for almost 25 years, I went from one of the most densely populated cities in the world to one of the most sparsely populated areas of the United States: Coconino County in northern Arizona. Located in the high desert on the Colorado Plateau, and favored by astronomers for its lawfully protected and shockingly clear night skies, the high desert is an area of rocky soil, flat-topped mesas, and miles of sweet-smelling Ponderosa pines.

From my small danchi apartment, I moved into a 2000-square-foot house sitting on 20 acres of land on an open-range cattle ranch called Howard Mesa. Just getting to the highway from the house required a fifteen-minute drive on a winding and corrugated cinder road. Over time, the cinder dust will kill the electrical system in any vehicle and I was forever dodging wildlife that seemed to think that a moving vehicle is something to run toward. There are prairie dogs, bobcats, wild pigs, vultures, rattle snakes, roadrunners, coyotes, white-tailed deer, a billion jack rabbits, and of course, cows; free-ranging and enormous black bovines that suddenly appear in the pitch-black of night like apparitions with glowing green eyes. God forbid you should hit one of the them. Besides the damage to your vehicle, you can expect a costly reimbursement to the rancher.

Upon exiting Howard Mesa, you turn onto Highway 64; a narrow, well kept, and very busy two-lane state highway. Traveling this country tarmac are two categories of people: locals and tourists. In their dusty four-wheel drives, many of the locals are, by noon, three sheets to the wind. The tourists number in the thousands every day, speeding to and from the internationally-famous Grand Canyon – a mere 50 miles away.

Keep in mind that five million people visit the Grand Canyon every year! International and American travelers alike often fly into Phoenix, rent a vehicle, hop the freeway for a three-hour, steeply-ascending drive, and exit onto Highway 64 for the last 50-mile-leg of the journey. At the north end of the highway is the Canyon’s South Rim, the most popular tourist destination for viewing the 18-mile-wide gorge.

For anyone traveling into the the landscape of the American Southwest for the first time, it is truly, truly awe-inspiring. Though we’re quite familiar with postcard and calendar images of places like Monument Valley, the Petrified Forests, or Meteor Crater, when you actually visit, it’s almost surreal. Spatial relativity starts to disappear and the heat and wind can be intense. Driving into Sedona, near Flagstaff, or through the Native American Reservations, is an eye-opening look at the varied lifestyles of Americans. It can be so challenging to your senses that you’ll be forever changed, or dead if you’re not careful.

When you’re on Highway 64, there are signs warning you about animals like deer and elk. They’re big, gorgeous beasts and hitting one will send you floating into the clouds with a new set of wings and strumming a harp. Once you arrive at the Canyon, more signs warn that people die every year falling off the cliffs, or hiking down into the Canyon unprepared where they expire from dehydration. If you run into trouble on a trail, the only way out is by helicopter or mule. Outside the relatively small tourist area with family-friendly guard rails, the trails are completely unguarded and the only safety barrier is your own common sense. When taking selfies on the edge of a cliff, remember, there are wind blasts that will knock you off like flicking a crumb off your sleeve. The Canyon is so beautiful, so vast, and unbelievably… well, grand, some people can only respond by having a panic attack.

If you’re a foreign tourist, it would be easy to think that everyone else traveling down Highway 64 is an American. You couldn’t be more wrong. The two times I pulled much-derided American SUVs out of snowdrifts, they were Europeans. You know those ridiculously huge and laughable RVs that look like apartments on wheels? They’re probably rentals driven by Canadians or Swedes. I know because I filled lots of their propane tanks. How about the troops of leather-clad motorcycle gangs? They’re surely Americans! Possibly, but they’re just as likely to be German or Polish motorcycle clubs doing an American road trip. In this mix are the daily convoys of Korean and Chinese tour buses traveling north to the South Rim in the morning and rushing back to Flagstaff at night. Today’s Japanese are more likely traveling in family sedans or with friends in a rented Mustang convertible – the most coveted rental car for visitors to the Grand Canyon. At the Canyon, you’ll find multilingual park rangers and over 2,000 publications in Chinese, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, and Korean!

On a northwest curve on that two-lane highway is JJ’s, a small, 6-pump gas station where I worked part-time. A magnet of activity, locals come daily for beer, tobacco, propane, and to jaw. The tourists arrive by the hundreds to refuel and recoup after the hot and forever-uphill drive from Phoenix. They spill out of their cars, vans, and buses to ask the number one question: “Where’s the toilet?”

In front of JJ’s you can chat with Native Americans selling their colorful handmade jewelry. Inside the store, you can pick up postcards, souvenirs, maps in multiple languages, sodas, candy of every stripe, T-shirts, and peruse a large selection of sweat shirts, because few are prepared for how cold it gets in the high desert. If you have a query, you can ask in English or Spanish. My presence as a Japanese speaker was unusual but came in handy many times – and usually to everyone’s surprise. If you’re lucky, you can take a selfie with the Cataract Creek Gang, a friendly band of cowboys hanging out in the parking lot. The dusty rascals regularly stop by JJ’s for snacks before mounting their horses and robbing the Canyon-bound passenger train.

Photo by Charlie Clark/Cronkite News

You know that shopping role play you do in your ESL classes? The task is to go to the counter, pay for snacks and gas, and maybe ask a question. Working at JJ’s was the real deal and I carried out that task with foreign speakers of English all day long. Let me tell you about some of my experiences and observations.

Nervous and tired, foreign travelers often rely on the kindness and patience of the stranger behind the counter. Some, on the other hand, aren’t nervous at all and won’t shut up. Most do their best to just get through the transaction with as little confusion as possible and the hope that their foreign credit card works, which it sometimes doesn’t. Gallons, liters, petrol and gas are the words customers stumble over the most. And, to be sure, I keep in mind that I’m not everybody’s bloody English teacher.

But, let’s begin with traveling Americans. Mostly outraged by the cost of gas in the area, many are as much a foreigner to the southwest as any international traveler. They also cross a wider demographic: young, old, wealthy, and poor. Americans most often travel with families, clubs, and religious groups. Accents range from the flat dialect of the Midwest to fast-talking northern Yankees, or the sweet southern drawls of the Southeast states. Americans are as likely as any foreign traveler to be looking for exotic souvenirs when perusing the Native jewelry sold outside. Many are genuinely surprised (or annoyed) that the person pumping gas next to them is speaking French or German. Their all-American vacation turns out to be more international than they could ever have imagined.

Then, of course, there are the much-berated Mexican immigrants. I quickly began picking up store-related Spanish: banos, hielo, etc. The friendly Mexican cowboys were many. They were swarthy, plaid-shirted young men with pearl snaps, tan galán hats, more rodeo than most urban cowboys, and sexier than all get out. Damn! Sorely aware of their own lack of English, they usually took care of their business all too quickly and were out the door. In one memorable conversation with an older cowboy who spoke with blended Spanish and English, he told me that he never gets wet in the rain because he dances between the drops.

Europeans come to the station counter speaking English most every time. They’re generally polite and comfortable speaking sometimes limited but colloquial English. It always takes a bit to figure out the American system of buying gas as we usually pay by the dollar amount and not volume, with the biggest quandary being how many “gallons” it will take to fill their rental’s tank. Europeans are also the most surprised by the American fountain drinks and have to be reassured that, as illogical as it seems, small or ridiculously extra large, it’s still 99 cents. And if you catch me cleaning the toilets, there’s no need to tip.

Indians? These frequently seen tourists can be fountains of conversation! They are often smiling, inquisitive, and hang around the store the longest. One young man followed me all around the shop up and down five isles as I mopped the store floor – talking the whole time. When a local tribe of goats got loose and tripped down the hill to the station grounds, I could have sold tickets to the comedy that ensued. As I tried to trap them in the women’s outside toilet, a flurry of Indian ladies came flying out the narrow door trying to avoid the confusion of bleating animals. Eventually, the animals’ owner came down and deftly corralled them back up the hill.

Another day, a pack of Polish motorcyclists arrived; TALL, leather-wrapped, and mustachioed men, looking like models for Tom of Finland. Though their English was limited, they kept everyone in the shop thoroughly entertained trying on cowboy hats and playing with the Native American pipes for sale. When one asked where he could get some American marijuana, locals happily chimed in with advice and pulled out their own state-issued medical marijuana cards.

Most often, the Chinese and Koreans, like the Japanese of old, travel in large groups with one in their retinue dealing with any verbal transactions. The rest of the group pile goods on the counter willy-nilly and with no regard to queuing up. A nightmare for a cashier. Other Asian travelers come in assuming that everything is up for barter. With sympathy-invoking sighs and pleas of poverty, they usually exit the store with only a Cup Noodle and leave behind a large pile of T-shirts to be refolded.

One night shortly before closing, the quiet store suddenly filled up with a busload of noisy Chinese tourists who moved quickly among the narrow isles of the just-mopped store. When one young woman spied the store cat sitting on the counter, she pointed at the animal and let out a terrified shriek. Just as suddenly, the store emptied as the entire band of travelers rushed Helter-Skelter out the narrow door and I watched the bus flee into the night. It was a real Twilight Zone experience and is still a mystery to me.

The Japanese? Though predictably polite, they came to my register speaking Japanese almost every time. 満タンまでお願いします!(Fill it up please!) Over time, I learned that it’s easier to just go out and pump the gas for them. One day, a handsome and well-dressed JPop singer traveling with his male companion arrived in an expensive little sports car. He took lots of selfies and his travel companion reminded me several times (in Japanese) that his friend is very famous in Japan. Upon leaving, his 名刺 (business card) was handed to me like a precious keepsake. I Googled him later. ‘Famous’ was a long stretch.

One morning, a red-haired and freckled Russian couple stood at the counter for almost an hour talking about their experience of fleeing the U.S.S.R, finding refuge in the States, and raising their two sons in the rural Midwest. It was their third family trip to the Grand Canyon.

Occasionally, the children of tourists are sent to the counter to conduct their own transactions and to practice their English while a parent stands by watching. High fives and free candy are the reward for their efforts and the teacher in me is flooded with contentment.

Mixed into all this international activity are the locals. Everything you may have heard is true: fiercely independent, go-it-alone homesteaders, and staunch open-carry advocates. There are Mexican immigrants and Native American rodeo riders, artists, outcasts and ne’er-do-wells, all surviving a harsh land with an “all or nothing” attitude.

I have to give credit to the locals as they were extremely patient with the presence of so many foreign travelers and more than happy to give directions or advice. Anyone living in the area understands that tourism is what greases the wheels of the local economy. Many residents are very poor people who work at the camp grounds, restaurants, and motels, cleaning up the detritus left behind by travelers, wiping down the toilet seats, and tolerating the sometimes condescending attitude toward their sad, sad American poverty.

Though I now live with my brother, Mike, in Austin, Texas, the transition I made from the Far East to the American Southwest was stark and memorable… kind of like the first time I arrived in Japan from Iowa so many years ago. After 25 years abroad, I couldn’t have picked a better place to reacquaint myself with America, bring my overseas experience into the fold, or have done so in a more beautiful place as the high desert.

If you visit, and I hope you do, slow down, drive safe, and enjoy the view.

Donald Kinney

Filed Under: Kinney Brothers Publishing Tagged With: Arizona, ESL Activities, ESL Dialogues, ESL Drills, ESL Flash cards, ESL Games, esl textbooks, ESL Worksheets, Grand Canyon, Kinney Brothers Publishing Blog

Fun Facts About English #49 – Portmanteau

03/20/2020 by admin Leave a Comment

In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice that slithy combines the words ‘lithe and slimy’ and mimsy means ‘flimsy and miserable.’ Though Carroll’s fanciful expressions may have lacked linguistic legs, his analogous use of portmanteau, a Middle French term for ‘a large suitcase,’ coined the word as a literary device. In fact, portmanteau is itself a portmanteau that joins porter (to carry) and manteau (cloak)! A synonym and itself a portmanteau, frankenword is an autological word exemplifying the very word it describes.

Portmanteau words are very popular in modern-day English and new combinations can manifest from any social corner. Many older words have become so common that their timely origins are forgotten and their novelty has long since worn off. Here is a short list of common portmanteaux in order of their known appearance.

  • gerrymander – Governor Elbridge Gerry + salamander; early 19th century
  • brunch – breakfast + lunch; late 19th century
  • Eurasia – Europe + Asia; 1881
  • electrocution – electricity + execution; 1889
  • motorcade – motor + cavalcade; early 20th century
  • smog – smoke + fog; early 20th century
  • spork – spoon + fork; 1909
  • hangry – hungry + angry; 1918
  • Chunnel – channel + tunnel; 1920s
  • motel – motor + hotel; 1920s
  • meld – melt + weld; 1930s
  • ginormous – gigantic + enormous; 1948
  • frenemy – friend + enemy; 1950s
  • rockabilly – rock’n’roll + hill-billy; 1950s
  • televangelist – television + evangelist; 1958
  • bionic – biology + electronic; 1960s
  • workaholic – work + alcoholic; 1968
  • internet – inter [reciprocal] + network; 1970s
  • Microsoft – microcomputer + software; 1975
  • gaydar – gay + radar; 1980s
  • carjack – car + hijack; 1990s
  • cosplay – costume + play; 1990s
  • emoticon – emotion + icon; 1990s
  • metrosexual – metropolitan + heterosexual; 1990s
  • adorkable – adorable + dorky; 21st century
  • anticipointment – anticipation + disappointment; 21st century
  • Brangelina – Brad + Angelina; 21st century
  • bromance – brother + romance; 21st century
  • mansplain – man + explain; 21st century
  • advertainment – advertisement + entertainment; 21st century
  • permalance – permanent + freelance; 21st century

If you enjoyed reading this post, check out these posts on fossilized words, the problem with peas, or eponyms named after notorious personalities!

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Donald's English Classroom Kinney Brothers Publishing

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