Re: McGuffey Readers and animals

Carsten wrote:
<<
What gave me headache is that there are
frequently mentioned everyday animals. Since the Ayeri are
supposed to live on another planet, there are of course no
dogs, cats, duck(ling)s and such per se.
 >>

Depends on what your goal is.  If your goal is simply to show
off sentence structure, that it doesn't really matter what animals
are in the pictures.  You can call them all "blings" (or whatever
the equivalent of a nonce word is in Ayeri).

If your goal is to introduce people to the culture or vocabulary,
then just don't use the McGuffey Reader.  One that you came
up with on your own would definitely be more suited to your
language, and would probably be much, much better (I don't
think much of the McGuffey Reader).

What I always did was I use a TY book for a similar language.
So, for example, Kamakawi is a language that's supposed to
be spoken on an island in a clime not at all unlike that of Hawai'i,
so what I've been doing is working through a TY Hawaiian
book (not that series--I have several different ones), and doing
all the exercises in both Hawaiian and Kamakawi.  This way I
both learn Hawaiian and flesh out the vocabulary of Kamakawi.
Plus, I never have to worry about clashes (well, except for
concepts/words/animals that were introduced to Hawaii from
the mainland).

Of course, if your culture is too different, you won't be able to
find a TY book that's similar, but maybe something will be close.

On a different issue...

Teoh wrote:
<<
As for ducks... these are *food* for the san faran. When they see a
duck in a pond, their reaction is not "oh how cute", but "look!
Dinner!" Now, you might think that's rather barbaric, but the san
faran would call us modern, supposedly-cultured people, equally
barbaric, especially for eating cattle and other farm-raised animals.
 >>

<opinion>
What, so cows can't be cute in our culture?  Or chickens?  This is
just like my girlfriend's family, who are all vegetarian.  They like
to make fun of me by saying, "Hey, look, there's a cow.  Doesn't
it make you hungry?"  NO!  I don't look at a cow and think "food",
even though I eat beef, and I don't think I would think that about
an animal I had to hunt, either.
</opinion>

-David
*******************************************************************
"sunly eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."

-Jim Morrison

http://dedalvs.free.fr/

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