"That's a u with an umlaut"
April 12, 2017 1:40 PM   Subscribe

(Better late than never) a teacher sets a fiendish spelling test as an April Fool's prank. Beware the silent letters.
posted by billiebee (28 comments total) 21 users marked this as a favorite
 
Deadpan delivery of the punchline is worth sticking around for.
posted by howfar at 2:14 PM on April 12, 2017


Rol-aska-tox. Bringing RuPaul's Drag Race into the classroom.

(It's really cute when the kids who got the words right celebrate.)
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:17 PM on April 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


The RuPaul's Drag Race reference (Rolaskatox, spelled without hyphens in the non-April Fool's world) totally makes it.
posted by snorkmaiden at 2:18 PM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


I realize why it wasn't, but I kind of wish the camera had been on the kids....
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:23 PM on April 12, 2017


Bringing RuPaul's Drag Race into the classroom.

Just wait until the kids start talking about their Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve, Talent, and Synergy (it's a RuPaul thing).
posted by filthy light thief at 2:29 PM on April 12, 2017


Best is the example sentence for speekuzslmn: "Look, there's a speekuzslmn!"
posted by neroli at 2:35 PM on April 12, 2017 [3 favorites]


Wait, so... given his reference to RuPaul's drag race, while he himself may not be gay - he is at least gay-friendly... which begs the question that I now have:

Is the reason Republicans are so resistant to quality education that spelling is part of the gay agenda?
posted by Nanukthedog at 3:04 PM on April 12, 2017 [2 favorites]


As visibly aware and committed to the smallest of gesture and innuendo this young man's professionalism may be, Close Enough to the day of April Fool's is not April Fool's. Unless it's a warm-up and one of many before the big one.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 3:38 PM on April 12, 2017


This reminds me of a digression on a mailing list a few years ago where we came up with most of an anti-phonetic alphabet. We didn't fill in all the letters, and there were a lot of fun alternates for some letters, but here's some of what we came up with:

A as in "aye"
B as in "bdellium"
C as in "cue"
D as in "djinn"
E as in "ex"
F
G as in "gnome"
H as in "hour"
I
J as in "junta"
K as in "know"
L as in "llama"
M as in "mnemonic"
N as in "nguyen"
O as in "ooh"
P as in "phonetic"
Q as in "que?"
R
S as in "sea"
T as in "tsunami"
U
V
W as in "why"
X
Y as in "you"
Z
posted by adamrice at 4:14 PM on April 12, 2017 [15 favorites]


Isn't the Y in you just a normal 'y' sound? Would the y in Egypt be better?
posted by biffa at 4:36 PM on April 12, 2017


Transcribing the words:

blorskee - I lost my blorskee at a carnival.
tangeteen - I eat my spaghetti with a tangeteen.
speekuzslmn - Look, there's a speekuzslmn!
wazamata - So they were sick, I said wazamata with you?
slipert - Be careful when you're sleeping, there might be a slipert in your house.
chchch - The horse was angry, so I said chchch.
rol-aska-tox - Rol-aska-tox was the prize when James took the crown.
speenuch - My favorite food is speenuch and artichoke dip.
shabolaskt - Be careful that you do not catch shabolaskt.
gürrr - My friend told me a secret, I looked at her and said, "Gürrr?"
posted by graymouser at 4:38 PM on April 12, 2017 [8 favorites]


Adamrice I read that and immediately thought of the barenaked ladies kids song Crazy ABCs It's got all the letters (except R)
posted by ShawnString at 4:48 PM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


This reminds me of a digression on a mailing list a few years ago where we came up with most of an anti-phonetic alphabet. We didn't fill in all the letters, and there were a lot of fun alternates for some letters, but here's some of what we came up with:

posted by adamrice at 7:14 PM on April 12 [1 favorite −] Favorite added! [!]


Also sounded familiar: AskMe
posted by Nanukthedog at 5:02 PM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'll be honest: the most rewarding part of teaching is the opportunity to mess with children
posted by DoctorFedora at 7:00 PM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


I was most rewarded by how they messed with me.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 7:17 PM on April 12, 2017


I do like the kids that protested it was not April Fool's Day (but this year, it was on a Saturday, so I definitely agree with the "close enough"). If these are fourth-graders, I imagine some of them caught on that something else was going on, especially with some of the ridiculous silent letters and hyphens. All the work that he put into this and how much he was trying not to break was delightful.

This was pretty funny and charming and a good joke because it wasn't mean-spirited. The teacher was having fun but I never got the sense he was trying to hurt his students.
posted by darksong at 7:43 PM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]


So many great pet names, and he even provides the correct spelling.
posted by morspin at 9:20 PM on April 12, 2017


Thank you graymouser for the transcript.
posted by bendy at 9:26 PM on April 12, 2017


How do I change my Mefi username to... any of these?
posted by alex_skazat at 9:31 PM on April 12, 2017


Not hard to change your üsername to somüthing with an ümlaut
posted by Namlit at 10:45 PM on April 12, 2017


adamrice? Your list needs to include F as in Ffywellyn. At the call center where I worked it was P as in psychology, not P as in phonetic but otherwise your list is pretty well correct. You could also go with W as in Wagner, if you use the proper German pronunciation, as of course you do.
posted by Jane the Brown at 4:23 AM on April 13, 2017


phthisic
posted by Zerowensboring at 4:29 AM on April 13, 2017


Good morning. That's a nice tnetennba.
posted by cichlid ceilidh at 5:15 AM on April 13, 2017


anti-phonetic alphabet
Not quite the same but I once had to learn a phonetic alphabet for <some country> in a language that has a couple of different flavors of distinct phonemes that are not significant to English ears and while it's now totally forgotten what I do remember is that there were at least a few minimal pairs in the list, definitely including two kinds of s and TBH I think even for some common garbles. Like, the people who came up with it had totally missed the point of developing a phonetic alphabet. Even accounting for the sounds being distinct to native speakers, if you're trying to avoid ambiguity in an imperfect communication medium you don't spell in rhyming words that differ only in the single sound that matters.
posted by Hal Mumkin at 5:38 AM on April 13, 2017


My dad always used to insist that you could spell fish "ghoti" -

after all,
gh as in enough
o as in women
and ti as in attention

Which is probably why we make our son nuts when he asks how to spell anything with P. P as in pheromones, P as in in psychology, P as in pneumonia, P as in pterodactyl...
posted by Mchelly at 5:54 AM on April 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


Mchelly—George Bernard Shaw came up with "ghoti".
posted by adamrice at 7:07 AM on April 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


bullwinkle went to Wassamatta U.
posted by judson at 7:55 AM on April 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


Hey!
posted by billiebee at 12:09 PM on April 13, 2017


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