Superlatives

If nothing else, we will leave here having taught our students English superlatives for “good”:  great, excellent, fantastic, outstanding, etc.  Because they always try to show off their English to us, our kids will drop “fantastic” or “excellent” to describe seemingly mundane, everyday things.  Recently, a group of kids watched a movie at our house.  When they left, one of the boys told Matt that it was a “fabulous visit.” 

Teaching superlatives, however, has also led to some unforeseen negative consequences.  All of these positive words roughly translate to “mnandi” in Zulu, and this same word is used to describe tasty food.  So Matt taught his 5^th graders early in the school year that “ukudla kumnandi” means “delicious food” in English.  At the time, Matt didn’t realize that mnandi was used not only for food, but also for every positive experience known to man.  Later in the year, Matt gave grade 5 a test and asked them to write a complete sentence about their favorite school subject.  We were thoroughly amused when one of the brightest boys in the class wrote “science is delicious.”  We’re not sure if our explanation of when to use “delicious” completely rectified the mistake, but you win some, you lose some!