I've been collecting alphabet charts ever since I started traveling. I hang them on the walls of my classroom, wherever that is at the moment, charts from Sweden, Korea, Ukraine, Germany, Spain, France, Taiwan, and now Azerbaijan.
I have an Azerbaijan chart for the Azerbaijan alphabet, then I found an Azerbaijan chart to teach kids the English alphabet. I bought it and put it up in my classroom a couple of months ago without looking at it too closely. The other day, I was idly gazing at it while my students copied their homework assignment. I noticed that a donkey was used to represent the letter "J", which in Azerbaijan sounds like "dzh" (djonkey?) but isn't a very good picture for J, I thought.
"Look at the chart!" I told my students. "Who can find the mistake for the letter J?" They all looked and agreed that donkey starts with D, not J.
Then, to my shock, I saw the picture for the letter N.
Cripes! In the US, I'd be fired for having this on the wall! Before I took it down "to burn it" as I told my friends, I showed it to a couple of them. They said 'Well, it could be "native" or "Nigerian" ' but that probably wouldn't be the automatic response here, where the N-word is casually used.
Also, my friends said the J picture was probably "jackass."
Oh my! I thought 'jackass', but only as an afterthought. That's a bad word! I wonder what your kids thought the N image represented. Have you reviewed your other Alphabet charts for 'faux pas'?
ReplyDeleteI loved your Jane Austin quote, btw.
The local kids probably thought it stood for the n-word. As a matter of fact, one of my students got in trouble last month for using THAT WORD (he probably didn't understand how seriously it's taken). That particular kid happened to be staring very intently at the poster during this whole incident, and I kept trying to distract him. "Azul! what are you reading? Azul! Is your brother home from college yet?"
ReplyDeleteAs soon as the class left the room, I yanked down the poster.