I was trying to teach Year 7 about compound nouns. In French you can't make compound nouns in the same way as it is possible in English. Cheesecake becomes Gâteau au fromage, for example. Other compound nouns are formed with a partitive 'de' like pomme de terre for 'earthapple', or potato.
Me: So for example, you might stick two words together in English to make a new one. Hourglass, for instance. Or steamboat or Hogwarts or laptop. Can anyone think of any other compound nouns in English?
MM: Dickhead?
DJ: Bumhole!
KB: Dumbarse!
Well at least they understood the grammatical principle.
pengadj. attractive, beautiful, 'definitely would'. Used by horny, teenage wannabe-lotharios when talking to their mates about a girl. As heard today: "Check out that sixth former, blud, she's peng!!"
brassadj. [with a short 'a'; rhymes with 'crass' or 'gas'] the opposite of peng, meaning ugly, gross or unattractive. For instance "Sir, the Headteacher is brass" or "Unnergh! stop tryin' to be all smoov and dat! you're brass, blud, you'll never get in der!" or "What's your favourite TV show? Brass Betty?"
Today SR and XP taught their year 8 Enterprise classmates how to count in German as part of a project whose aim was to encourage pupils' presentation skills. On their introductory PowerPoint slide they kindly gave us a brief summary of the language:
"German is spoken in Germany and nearby areas and countries. It is mainly spoken in the back of the throat."
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My year 7 French class were thinking of ways to help them memorise the French numbers 1-20. FC put up his hand:
Me: Can you see a pattern? Have you got the hang of it?
FC: I know how to remember eighteen.
Me: Dix-huit? How?
FC: It sounds like These Wheats.
Me: This Week?
FC: These Wheats.
Me: How will that help you remember that dix-huit means eighteen?
FC: Because it sounds like These Wheats.
It reminded me of that great bit in Series 4 of The Wire:
