We had a break through moment in our English lessons today. I have been teaching English and computers to my friend and colleague at Bush-Field. A few weeks ago, we decided to axe the computer lessons and workout after work instead. He still gets English, I get a workout. Pretty good exchange I think.
Today, during our workout, he said his legs feel sluggish. Except, I had a bit of a time understanding when he said the word: sluggish. Afterwards, when I dropped him off at the library, I got him to say that word again. It turns out, the reason I was having a hard time understanding him was because he was trying to use the front of his tongue at the back of his mouth to pronounce the sound UG (as in slug).
Ah hah! I got him to say a few words with the guttural G sound: ogre, frog, hug, mug, jug, dug, bug. Not too much luck. He was still trying to use the front of his tongue at the back of his mouth so it made for interesting sounds.
Finally, though–he clamped the front of his tongue between his front teeth and started making the UG sound with his throat. “UG! UG! UG!” Makes for quite a scenario outside the library–but it seemed to work.
OK–now with your tongue between your teeth, say a few “ug” words. How hard is that? It’s easy to say HUG, LUG, BUG. It’s not easy to say SLUG. But he tried it anyway. Then he tried again with a liberated tongue. Still not great pronounciation on the SLUG–but a definite improvement.
I started to get him to say UGGER with letters of the alphabet starting from A. By B–we were peeling with laughter–except he didn’t know what BUGGER meant. I had to explain–mischeiveous urchin. Ah. OK. CUGGER. DUGGER. FUGGER. It was too much. I was in stitches again. He kept going though and made it through the alphabet. The interesting thing is he got to S and said SLUGGER no problem. He still has a bit of a time saying SLUG though.
He’s going to go home and practice speaking his UG words with his tongue between his teeth. Then, he’s going to make nonsense sentences with all the words. Before he left, we came up with HUG A SLUG. So that is our new official slogan for our workouts. HUG A SLUG.