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maidi sta bin buldan

I was sitting quietly on the language centre steps this arvo after a noisy afternoon of language classes and my 4-year-old neighbour wandered over and started chatting (all in Kriol of course). After a while she pointed to the hill in the distance behind language centre and said,

"yu gin luk shainiwan ting jeya?" (Can you see the shiny thing there?)
"yuwai, wani tharran?" (Yeah, what's that?)

I reckon it was just an aluminium can reflecting the sunlight, but she says,

"maidi sta bin buldan." (Maybe a star fell down.)

I asked her if she'd seen any stars fall down and she said no, she went to sleep last night and got up early to go to school.

How beautiful is that?

But then, I couldn't help think that when this little girl is at school, her white school teacher will not be able be access this child's observation skills, communication/language skills and imagination because this little girl's classroom is a predominantly English classroom and she doesn't speak English. What a shame.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Aww, what a sweetie :-)
9:28 am
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