Immigrant Brides Collection by Irene B. Brand

Author:Irene B. Brand [Miller, Judith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-62416-421-7
Publisher: Barbour Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2006-09-21T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

Teaching had been a heady combination of joy, fear, study, and lack of sleep for Marin before Talif joined the classroom. Now every day challenged her emotions. She was challenged to keep her attention on the other students and their lessons. She was challenged to keep her gaze from darting to Talif whenever she heard his voice or laugh. The greatest challenge came during the part of each day she spent with the older boys on their specific lessons.

Three weeks after Talif began attending class, Marin approached the older boys with dread. Talif, along with Einer, Jems, and Knute, made up the class. Marin kept her gaze carefully away from Talif as she approached them.

“We’ll be working on English words with especially difficult spellings and sounds today,” she informed them. “We’ll start with words that begin with the letter k, but the k is silent.”

Jems, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, sneered. “Why would a word have a letter that’s silent? That’s stupid.”

“Be that as it may, there are such words.” Jems had been challenging her more lately. He’d started school as excited as the other students to learn, but the last week or so his attitude had changed, and she didn’t know why. “We’ll start with kniv, which is spelled k-n-i-f-e in English.” Marin picked up one of the small board slates, wrote the word, and held the board for the four to see. “It sounds like nif with a long i.”

“So the e is silent like the k?” Talif asked.

“Yes.” She nodded toward Knute. “If you pronounce the word like we do Knute’s name, with a k sound, you’ll be proclaiming your ignorance of the language.”

Knute grinned. “That makes it easy for me to remember.”

“For all of us,” Talif agreed.

Funny how the simple recognition that she’d made learning such a small thing easier for them filled her with pride. “Another word is the English word know, which in Swedish is either veta, to know something, or känna, to know someone.”

“The same word is used for both in English?” Talif questioned again.

“Yes.” She wrote the word on the board below knife.

“It sounds the same as no,” Jems protested, “the opposite of ja. How do we know which form of the word to use?”

“By the way it’s used in a sentence,” Marin explained, trying to keep her patience. Jems should know that rule by now. “Why don’t you try using each version in a sentence for me right now? Say the entire sentence in English, of course.”

“No, I won’t.” Jems grinned. “I don’t know how to say it.”

Knute and Einer laughed, and Marin could see Talif brush his hand over his face to hide a grin. Marin found Jems’s play on words rather amusing, also, but the teacher in her wondered whether the action was inappropriate and disrespectful. Best to let it pass, she decided.

“Very good. Now you, Einer.”

Einer and Knute each copied Jems by coming up with twists on the two words. The boys’ laughs soon drew the other students’ attention.

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