Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Random Memories

I don't know what prompted it, but on my way to work this morning I kept thinking about one of my high school teachers. He was a bit of an odd-ball, but then I think most high school teachers have to be if they're going to survive :)

What made him odd, other than the bizarre stories he told (my favourite involved cheap luggage and a run-in with the Russian mafia), was the fact that he created his own language, and expected his students to learn it. All of his notes and assignments were written in his language, so you learned it or you flunked. And you know what? I still remember it, or rather it's basic principles. I don't remember anything else I learned in his class, but the language I do. Here's an example of a typical assignment question:

Lean 4 misterhamburgers butler farewell Enron motel the 1990's.

Any guesses as to what that says in regular English?

2 comments:

Annie said...

That's wild! I can see how it would make for an interesting class though I'm not too sure if the teaching technique is all that helpful to the students!

Anonymous said...

Now that I know what I do about who they let into teacher's college ;), it's perhaps not surprising that you had a teacher that made you learn a made-up language. But what a wonky teacher! Think you learned any skills from the exercise?

(And I tried to make up a witty guess as to what the question was, but I got nothing.)