ATTENTI GHALL-QANFUD has become Try Our Amus Bush
Published:
February 8, 2015 at 10:28pm
Majtezwel right it lajk det, eh. After all, dej tell us at skul to right blekbort and penti and xorts, allura why not di amus bush?
As somebody commented beneath this picture on a Facebook Timeline: Ghal naqra mhux anus bush.
Bush, qanfud, mhux l-istess hi. Mela pay attention to the bush.
Jahasra.
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Glass of Aperitif.
Plate of lanch or diner. Majtezwel.
It’s also called an amuse bush. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crlvJHXyKyo
This is almost as bad as ‘Horse Dovers’.
Syllables are the neglected emphasis in language teaching.
In other countries mother tongue languages benefit from a complete focus on syllables – with language assistants with this specialisation available – upon entry to Prep 1 /Junior 1.
Just because we have two official languages, this focus should neither be neglected, nor diminished in favour of one language or the other.
In Malta we’re too busy try to skip classes, be comparatively better at anything, be cool about things etc.
The rat race to nowhere, for most people.
I can honestly say that I never learned my two native languages at school. I think Daphne wrote about having the same experience. I just picked them up as I went along, by observing. And my sentences were always well-formed, because I wrote by imitation, and I imitated stuff that was well-written.
Now I’m not saying this in order to gloat. I’m just suggesting that maybe we got our language teaching methods wrong.
The times that I did learn things from my teachers were so rare that I can remember them. One time, I wrote “rythm” without an H, and my English teacher corrected me. I must have looked like I was doubting him, because he went on: “Baxxter, I know it must be RH, because I know Greek. That’s a Greek word and that’s a rho.” And the lesson stuck.
Years later, when I met the Athenian Rhythienne, we would sit on a park bench and I’d point things out to her and she’d tell me the name in Greek. And the rho would roll off her tongue like Herse’s dew off Persephone’s pomegranate. God knows what happened to her. I hope she didn’t die in one of the riots.
My mate Spud swears by the audiosexual language method. I think he may be on to something.
It all makes sense once you know the classics.
God knows why the powers that be (not only in Malta) all think that the classics are dead or obsolete.
The formidable Horatio.
Well I didn’t learn much grammar either and learnt Maltese and English by imitation and reading plenty of different material. Although I remember being taught some Maltese grammar in secondary school.
However I would have loved learning more grammar because I find it fascinating knowing how rules originate and why words and construction of sentences are what they are. I love looking at the whole picture, know that it’s correct and why it’s correct.
I bet everyone knows what ‘amus bush’ is a corruption of!
Jean-Georges Vongerichten would be impressed.
Actually it took me a couple of minutes, because I was pronouncing ‘amus’ in the same way I do ‘anus’.
Some time ago a U.K newspaper tried to show its readers how to pronounce ‘Chateau Neuf du Pape’.
The ‘phonetic’ version read ‘Shut Oh Nerve Do Pup’.
That beats the Square’s version of ‘amuse bouche’, doesn’t it.
This reminds me of the waitress at a wedding who described the item on her tray as ” Angels on horses”.
The menu writer does have a point though. One can Amus oneself with the Bush.
I try and learn something from everyone I meet and tend to be less scientific about the point to point of it, which would indeed have been disappointing, at school, in as far as living languages were concerned. With the exception of English and history.
Linguistics ideals set in at University level, with that speciality.
Our linguistics academics – we do have some fine ones – need to hit the early and middle school classroom textbooks and audiolabs (the rest you mention can come later as a bonus). Perhaps there could be some cross-reference in treatment and application when it comes to what is actually a high polyglott concentration at base? I think we fail to recognise the wasted potential in raw material that happens because we fail to look after the basics.
We are not some back-of-the-woods single school with zero foreign influence where phonemes and syllables can be expected to be uniform without a deserved and overdue focus. However we treat syllables and phonemes as though their pronunciation can be taken for granted, when in fact nothing about grammar and the supporting pedagogy can be taken for granted.
I have observed emphasis on syllables and phonemes in language pedagogy abroad since school and university, and it is my experience that the results are superior to what we are seeing in mainstream education in Malta, with English etc., on a broad scale.
Where there is a child whose application of these at age 6 does not conform to the national standard (not a bastardised version of a failed Academy, but a “hoch Deutsch” equivalent), assistants are called in – free of charge – to accompany each child requiring such assistance, and this within the first trimester.
Age 6 would be the first year of primary school. This ancillary focus is repeated again throughout the whole of the first year of secondary school, but extended to ensure that the required linguistic safety net at that level is in place to cater for the next developmental spurt.
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Like Tinnat, it took me some seconds to get past the “Ay-mus” conditioning to get to the sad hilarity.
Who on earth would take his/her partner to the Pavi shopping complex for Valentine’s dinner?
Some who finds McDonald’s full probably.
(embarrassed) I don’t get it. Isolation distorts perspective, I guess, but what is Amus Bush meant to mean? (Really).
[Daphne – Ah, Tim, you see that’s the downside of taking absolutely no interest in food: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/amuse-bouche ]
What Norman “doorman” Hamilton calls “canapés”, Mr Ripard.
Thanks, Mr Baxxter, but that ain’t much help.
You mean, I should worry about failing to grasp some obscure culinary term once every 55 years? I don’t think so.
I’m an anti-foodie and proud of it. Doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy a good meal out but there is no way on earth I’ll ever watch some celebrity chef, or take the slightest interest in hunting down new ways to cook.
Now this is the future of food:
http://www.soylent.me/
Finally! A fellow anti-foodie!
Here’s to tinned sardines, beans on toast, boiled eggs and porridge. And coffee, of course. Instant.
And here in jolly old Vienna there’s nothing for free in a restaurant – a slice of bread costs a euro – and I’m pretty sure they’ve never heard of no Amus Bush. Never seen a free appetizer anywhere.
Amuse Bouche [a.myz.bush] – A little bite of food to amuse the mouth and invigorate the palate.
Oh I see. So that’s why some people call it a bush.
Decoding Malta: it took me the best of a day to understand what could possibly be an amus bush. Cripes, if they are cooked.
Anus bush, haha!
Oh my, it took me a while to figure what they were trying to say.