Oops--did I say that!

I remember when the kids were preschoolers we used to sing a song that went.."Oh be careful little mouth what you say. Oh be careful little mouth what you say. For the Father up above is looking down in love. Oh be careful little mouth what you say." This song is especially true when living in a different culture and learning a foreign language. Since Cindy returned to the States for furlough, I have been leading a Bible Study she has on Saturday mornings with 5 girls from the neighborhood. I have really enjoyed it and will be sad to let it go when she comes back. Recently, one of the girls had to bring her brother with her. He was about Will's age and had a great time exploring the yard and playing with Will's Lightsaber. As we were having merianda (which is a Tagalog word for a snack that is the equivalent of British Tea, or Kenyan Chai Time), I asked him a question. I started by calling his name. "Baboy..." Now to understand this you need to know that in the Philippines most people do not go by their given name, they go by nicknames. His name is David, but I didn't call him David. I called his nickname. Elena, the Nelsen's helper, who is there to help cross the language barrier if needed, asked me "What did you call him?" "Uuuhhh, the same thing you've been calling him. Isn't that his nickname?" Well, it's not exactly. His name is Boboy. Baboy is a pig. I was really embarassed and I apologized a lot. He was a good sport and took it in stride. He started oinking around the kitchen. His sister Diane says he gets called that on purpose sometimes and he never minds. I felt really bad though. Allan and I did laugh about it later. Ah the culturally sensitive missionary--that's me!
Blunders aside, our Tagalog has come far in a year, but obviously not quite far enough. Allan is able to get by in the clinic now because he asks the same questions over and over and the responses are similar. We can speak and understand very basic conversation, but often it seems so fast and we sound like 2 year olds. We keep pushing on. We have a new tool to help us. Rosetta Stone is a great computer language program used by the military, peace corps, homeschoolers and others to teach 40 or so languages by immersion. They just recently added Level 1 Tagalog so we have decided to review from the beginning with that. It is good so far.

On another language funny note, Filipinos think our dog has a really strange name. They pronounce WAGs -"Waug". This sounds the same as the contraction for the word Huwag which means "Don't". I actually think it is kind of fitting and we have taken to sometimes saying to him Huwag Waug. When delivery men or others who don't know us, stop by the house, they often ask our helper, Dhel, why our dog is named don't. They also usually think the Nelsen's dog, Bonnie, is named Bunny.