For Week 7, I've decided to do the Jamaican Anansi Stories unit. I don't really know why I picked it, I kind of just wanted to see what Jamaican English was like in a story.
Okay, so this might have been a bad idea. The first story I read, Tying Tiger, was pretty hard to read. The basic gist is that Brer Nansi (which is apparently a spider of some sort?) wanted some mangos from the Tiger's tree. The Tiger told him no, so he made up a story about a law being passed that the owners of mango trees must tie themselves to them because of the storm coming up. So he tied the Tiger to the tree and ate his mangoes. Eventually Anansi (Nansi) tries to take advantage of the tiger and gets found out and kicked out.
This might not be the most helpful diary I've ever done for anyone that reads it. Trying to understand Jamaican dialect is pretty hard when you can't hear them say it out loud.
The next story that stuck out was Long-Shirt. Anansi, Tacoomah and Tiger were a band and went to a place where no one had clothes except the head leader. He had a long shirt on. Anansi wanted his shirt, so after they had played everyone to sleep he went and took it. After it was found that the shirt could talk, he traded the shirt with the goat. The goat then ran and ran and buried himself in the dirt. But the head leader found him, and cut off his horn. They threw all the wet slops on him, and he wrung everything out except his beard. That's why goats smell so bad!
These stories are interesting. But they are extremely difficult to comprehend (to me). Trying to get the storytelling section done in a reasonable amount of time will be pretty hard I imagine, just because of how long it took me to understand just these few stories on my first read through!
Okay, so this might have been a bad idea. The first story I read, Tying Tiger, was pretty hard to read. The basic gist is that Brer Nansi (which is apparently a spider of some sort?) wanted some mangos from the Tiger's tree. The Tiger told him no, so he made up a story about a law being passed that the owners of mango trees must tie themselves to them because of the storm coming up. So he tied the Tiger to the tree and ate his mangoes. Eventually Anansi (Nansi) tries to take advantage of the tiger and gets found out and kicked out.
This might not be the most helpful diary I've ever done for anyone that reads it. Trying to understand Jamaican dialect is pretty hard when you can't hear them say it out loud.
The next story that stuck out was Long-Shirt. Anansi, Tacoomah and Tiger were a band and went to a place where no one had clothes except the head leader. He had a long shirt on. Anansi wanted his shirt, so after they had played everyone to sleep he went and took it. After it was found that the shirt could talk, he traded the shirt with the goat. The goat then ran and ran and buried himself in the dirt. But the head leader found him, and cut off his horn. They threw all the wet slops on him, and he wrung everything out except his beard. That's why goats smell so bad!
These stories are interesting. But they are extremely difficult to comprehend (to me). Trying to get the storytelling section done in a reasonable amount of time will be pretty hard I imagine, just because of how long it took me to understand just these few stories on my first read through!
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