"Do you have more stories?" (Journal Entry)

I spent several hours at the neighbors house today where I’ve tested stories. It was an encouraging trip. Instead of asking about English classes, they asked if I had more stories. I’m not sure that means that they like the stories- but more likely since every time I’ve visited them in the past I had stories- so in some ways, they were expecting them.

We played a version of hopscotch for about an hour- that was tiring, but also a lot of fun. I did also ask them about the “Giant” word in the David and Goliath story, since Irene had a question about it. I found out that it is a word for spirit/ghost, and you wouldn’t really use it to describe a man. However, in testing, people didn’t think Goliath was a ghost or spirit- they thought he was a man. The story, after all says, “he LOOKS LIKE a jhin/ghost.” Not that he was a jhin. And this word has the connotation of being tall- so it fit.

However, I got another word to ask the girls and Irene about- it’s “khabis” – we’ll see what that actually means. The Kahani village people are pretty simple minded (and by that I don’t mean dumb!) and don’t really have words for giant, as such. They would simply say, “a tall man.” Then they might describe it, “So tall that he was taller than everyone else” or “So tall, as tall as a stack of grass.” Or something like that- they don’t have as much vocabulary as we do in English- so they define what they mean by giving additional explanations, or repeating something.

Anyway, it was a good day. In language session, I did learn today that there isn’t really a word for sympathized/comforted. I tried to present the following scenario to Gaitree and Panna.

"If Panna is sick, and Gaitree goes to Panna and says, “It’s okay, don’t worry, you’ll get better, take rest, it’s okay, etc, etc.” And I was later telling a friend, “Panna was sick, Gaitree came and did what to Panna___” - what would you say that Gaitree did. What would you call what she did."

They just continued to say, “Gaitree came and said it’s okay, don’t worry…” Panna came up with a word that means peace, and Gaitree finally agreed we could say that, “Gaitree came and gave peace” but that didn’t really seem to fit. I’m pretty sure they understood my question, but there just didn’t seem to be good word/phrase that summarized the actions.