When my daughter started school in Germany, I wondered how long it would be before she learnt something in her English lessons, that I did not agree with. A piece of grammar maybe, or a translation.
Regular readers of this site may recall that she is being taught “school English”, which was defined as spelling “colour” with a “u”. Whilst not exactly the words “British English” that I would like it to be defined as, I am at least happy that I do not yet have to explain that other countries leave that “u” out and in some cases even use other words for the same things.
It was whilst I was helping her revise for a vocabulary test a few days ago, that I suspected the time may already have come, and further inspection of her vocabulary book confirmed my suspicion. In some cases, I found the translations to be unusual, but in some to be down right wrong.
And since there were some entries from her teacher in the book, I am assuming that she has seen the offending words and that this is not just a mistake that took place copying them from the blackboard. [Read more…]