I had reference to this article from the Cape Argus earlier but didn't get around to looking at it until now. Rather interesting - American high school students of Zulu (a rarity) on a teleconference with students in South Africa before travelling there. It would be interesting to read any follow up articles... DZO
US 'Zulus' stumped by Big Five http://www.capeargus.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=49&fArticleId=3054498 January 5, 2006 The cultural differences popped up right away when the students in Sam Dyson's Zulu language class in Chicago met via video conference with Zulus in South Africa. "Are you looking forward to seeing the Big Five?" asked one of the students from Vukuzakhe High School outside Durban. The question stumped the American students at Walter Payton High School: it referred to the lions, leopards, elephants, buffaloes and rhinos the Chicago students might see when they fly to South Africa for a two-week visit in April. The South African students hope to visit Chicago in September. "It was one of those things that just showed how differ-ent some of their experiences were from ours, even though we have a lot in common," 17-year-old Chicago student Allie Sontag said. "They live near a big city too, but they can show us lions. We can show them the Sears Tower." It's that sort of cultural juxtaposition that, Dyson said, made the Zulu language come to life for his students. His class is a rarity among high school language courses that typically focus on European languages. "I think Zulu has a poetry to it. I love the music of it," Dyson, 32, said. Dyson, who studied Zulu at Yale University, taught science in South Africa in 1996. Antonia Folarin Schleicher, director of the National African Language Resource Centre at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said more schools have begun offering Zulu courses as American travel to South Africa had grown since 1994. Dyson said he wanted his students to learn what life was like in South Africa, in addition to having learnt basic Zulu. About 16 of the Chicago students have raised about $30 000 of the $50 000 needed for the SA trip by selling doughnuts and soliciting donations. - Sapa-AP Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AfricanLanguages/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
