You don't have to be a weatherman ...

Facing two oral English classes tomorrow. For the lower functioning class I have a series of lesson plans thanks to another teacher. Last class the major exercise was having them introduce themselves by explaining their names. Unlike English names, there is usually a story behind Chinese names. Here is the example from the class notes, where a Chinese student is asked how he got his name, Wang Xiaoyu: "Well Wang is my family name. My given name means "laughter and rain." My father chose it for me because when I was born, my father was very happy and it was raining hard at the time." Another difference is that Chinese introduce by their last name first, the exact opposite, of course, of the American way of introducing themselves. That is, if I were to introduce in the Chinese manner, I would introduce myself as "Vernezze Peter." This is often explained by declaring that for the Chinese it is the group or family that is more important and for America it is the individual that is more important. This week they are supposed to work on starting up a conversation with a stranger with such phrases as "Nice weather, isn't it?" though it seems to me if you are going to start a conversation it should be with the phrase, "What about this weather?" That just seems more natural. That is, I don't think you want to come off sounding too optimistic when reporting on things. People might look at you strange. It's like when we were doing a section on just basic greetings, the "hey, how ya doin?" I discouraged people from saying things like "Great!" because I don't think people generally say things like that, and if they do we look at them kind of strangely. It's not that they are negative. Instead, I think it goes back to ancient superstitions of not wanting to draw the notice of the gods by declaring how wonderful things are.

And while we are on the subject of the weather, I think I will point out to them that it seems to me you can at least try to strike up a conversation with anyone in America by saying "What about this weather?" in a way you could not with any other phrase or statement. If you turned to a stranger on a bus or that you were standing next to in line and said hello, they would probably look at you oddly, but the "how about this weather?" comment seems pretty inncuous and while it might not always get a reply it probably has as good a chance as any line.