What is your name again?

This week, I have spent time in several preschools/child care centres around Whanganui. I have had a wonderful time, and have treasured every moment with the children here. But I have had one big problem: names.

There are four major things that are preventing me from learning and remembering the children’s names.

1)   Child Pronunciation – Often children do not fully pronounce some sounds or replace them with other sounds. Because I spend so much time with time with children, this is not usually much of a problem for me. But it can definitely throw me off sometimes.

2)   Kiwi Accent – As I mentioned before, names are one of the hardest things to figure out in a new accent, because there is no context, and names can be anything. What is fascinating, though, is that the children want me to say it with my accent. For example, a girl told me her name was “Tylah” (which sounds like some Maori names). After several rejected attempts at repeating it back, I got to “Taylah,” but she was still not satisfied. Finally, I realized that she meant “Taylor,” and she was thrilled. But me saying “Taylor,” with the hard American ‘a’ and the heavy ‘r’ at the end sounds NOTHING like the way she says it. So how does she know that that’s how I need to say it?

The ‘r’ (or not) at the end of names has caused me endless problems. In addition to Taylor, I met “Rivah,” which I assumed was “River,” but no, it’s “Riva.” But if it was “River,” they would have said it the same way. Same story with a girl whose name I thought was “Pepper,” but it is actually “Pippa.” It is crazy to me that those are homonyms in Kiwi.

3)   Maori Names – I am so excited to learn Maori, and I want so badly to start out on the right foot and to be culturally sensitive, and it KILLS me to not be able to understand and use Maori names. But they’re so hard. There are names like “Ihia” which sounds like all vowels to me, and most of them have more vowels than I am used to. They have a sort of tongue-clicking sound for ‘r’s sometimes, and I think that’s why it comes across as a ‘d’ to someone who isn’t used to it.  I am trying so hard with them, but it will take time.

4)   Numbers – In the centres I have visited so far, there are 20 or more children in each classroom, with several classrooms per centre. So the sheer number of names to remember is a big overwhelming right at the beginning.

So the overall message is that I ask children to repeat their names for me a LOT. And if they can spell them, that’s extra nice. Fortunately, children love spelling their names to show of that they know how, so I have been capitalizing on that lately. I am determined to keep working on learning and using children’s names as quickly as possible, but it is definitely a struggle.