Continuing to experiment with Language Restoration, here is a French Lesson. I am inspired by the WAYK language development system, developed by Evan Gardner in North West America.
I taught the signs using English but that creates twice the amount of new things to learn. Other teach the techniques and signs via the language you want to students to acquire (TL), with some asides in the Source Language to help with the TQ (techniques). I missed out a whole load of useful gestures like ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘obviously’, which would help develop the performative aspects.
Corinne said she’d lived in France for a year but didn’t remember much, but vocabulary began to emerge as she played. We ended up having a French chat with the aid of an ornament of a cat (chat). But I was already fixed on the dog in the same ornament and missed it when Corinne showed her delight at seeing a cute little cat. Lesson for me: you have to listen very carefully to your participants.
Was there an influence from Table Top Shakespeare (Forced Entertainment). This is unexpected but on reflection... perhaps because I limited myself to using objects you might find in a local independent café. We analysed the text created picking up on Naoki Matayoshi's Instant Fiction.
Our dialogue emphasises the repetitive stupidity of clown language play, rather than providing the insight of Instant Fiction.
The next stage is to ask Jeanine to host the café language class to see the layers of getting into character.