Confessions of a Former English Instructor

            I ate the whole jicama, and I can’t even pronounce it.

            I love the unaccompanied flute solos of French composer Charles Koechlin, and I do not know how to say his name.

            I’ve always loved Kate Chopin’s short stories, but her characters’ names are beyond me. The same goes for Russian novelists such as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, but for them I have an additional problem:  I cannot keep track of who’s who in Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov.

            I mispronounce English words even though I was a college English instructor.  The time a student corrected me on the pronunciation of hyperbole was embarrassing, to say the least.

            And, if a person’s name is foreign to me—well, I always give it a German twist.  That does not work well for Japanese names, or Spanish names, or any names other than German names, for that matter.

            Writing is safer than speaking, because even if I cannot say a word correctly, I can usually spell it if I’ve seen it.  Even onamatoepia.