February 22, 2005

  • Dmitry is facing one of the biggest scholastic challenges so far, with a lot riding on it:  a research paper for his history class.  His assigned topic is Springfield, Illinois.  Last night he brought home the notes he'd made regarding it:


     


    What's scary is I can decipher most of it. 


    Told him I'll bet I'm the only person in the world who could figure out what is the word with the arrow pointed to it.  His Pops certainly couldn't. 


    BTW, does Illinois even have a "most famous state food"?  I can't think of any.

Comments (7)

  • I'm amazed that Dmitry can even take notes like this, let alone spell words like "historical" correctly. This kid is a survivor, I'm telling you. And you can tell him I'm impressed with his determination not to give up. That's going to take him a good ways towards getting on top. Just a year and a half ago he was still writing in Cyrillicand didn't know a word of English!! Stupendous!!  Regarding Illinois, look to its crops and to the ethnicity for the state food. Something tells me that like Indiana, it's going to have alot to do with pork, corn and sauerkraut.

  • Probably deep dish pizza. ;)

    Seriously, go to the state website - all of that stuff is usually listed all together. (Being on UC these days, I spend a lot of time noodlin' around PA's website, and it's all connected.)

    Does Dmitry's mystery word have something to do with when the state was "founded"?

    I agree with Eleanor, he's doing great. 5 stars, Dmitry *****. :) Too bad they're not bright yellow Texas stars!

    Tell me, does Dmitry speak Russian accented English with a Texas drawl?

    me<><

  • What's scary is that Dmitry did a better job that my born-and-bred-in-the-USA grandson would probably do.  I think it's excellent.  I'll give him six stars ****** just to outdo Cindy.

  • Durnburn you, Cindy! 

    Yes, that's it....the mystery word is "founded". 

    Can't imagine how you did it.  I had to stare at it for several seconds.  What gets me is how he uses "y".  For him it's an all-purpose vowel, the one he defaults to.  On the first page "PYT" is both "put" ("pyt in folder") and "part" ("if you have a pyt B").  Don't know where the "r" got off to in that last one. 

    I thought it was cool how close he got to a perfect spelling of "bibliography."  Subbing an "f" for the "ph" is darn close.

    He still gets tripped up by "c", and how it can be both soft and hard.  Cyrillic doesn't do that.

  • It makes sense that he learned bibliography nearly right -- that's probably a new word he had to learn entirely from scratch since starting American school. So he just memorized it (almost) when he first learned it, instead of thinking he could spell it phonetically like the words he thinks he "knows."

  • I got the word by looking at the words I could understand, catching his creative use of the Y and then looking at the context. History of the state and WHAT? When it was founded, what else? :)

    Oh, and I printed it out so I could see it more easily. Dadblamed bifocals don't help a lot when I need to see something up close on the monitor!

    me<><

  • Every time I go to Illinois they serve me deer...

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