9
The nature lesson. The mother-tongue lesson
Textbook: Part 1, pp. 44–47
GoalIdentify who is speaking in a poem (the lyrical hero); find and create comparisons.
New words
lyrical hero, the speaker · lirik qahramoncomparison, simile · o‘xshatishmap · xaritamother tongue · ona tili
Explanation
The textbook has two poems from Halima Ahmedova’s series “O‘g‘limga darsliklar” (Textbooks for my son): “Tabiat darsi” (The nature lesson) and “Ona tili darsi” (The mother-tongue lesson), in which a mother tells her son her thoughts about the world and the mother tongue. We do not retell the poems. In every poem someone expresses thoughts: this is the speaker, the lyrical hero. It is not always the poet. A simile compares one thing with another: “Quyosh oltin tangadek porladi” (The sun shone like a gold coin). The endings “-dek” and “-day” help here.
Worked examples
“In front of the map”. In the evening, looking at the big map in our room, I asked my father: “How many languages are there in the world?” Father stroked the map and said each land has its own language. “But the closest to you is the language of the lullaby your mother first sang,” he said. I compared the blue seas of the map to a silk scarf and the mountains to thick eyebrows. From that day I began to value my mother tongue even more.
The speaker in the text is the child. Similes: seas – like a silk scarf; mountains – like thick eyebrows.
Class activity
“I am a comparer”: every child compares an object in the classroom to something else in a sentence using “-dek”.
Practice
1
Whom did the child ask and what?
His or her father, how many languages there are
2
What did the father say about the closest language?
The language of the lullaby the mother first sang
3
What did the child compare the seas to?
A silk scarf
4
Who is the speaker in the text?
The child
5
Make up your own sentence with a simile.
For example: The snow fell like cotton.