There is a sweet little girl I work with regularly whose family has recently come to the US from Myanmar. English has not been a breeze for her but she is working hard and it is coming along. Today her third grade homework was to read a story about a tiger and then continue the story and answer the questions. We had read the whole story but when it came to making up a sentence or two to finish it off, she was stuck.
“How do you say tiger in your language?” I asked. “Kya” she responded. “Well, write that,” I said. In her imperfect print she wrote out “In my language a tiger is called kya.” This started a conversation amongst the other kids on how to say tiger in other languages. All of the sudden I heard tiger in Arabic, Georgian, Russian, and Spanish. I even added in Italian for good measure.
Siberian Tiger – taken by National Geographic
I think this will now be a regular question I ask these little ones. It helps them connect with their home country, teaches the other children and me something new, and keeps them speaking their native tongues.
Want to know some other ways to say tiger? Check out Wiktionary’s list. I’ve included a few for practice.
- Afrikaans: tier
- Amuzgo: kítzia
- Belarusian: тыгр (tyhr)
- Burmese: kya:
- Czech: tygr
- Finnish: tiikeri
- Georgian: ვეფხვი (vep’xvi)
- Hindi: बाघ (bāgh)
- Irish: tíogar
- Japanese: 虎 (torá)
- Rohingya: bag
- Russian: тигр (tigr)
- Swahili: chui-milia
- Zulu: ingwe
