Sally's Desk

Yesterday the third year and I reached a new dizzy height of linguistic excellence. The following sentence was produced, sans prompting:

'There are two blue rulers on Sally's desk'.

Forget the semantics (no, it doesn't refer to two depressed dictators and believe me, it's much better than 'There are two pink rubbers on Sally's desk') - now pay attention to the major grammatical obstacles hidden to the casual native glance.

'There is' or 'there are'. I myself had no idea that the singular and plural forms of the verb 'to be' could be so impenetrable to so many. In fact, had I known how many times I'd have to repeat the mantra: 'when you have one object: there is, when you have two or more - there are', I would probably be sedated in an asylum rather than reliving the memory through a blog.

'Two' - 'How many rulers are there, Francisca?', 'Count the rulers João', 'One....two.' Let's say it together: 'two'. 'Two rulers' dear, not 'rulers two'. Etc.

'Blue' - 'blue rulers' dear, not 'rulers blue'... The number, the colour, the object: 'two blue rulers'. At this point my tongue is numb at the sides and curling inwards.

'On' - revision of the entire 'on', 'in', 'under' lesson, with props and miming.

Sally, surprisingly, poses no problem, but 'Sally's' is another matter. We have done the possessives already and we get there in the end, but here's the thing: when I say 'Sally's desk' I suspect that some of my little friends see one desk shared by two Sallies. They don't find anything strange in this, and nod just as fervently as the ones who've sussed out by now that we're talking about a desk that belongs to this Sally person.

'Desk' however. Desk, oh desk.

'Dex' - they say happily.
'Desk' - help me, my patient heart, stay with me, sanity!
'Dex'.
'OK, say Dessssss...'
'Desssss......'
'Good, now say Desk'.
'Dex'.
'Once again.... desssss.....k'.
'Desssssss...sex'.

We'll take it from there on Tuesday.