In my first year of teaching English here in Turkey, I made all sorts of amusing mistakes. Here is one. I was teaching suffixes, namely -ish, as in "like". (Okay, I admit, a pretty lame point to be teaching but I thought it was neato at the time and I was very VERY green at that time)

One day, about eight years ago, I was teaching an advanced group and had them doing some conversation exercise, which I eventually wanted to bring to a close. I stood at the front, clapped my hands and waited as the group slowly got the message, except for two young women, who were deep in conversation. I then whistled and one of them looked at me and said, "We are not dogs!" Not being one to miss a vocab opportunity, I said, "No, you are bitches!" Fortunately, they still speak to me when we meet in the street.

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Well, it depends..I remembered the most common and frequent answer, one of our Tutors gave in the Nottingham University ELT Applied Linguistics class. I like to take new teachers into these classes so they cabn see the funny side of the job, and the Viets then go into a conversation role play that goes something like this: I have been teaching ESL in Vietnam for almost 4 years now, and have several interesting stories, but will relate one of the funniest from the class-room environment. Debbie" or a similar sounding word in the Nanjing (200 km away) dialect means 'vulva' as I discovered from a more open-minded Chinese lady teacher. Oops ! Won't make that mistake again......

Indeed, Murphy has led the way with fictionalising queer history for a popular TV audience: having finished its third and final season last week, Pose blew open the drag ball culture scene of New York in the late 80s, and last year's Hollywood was a LGBTQ+-themed fantasy set in 1940s Los Angeles. Elsewhere on the small screen, It’s a Sin's five episodes have had a total of over 18 million views in the UK, while it earned near-universal raves on both sides of the Atlantic. Add to this recent queer-themed period films Carol and Call Me By Your Name, plus the French indie hit 120 Beats Per Minute, a love story set amongst the Aids activist movement of 1980s Paris, and it is clear that there is now a huge scope for telling queer stories in mainstream film and TV. Most recently, the internet exploded with behind-the-scenes photos of Harry Styles from the shoot of new film My Policeman, an adaptation of Bethan Roberts's 2012 novel starring the pop superstar as a closeted gay man in the 1950s. Yesterday, I was teaching an Elementary English class. I was teaching "Don't" and Doesn't". These elements are known as "olumsuz" in Turkish and I was constantly saying the word for "immortal" which is ölümsuz" in Turkish. At the end of the lesson one of the students corrected me and we all had a good laugh at my constant confusing Turkish words. I was teaching in a language mill in downtown Suzhou one day, (2nd month in China - 6.5 years now) and as I passed the reception desk on the way to another class, one of the Course Consultants stopped me. I have been helping a lady from China improve her English reading and writing. We were working on short vowel u words. However, it's fiction that’s very much driving the phenomenon of bringing "lost" stories of gay life from the past to light. Over the last five years, a trio of Irish writers have delivered stunning gay-themed novels set predominantly in periods of history that didn't welcome them – John Boyne (The Heart’s Invisible Furies), Graham Norton (Home Stretch), and Sebastian Barry (the Costa Award-winning Days Without End). In the theatre, Matthew Lopez's exploration of gay male history The Inheritance triumphed in London before transferring to New York, where it opened the year after a well-received revival of Mart Crowley's seminal 1968 play Boys in the Band. Last year, the latter was remade as a film for Netflix by Ryan Murphy.I then tried eating it. The "napkin" was actually a kind of cheesecloth (apparently edible after a fashion) heavily impregnated with corn meal. Kind of chewy, but I got some of it down. Had to keep from feeling too much the "round eyed" fool! I replied haughtily "I too am a 'sage femme', but I at least remember to collect my kids on time" It was only after some explanation and miming that I understood that sagefemme is a midwife. A good example of not doing a literal translation. The other student, trying hard to control his laughter, proceeded to ask again if I worked out, and now, getting a bit annoyed, I again replied that I did not work out. I worked IN. I worked at an "indoor" restaurant, not outdoors. Finally the student explained to me that working out meant exercising. I had only been in the United States approximately three months, so this was a very embarassing experience particularly for someone like me who was always a perfectionist and had minimal tolerance for mistakes when I communicated with others. I looked around inquiringly.'ma'am she said 'for us , you are a Miss and for your husband you are a Mrs'. Oh Dear. Was she right in this?