variations in the Anglosphere

[asakiyume]

The ninja girl has been teaching English in Japanese public schools for ten years now. She's got an American mother (me) and an English father (Wakanomori), and she's lived in both places, though primarily in the United States. It means she's familiar with words and songs and games from both England and the United States... but native English-speaking English teachers in the Japanese schools come from other parts of the Anglosphere as well, and it can make for interesting conversations when they get together, as when a teacher from Jamaica was talking about a playground game called, in Jamaica, "Chinese skip." A teacher from South Africa recognized the game, but said they called it "Chinese elastic."

"I didn't know what they were talking about," said the ninja girl.

"I think I do," I said. "We had a game we used to play with a large loop of elasticized cord. Two people would stand inside the loop, about three or four feet apart so the loop was pulled taut at their ankles, making a little elastic rectangle. Then a third person would stand in between them and do a jumping pattern, landing inside, outside, and on the elastic. We called it 'Chinese jump-rope.'"¹

But neither in her years of school in Massachusetts, nor in her year at a school in Dorset had the ninja girl encountered the game. Maybe it fell out of fashion in the United States and was never a thing in England? Or maybe it's just chance of where she happened to live?

On the other hand, both the Jamaican English teacher and the ninja girl knew the song "I'm a Little Teapot," but the South African English teacher didn't.

All of them--including a Filipino English teacher--knew "The Itsy Bitsy Spider," but they had different hand motions to go with it.

¹ We both acknowledged how all these names are examples of that naming convention where you stick some faraway/other/foreign group-name on a thing to show that it's different from another, common, this-is-how-WE-do-it version of it, or something like it.

Comments

[raven]

Ahh I played that! In the north of England in the early nineties, we just called it "playing elastics".

[athenais]

Wowwwwww I haven't thought of Chinese jumprope in decades and decades! But yes, I remember playing it. It's always fun to find out what games other countries' kids played and what they call it if it's one we know.

[mallorys_camera]

Do kids even jump rope anymore? Admittedly, I don't spend a great deal of time watching pre-teens playing outside, but I don't think I've seen jump ropes in many decades.

[sovay]

"I think I do," I said. "We had a game we used to play with a large loop of elasticized cord. Two people would stand inside the loop, about three or four feet apart so the loop was pulled taut at their ankles, making a little elastic rectangle. Then a third person would stand in between them and do a jumping pattern, landing inside, outside, and on the elastic. We called it 'Chinese jump-rope.'"

I know this game, but I don't think it was called Chinese anything! I saw it in elementary school. It is familiar enough that I may have played it, although if so not often: I know I also read about it. That's so interesting.

[cmcmck]

I don't think I saw it growing up in the south of England.

[osprey_archer]

I don't think I've ever heard of the elastic rope jumping game under any name! Fascinating.

I'd love to know all the different hand motions for "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider." These little variations are so interesting.

[minoanmiss]

I haven't heard of Chinese Skip in DECADES and I only heard of it in Jamaica!

[asakiyume]

CONFRIMATION!!

[asakiyume]

So maybe it's something my generation did and then faded out! Maybe the name didn't help ;-)

[asakiyume]

Huh, so it didn't have a particular name, that you recall?

[asakiyume]

So maybe it just wasn't a thing in England, at least not in the south.

[osprey_archer]

I was familiar with a rhyme that began "Chinese, Japanese..." though, so I'm not sure that our enlightenment or lack thereof contributed to our knowledge of this skipping game!

[asakiyume]

See, you played it, but osprey_archer, who's my kids' age, didn't. And you're more or less my age--and grew up on the other side of the country! So maybe it was something that faded out after our generation.

[gingicat]

Neat!

Apropos of nothing, there's a version of "Itsy Bitsy Spider" that can be sung to the tune of "The Mary Ellen Carter."

[asakiyume]

I wonder! When I was in middle school, we did actual jumping-rope games, too, during recess, including a complicated one where you had two kids swinging the rope and then someone jumped, called another person, and then they chased each other in a figure-eighth pattern across the rope and around the twirlers.

One of the girls next door jumps rope; she's very good! But that's not the same as doing it as a group thing, where you have people twirling and others jumping...

[asakiyume]

Aha! I missed your comment when I answered cmcmck below. And you're more my kids' age than my age, so this means it was present at least in the recent past. So maybe in England it was/is a northern thing.

ETA: Also, I like your non-racialized name for it.

[asakiyume]

No--that's something else (and more racist, LOL).

For this game, there were no words (at least, not the way we played it)--you just jumped particular patterns, and then the variations came in how high the elastic was, whether you spun around while jumping, etc.

[asakiyume]

Oh, and re: hand motions, the way the ninja girl learned them, you connect your thumb of one hand to your forefinger of your other hand, and then alternate them going up for the spider going up, but the way the teacher from Jamaica did it, you made two interlocking loops of your thumb and forefinger of one hand and your thumb and forefinger of the other hand and then took them apart and put them back together again, twisting your hands, to show the spider going up.

[asakiyume]

Hahaha, that's great! I love that kind of thing, like singing "Amazing Grace" to the tune of "House of the Rising Sun"

[sartorias]

Oh, yes, Chinese jump rope! It had gone totally out of fashion when I was a teacher, but we used to play it as kids.

[raven]

I've found that with other things - clapping games, nursery rhymes, that sort of thing, being in the north of England definitely does make a difference.

On another note entirely, I don't think I knew you were American! What an odd thing not to know. 😂

[wychwood]

We played it in the English Midlands in the late 80s, early 90s, though I don't remember what it was called, if anything!

[asakiyume]

LOL, well that pleases me--not that I try to hide who I am, but.

I remember the first time I lived in Japan, in an international house with people from all over, I eventually became friends with a girl from Italy and another from France (well, New Caledonia, actually), and they said, "We never guessed you were American: you always walked so close to the wall of the corridor, like you didn't want to take up any space... definitely not American."

[asakiyume]

Yeah, that's the sense I'm getting! (Though sovay, who's between my kids and me in age, did know it, so maybe she's a boundary case.)

[asakiyume]

Aha! Another vital data point! raven, above, played it in the north of England, maybe a little later than you did. They apparently called it "elastics" up there.