Room names  When we moved in to the new GenkiJACS school a year
and a half ago, we gave all the classrooms numbers instead of
names, to make it easier for students to find their way around.
But it always felt a little boring to just refer to them by
their numbers, so last week we added a Hakata-ben phrase to each
room’s name. For those of you who don’t know, Hakata-ben is the
local dialect of Fukuoka. Some of our students get quite good at
speaking it by the time they finish (hi Frank!), so we wanted to
give them a helping hand. The picture above is an example from
Room 3, 「しっとう」(“shittou”), meaning “I know”. In Hakata-ben, the
present progressive verb ending ている (“te iru”, “am -ing”) is
replaced with 「とう」, so for example: 知っている -> しっとう 持っている -> もっとう
食べている -> たべとう 寝ている -> ねとう  To make a question in Hakata-ben, you
add 「と」 to the end of a sentence, instead of the standard 「か」.
So “Do you know?” is 「しっとうと」. The most iconic example is “Have
you taken one?” “Take” is 「取る」 (“toru”), so the Hakata-ben is
「とっとうと？」 (