esl thoughts

Esl went well today; I had 4 students, but they were very inquisitive. Even after all of these years teaching ESL, I still get questions that "stump" me. For instance, one of the students said, "me don't espeak ingés very well"..I responded "yes, you do..I understand you perfectly". She gave me a puzzled look and asked me to repeat my answer. I had to think, and then repeated, "yes, you do". She heard, "Yesshudu"......I had to really ponder my response, linguistically, and from a dialect perspective. I've never thought about it, but my assumption is that there is a form of "sure" in that response. Yes we say, Yes You Do, but in reality, if we truly listen to ourselves, we respond...Yesh you do..but run it together. I find the English language a fasinating inigma, and I continually learn this language from my students. Funny how I only speak English, but my understanding of this language is through my non-native English speaking students, ironic..don't you think?
tommiann