Multilingual

My sub job today started in a small 6th-grade English class of seven students. They were working on word parts and taking a quiz, and I was one of four educators in the room. I didn't mind at all; it was fun to work one-on-one with some of the kids. Near the end of the block, I sat across from a boy practicing identifying action and state of being verbs. "Can you do it?" I asked him whenever he was stumped. "If yes, it's an action verb."

He did get a little stuck on the verb seem, though. 

"Can you do it?" I asked, and when he nodded, I raised my eyebrows and said, "Show me."

He sat very still for a moment and then tried several facial expressions, finally settling on a smooth, neutral look. "I seem calm," he told me.

"Calm is a feeling," I replied. "It's something you can be, that's why seem is a state of being verb."

He nodded again. "Do you speak other languages?" he asked.

It was a fair question. "Not really," I admitted. "I know some vocabulary in Spanish, and I took French in high school."

"I speak Spanish," he told me, "but I want to learn French."

"It's a fun language to learn," I agreed.

"I really want to know the word vagatay." He pronounced it slowly.

"I don't know that one," I said. "How do you think it's spelled?"

"V-G-T," he paused, searching for phonemes. "Another G?" he suggested, and then sighed. "It's a kind of food," he explained.

I thought for a moment. "Is it bread?" I asked him. "Do you mean baguette?"

"Vagette?" he repeated.

"No, it's a B. Baaaa-guette," I exaggerated. "But I guess B is pronounced like a V in Spanish, right?"

"Yes!" he said. "That's probably why I was confused."

"You're learning in three languages!" I replied. "That's pretty good!"