Monday, 20 December 2010

Memory game for a dull holiday moment

Ajective order, clothes, and stuff

Most people who study adjective order rules go metaglap mentally and make mistakes they never did before! Better to remember examples so that things "sound"right!


Here's two very famous songs , early ROCKandROLL "classics"with lots of adjectives before the noun!




First 
Lyrics:
part of the joke of the song is the ambiguity: is it an eater of purple  people or a people-eater that happens to be purple itself? or both? my fisking in red, alternative lyrics shown in blue with a forward slash mark  /
Well I saw the thing comin' out of the sky
It had the one long horn, one big eye
I commenced  a-shakin' and I said "ooh-eee"
It looks like a purple people eater to me

It was a one-eyed, one-horned, flyin' purple people eater
(One-eyed, one-horned, flyin' purple people eater)
A one-eyed, one-horned, flyin' purple people eater
Sure looks strange to me (One eye?)

Well he came down to earth and he 'lit ( one meaning of to alight is to land, get off , getout, get down (from a vehicle) , here  shortened to to light)in a tree
I said Mr. Purple People Eater, don't eat me
I heard him say in a voice so gruff(another joke: the voice is anything but gruff)
I wouldn't eat you 'cause  you're so tough

It was a one-eyed, one-horned, flyin' purple people eater
One-eyed, one-horned flyin' purple people eater
One-eyed, one-horned, flyin' purple people eater
Sure looks strange to me (One horn?)

I said Mr. Purple People Eater, what's your line(slang=what's your line of business,what do you do)
He said it's eatin' purple people and it sure is fine
But that's not the reason that I came to land
I want to get a job in a rock and roll band

Well bless my soul (idiom), rock and roll, flyin' purple people eater
Pigeon-toed, undergrowed/underclothed , flyin' purple people eater
(We wear short shorts!)(usa catch-phrase from the late fifties to the seventies, why, I  don't know)
Friendly little people eater
What a sight to see

And then he swung from the tree and he 'lit (again =alit) on the ground
He started to rock, really rockin' around
It was a crazy ditty(=Ditty = short song, catchy tune) with a swingin' tune
Sing a boop boop aboopa lopa lum bam boom(Meaningless rockand roll rythm words)

Well bless my soul, rock and roll, flyin' purple people eater
Pigeon-toed, 
undergrowed/underclothed, flyin' purple people eater
(I like short shorts!)
Flyin' little people eater
Sure looks strange to me (Purple People?)

And then he went on his way, and then what do you know
I saw him last night on a TV/starout  show
He was blowing it out, a'really knockin' em dead( slang=exiting them, impressing them)
Playin' rock and roll music through the horn in(normally we'd say "on", "in " makes him even stranger)his head



Video with"subtitles)



· more videos of the same, for you to enjoy







Finally to finish learning it, unless you don't want to, here's the karaoke version:










Now another:The itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny yellow polka-dot bikini( click for dicionary)
Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka dot
Bikini Lyrics
:
(Bop, bop, bop, bop, badop, bop, bop-bop-bop)

She was afraid to come out of the locker(=the locker-room=changing-room) 
She was as nervous as she could be.
She was afraid to come out of the locker.
She was afraid that somebody would see.
(Two, three, four, tell the people,)
(What she wore.)

It was an itsy, bitsy, teenie, weenie,
Yellow, polka dot bikini,
That she wore for the first time today.
An itsy, bitsy, teenie, weenie,
Yellow, polka dot bikini,
So, in the locker she wanted to stay.
(Two, three, four, stick around,(stick around, slang= stay around, stay around here, don't go away))
(We'll tell you more.)

(Bop, bop, bop, bop, badop, bop, bop-bop-bop)

She was afraid to come out in the open,
(Ba-da-dop)
And so a blanket around her she wore.
(Ba-da-dop)
She was afraid to come out in the open,
(Ba-da-dop)
And so she sat bundled up(to be bundled up =in a bundle) on the shore.
(Two, three, four, tell the people,)
(What she wore.)

It was an itsy, bitsy, teenie, weenie,
Yellow, polka dot bikini,
That she wore for the first time today.

An itsy, bitsy, teenie, weenie,
Yellow, polka dot bikini,
So, in the blanket she wanted to stay.
(Two, three, four,)
(Stick around we'll tell you more.)

(Bop, bop, bop, bop, badop, bop, bop-bop-bop)

Now she's afraid to come out of the water.
(Ba-da-dop)
And I wonder what she's gonna do?
(Ba-da-dop)
Now she's afraid to come out of the water,
(Ba-da-dop)
And the poor little girl's turning blue.
(Two, three, four,)
(Tell the people what she wore.)

It was an itsy, bitsy, teenie, weenie,
Yellow, polka dot bikini,
That she wore for the first time today.
An itsy, bitsy, teenie, weenie,
Yellow, polka dot bikini,
So in the water she wanted to stay.

From the locker to the blanket.
From the blanket to the shore.
From the shore to the water.
Guess there isn't any more. 


Sunday, 28 November 2010

foodmetaphors, with glorious food from N1 added


Some of you brought me this list:
a an Apple polisher (someone who attempts to garner favor with someone of higher rank or status,they butter them up)
a Bad apple (just what it says, a rotten item in a group, eg the one corrupt policeman in t he gang. sayings : one rotten apple will spoil the whole barrel., or, contradictory, the bad apple at the bottom of the barrel: all the others are OK)
Baker’s dozen (thirteen of something)
a Bean counter (a name given to accountants or others fixated on fine detail)
Beef: What’s your beef? (What’s your problem?)
beefy- strong, muscular;  solid nourishing food/ideas/etc 
Broth: too many cooks spoil the broth:
the broth of a boy- every bit a boy, a real boy,full of manly characteristics, courage, daring, recklessness...
To Butter up (see “apple polisher”)
a Butterball (a person or animal on the chubby side. Often affectionate.)
a cabbage/ a vegetable  a person in a long, deep(irreversible?)coma,  a braindamaged, braindead person, in a vegetative state(formal)
Cakewalk (an easy task?) to be a piece of cake,= to be easy as pie ( cakewalk : new orleans in origin: a  slaves'dance bulesquing  their master pretend aristocratic  manners.
A big cheese , exactly = un pez gordo
Cheesecake, a hunk of , tio macizo.Often used by wives for their husbands and shortened to hunks, like hon for honey.Pre WWII, a hunk of cheese was a miserable, despicable person.
cherry= virginity, from the red stainTo lose one's cherry, etc.tabu, but frequently used  more  semiformally as a euphemism in metaphor : eg  the regiment lost its cherry  in 1914 (here= saw its first fighting). 
the cherry on a cake etc= the final detail, the luxury detail.

Chicken feed (small amount of something, like money) Teaching is chicken feed compared to banking.
a chicken stealer, the lowest level of petty criminal.
Chopped liver (something insignificant)
Cockles- to warm the cockles of one's heart
 Corn - the most obvious and basic,( especially in leterature, entertainment, tv shows etc. hence the adj: Corny eg A corny joke , an old unsophisticated unsubtle. joke 
Crude
a crumpet tabu .
an egg: a good egg =a decent sort, a worthy person (The spanish metaphor with eggs is a nonstarter in English. For the equivalent, see nuts)
 a hardboiled egg =a hardboiled person, often a near-criminal.
 an Egghead (what some people call intellectuals)
a curate's egg. "Good in parts" as polite, faintpraise way of saying something is  hardly good at all, bad, rotten illconcieved, inappropriate, etc 
a   faggot Uk== meatball, USA USA faggot is tabu, fag usa = homosexual,(fag uk = cigarette, or boy servant at traditional schools) Usa faggot = raving homosexual, as an insult.Faggot UK also = carryable bundle of firewood, and old slang UK = a very used and retired prostitute or insultingly, woman who looks old and wrinkled that way. 
Fishy (something suspicious, not right)
To Go bananas (crazy)
a Goose (silly person)
Goulash (a mess)
gravy. the perks and privelidges of the rich and /or influential and powerful
the gravy train: expense accounts, state planes, official cars and residences etc for top administartors and politicians, all at public expense.
to have one's chips: to finish , to be finished with, to die. (in fact, from gambling: to cash one's chips.)
To have one's cake And eat it, one can't,  exactly translates the spanish nadar y guuardar la ropa.
halfbaked, underdone, like  politiciams' halfbaked ideas.
(+or- as)Happy as a clam (content person)
hard boiled- blase, seen everything ,unemotional,unfeeling, unaffected by calamities etc.
jam : extra benefits . jammy, lucky, undeservedly lucky.
Mutton dressed up as lamb: rich old women, mostly.
Nuts,slang affectionate, only semitabu: testicles.
 peanuts, a boy's, or small,  testicles, small boys in general . 
a wingnut is a nutjob or nutty or nuts, = crazy, probably by analogy with squirrel behaviour.
Peanuts, Monkeynuts (small amount of something)Same as chicken feed. Teachers' pay.
Nutty as a fruitcake (crazy person)
 a tough nut          Noun. A difficult or obstinate person
an Odd duck (eccentric person)  lame duck adj : politicians still  temporarily in office but defeated at election.
To play gooseberry : to be the extra young person preserving sexual propriety.
Pea soup (often used to describe the fog of London)
Peanuts (small amount of something)Same as chicken feed
a couch potato, see below
Pork, or pork barrel : unneccessary public money spent on projects and schemes to bribe one sector of voters, minority parties in coalitions, and similar.
Raw  a raw recruit etc 
Scouse- liverpudlian dish ,liverpudlian speech   liverpudlian
To Skewer (to spear someone with harsh words)
a Tart. apple/jam tart= sweetheart, possibly any (lowclass ?)city girl, even a prostitute.adj tarty = cheaply decorated., to tart up , decorate or present in a fancy way, redecorate.
a tough cookie     Noun. A strong unyielding person.tough guy    Noun. A particularly hard and unyielding male, scared of little and acting so.
sixpack 1. Joe sixpack used to mean a couch potato watching TV with his six-can pack of beer. " Now refers to very visible strong abdominal muscles, almost the exact opposite!
.
a Turkey (someone who just doesn’t measure up, loser) to be cold turkey = addiction withdrawal symptoms. Our turkey/goose is cooked. we've lost. we're turkey, etc
To Waffle (what politicians often do on important issues)Only  by coincidence with the food, it's by analogy with rodents waffling and snuffling meaningless continual noises and face movements.

Click here for more
and here
and here, for exercises

related topic:
caddie clipart picture

glass bottle clipart pictureA Few points:
Advice:
BEWARE: Food vocabulary is one of those endless specialized black holes that you can spend a lifetime learning! (And thank God we don't have the 3rdworld problem of starving, or only a little better,being undernourished, or ill-fed , and illnourished  at best.
Westerners are overfed)


And there are many, many, other things you need to learn, or to perfect!

So, my advice is
KNOW WHEN TO STOP!
AND
Learn to talk ABOUT food.
Probably more important than just
Vocabulary!
A few tips:
use category words, Eg for cooking methods:
Boiled,(+0r- hard- or soft-) Baked, Roast, SpitRoast, animated_gif_food_117.gif
Fried, DeepFried, StirFried, Stewed, Broiled, Grilled, Barbecued, Animated Food
Toasted, Steamed, Stuffed,Poached....
DON'T expect to be able to give an EXACT equivalent, very often an exact equivalent DOES NOT EXIST!
It's usually better to DESCRIBE a dish than to try to translate the SPANISH NAME.
(example from English: Do you know what "Toad in the hole"(click 4 link) is ?
Let's translate the NAME of the dish: "SAPO EN EL HOYO"* Does this communicate ANYTHING?
Would YOU ask for that to eat!
No?
Well, the same thing happens if you talk about a "Cubanish ricish dish" or " Daymeal of the sleeve" (Genuine menu examples) for "Arroz a la cubana " or "menestra manchega":
English-Speakers will be lost!  

salt & pepper areSEASONINGS
Anyway, just as in Spanish, just as in Spain, the same DISH may be called differently even from one family to another , let alone one region to another, or over the Atlantic!
Some Spanish dishes are known by the Spanish name, eg Paella
(Historical note: olla podrida= cocido madrileno, but it isn't used in English anymore except as a literary figure. If you say it to the average English person they'll think you're talking about  something else)
Don't confuse, plate, dish, fabada is the national dish of asturias, and course, a six-course meal is typical at weddings
Alright, if you MUST know, "Turron" is "almond and honey -based sweetmeats typical at Christmas and somewhat akin to nougat".Now you know.It's beginning to be sold in England as Turron.




(






TALKING about a (healthy/unhealthy etc)  DIET remember,  to go/be on a diet = to diet
Category words: Proteins, carbohydrates, Fats and oils, fibre, meat, fish, seafood, shellfish(included in seafood) , Fruit, nuts, eggs , dairy produce/products , veg.(=vegetables)pulses (included in veg.), pastas, bread, cakes &pastries, sweets (candies in USA)  & biscuits (cookies in usa) 
adj.s: whole , junk, fast, traditional, tinned, frozen, dried, preserved, fresh, oily, fatty, fattening, (fatty =contains fat, fattening=make you fat pastas are fattening, bacon is very fatty), Rich (=fuerte), hot (usually=spicey=picante), nourishing, wholesome , burned/burnt, overdone, underdone, raw (crude is unusual for food, but it's in "oliver" for the rhyme)
Pronunciation Dairy rhymes with scary, fairy, , don't confuse with Diary which rhymes with fire +y, 
  How often ..do you have ...?, how much...?   once a week etc 
   
This gif is just because I liked it,
it came up looking for
greens= veg and
 greens= environmentalists

( Pronunciation :  omit syllables: chocolate vegetable, camera,omelette different)

Free Animations
frutos secos= fruit and nuts: Fruit and nut chocolate

Pr :soup versus soap Soup rhymes with too, clue. true, soAp with hope, no, coat. THIS mistake causes much confusion."supper" rhymes with upper, mother, brother, lover, etc.
recipe: final "e" sounds /i:/. Doctors PRESCRIBE medicines. they give you a Prescription.
False Friends.
Preserved  foods, sometimes callled preserves are often preserved with PRESERVATIVES.(English cooks living in Spain nearly always cause amusement asking for these in shops)
You CONSERVE nature.There are special parks called "conservation Areas". Greens are usually conservationists. Conservationism.
Pickles are PICKLED food, preserved with vinegar.

Now look at the screen and ice age versions


British:
LINK :How To Make Toad In The Hole

Link to a long article on English breakfast

personality: illustrations of sheer, jam

sheer ;
0. sheer basic physical meaning:purely, overwhelmingly, all-that -the-eye-can-see vertical : 
From this derive the senses of (1)pure, unmixed, alone and complete-in-itself ,unalloyed, quintaessential: sheer cheek (la mas pura jeta, solo jeta sin mas), sheer luck, from sheer force of character
-2: for materials (=textiles) seamless, uninterrupted, nothing-but=smoothest,
-since this is  obtained by quality, =finest
from there, in hosiery and underwear ,2 has come to also mean thinnest and most transparent. You do NOT want to see the illustrations of sheer underwear on internet : visually SHEER underwear leaves EVERYTHING in view.






sheer cliffs



Here, the water falls sheer. It falls in a sheer drop


Just about gossamer visibilty :the
less there is , the more it costs.
  
 :  sheer cheek , in T shirts


by sheer force of personality


-TO SEW, NEEDLE AND THREAD, A STITCH, TO STITCH, TO STITCH UP, TO STITCH ON A BUTTON ETC.
EXAMPLE 


DAVE CONE'S MOTHERINLAW'S DOG BIT HIM, he had to have several stiches . They had to stitch him up. frankenstein is the most stitched up fictional character ever.


TO JAM = TO BE OR MAKE UNMOVING
A TRAFFIC JAM . 
THE TYPE OF FRUIT PRESERVES KNOWN AS JAMS.SPANISH ONES ARE RUNNY- A BIT THIN AND LIQUID.  ENGLISH ONES ARE STIFFER, LESS FLOWING MORE LIKE JELLY, UN MOVING 
-HIS NECK JAMMED. HE COULDN'T MOVE IT.
-THE DEFENDERS JAMMED ALL THE DOORS TO KEEP OUT THEIR BESIEGERS.

If you heard this, would you get it?

-Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote
adjective : quixotic /kwIksotIk/
-Guerillas fight guerilla wars


-let's vamoose from the hoosegow

Monday, 22 November 2010

22 nov : a few health problems(under construction)

a collar is still the name for putting on people with suspected neck injuries before putting them on stretchers.
-To sting stang stung: the translation is "picar" but it only refers to toxic animals or plants with special stings : I was stung by a wasp, bee, jellyfish, (medusa) nettle (ortiga) 
Otherwise, things BITE
cf snakes: poisonous ones have special hollow fangs.
-a stomach pump
-a Surgerycontable = false friend = la consulta de un medico, a place
(Surgery incontable =cirurgia)
-Put up with = stand= bear = aguantar, soportar
Usually with can/could:
I can't stand that doctor.I can't bear that doctor . I can't put up with that doctor. OR : when I was little I couldn't bear/stand/put up with injections.


-connected:TO SEW, NEEDLE AND THREAD, A STITCH, TO STITCH, TO STITCH UP, TO STITCH ON A BUTTON ETC.
EXAMPLE 

DAVE CONE'S MOTHERINLAW'S DOG BIT HIM, he had to have several stiches . They had to stitch him up. Frankenstein is the most stitched up fictional character ever.


Tuesday, 16 November 2010

points from spot the difference!15nov.Beards and bears


When a man hasn't shaved , you can describe this two ways
1. bristles, contable,(literlamente=cerdas, a pig's stiff hairs)He's got bristles(on his face, chin, cheeks, his face is bristly)
2. stubble, incontable, literal mente rastrojos, he's got stubble on etc, his face is stubbly


"Five o'clock shadow", or perhaps just shadow, is the beginnings of stubble, typically by the end of working day
(5hence

Song:
(  
Silver in the Stubble: the first gray hairs, so a sign that you are past your youth. If you are an old plebian , you are gray, and have gray or white hair. In the case of royalty, yourself in your own esteem, or customers, etc, it's not gray but silver.
(Sydney Carter)

(ACBG) Am G Am / Am G Am / Am G Am G Am G / Am G Am
Lyric variations in brackets(), fisking in red
Early in the Morning,
(I)Hear the razor('s) roar,
There's silver in the stubble
And it wasn't there before.


CHORUS:
For(for  Oh!)the leaves are getting  *greener,

And(and  the)spring is on the way;
(And)Girls are getting * prettier
And younger every day.


Silver in the stubble;
Winter in the wood.
**Fare you well,( =definite Goodbye for ever, usually just farewell or the archaic fare thee well)you wicked world,
I'm going to be good.
CH


**Time to think of Heaven;
Time to think of Hell.
(it's)Time to go to church on Sunday,
Hark,(Archaic=listen) I hear the bell.
CH


But if any girl is willing,(is willing, will have me)
She only has to say;
I'll hang my halo on a shelf(shelf hook)
Until another(another my dying) day.(Idiom: s.b.'s dying day,=  the day a person will, does in fact,  or should, die ) 
CH
*Just as with get old, get older = grow old, grow older, many people sing"growing" here.
For some reason , these compound verbs are something Spaniards generally dislike and avoid.

**Standard catholic theology, you should starting thinking of the four last things: death, judgement, heaven, or hell. And of course , repent, confess, and amend your ways!

----------------------------------------------------------------
As written by Sydney Carter in 1964, but popularly sung by many in pubs and clubs.
Copyright Sydney Carter

The newspaper article above:FACTORY BOYS BRISTLE OVER STUBBLE BAN,
wheatstraw & stubble after harvesting
From the Sun, October 4, 1986.
Workers were bristling (  look up "to bristle" , it comes from many animals' habit of reacting aggresively to intrusion, threat, or disturbance by  making their hair go vertical)yesterday over their bosses' ban... on trendy stubble beards.(aka "designer stubble".cf Miguel Bose, etc.)

The firm's younger fellas (horrible sixties female slang fella = fellow) - who copy Wham! star George Michael's hairy style - have had to take the decision on the chin.( dreadful pun : to take something on the chin = accept a problem, face up to a blow, not run away, or sometimes that an attack has hit its target 100%)

Some have been handed razors or sent home when they arrived at the Goodson lampshade factory in Hixon, Stafford.

Management claim five-o-clock shadows give a bad impression to visitors from customers like Marks and Spencer.

Managing director Phillip Goodson said yesterday: "We have high standards. It's disrespectful."

Some of the lads called in( remember this phrasal verb = to consult/ask for the intervention of) their factory inspector to see if the razor ruling was legal.

But they were told management was entitled to expect workers to look smart.

One employee, who did not want to be named, complained: "You can still look smart with a bit of shadow. It's trendy."


Bristly caterpillar


to lie/aI/ lay /leI/, lain/eI/ lying/aII/
to lay /eI/ laid laid laying


rug


Homophones and puns.
Check up the pronunciation to understand these English chestnuts: (=very old jokes)
bear    vs       beer  = bare vs  bier   
Mary had a little lamb, she also had a bear. Ive often seen her little lamb, I've never seen her---- other pet.
Epitaph:
Her lies father dear
for fifty years he had his beer
until his bier had him
























m

Monday, 25 October 2010

points from 25th Oct 2010

 in at a wedding, physically, that is: I was at my sister's wedding, and... 
Of course otherwise you can say "in:" In  their wedding, bride and groom make a promise before God and Man...
chance 1= possibility, opportunity, (example.:Michael Douglas Has Throat Tumor: What are His Chances?, activity:Google his chances  and look at the headline results.)2 as in" by chance", random, unpredictable, (aleatorio)
From the king and I : the song "young lovers"BOTH meaningsMinute 2.25

"When you fly down the street/on the chance that you'll meet/and you meet - is it really by chance?" "On the chance that" , in the possibility that; very nearly = in the hope that
In context,  a person's  chances may be romantic " I've had my chances" = I could have been married
or even directly sexual: "Francis, coming home from school
swung the baby by the t****
Naughty, naughty, little Francis!
Spoiling all poor baby's chances!" ( A parody  of "Ruthless rhymes for heartless children")
pass through a town, a situation. More  normally "go" +through a situation : you can go through hell in a bad neighbourhood"
undergo suffering, go through suffering .
When you pass something/somewhere travelling, this is usually only going by it, hence a "by-pass" road.You can make this explicit saying pass by, instead of just pass --> a"passerby" transeunte, or someon who is just on the scene "by chance"
to do make an excuse 














c

Wednesday, 26 May 2010

revising prepositions?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUNYx8LxkL0&feature=related
  and
realy lower level than na, but just in case:






m



Thursday, 20 May 2010

language fun in between revising.

A teaser:

Richard Smith, a 41-year-old care worker in Carlisle, England, did not think his name did justice to the exciting person that he actually was, so he changed his name by deed poll. The new name he chose was Stormhammer Deathclaw Firebrand.

 Vocab notes
 a "teaser" is like a "trailer" for a film ,  a small taste to get you to want more. The blurb on the back of a book is a little different, it may entice you with the plot but it may not all be direct quotation. 
amongst other meanings deed/deeds are legal documents, such as the escritura for a property.
A deed poll is the particular means to officially change your name for all legal purposes, as opposed to a stage name, nom de plume , etc
A firebrand, as well as the meaning of   a piece of incendiary wood on fire, refers to a violent or highly radical person, a rabble-rouser, a stirrer, a real revolutionary.  Cf " a brand for the burning", to brand cattle, etc.



For lots of similar material
click here

Monday, 17 May 2010

Revising sports? under construction


Some of you saw this worksheet with me.

But before we start, let's remember :

YOU MUST

Prioritize

In the first place :
Some sports vocabulary  is ordinary vocabulary that was used for centuries before being applied to sports
eg
"GOAL" (=meta)
or "BACK"
(=espalda=respalda=Defensa in many ball games)
or "GROUND/S", perhaps the most typical word for the Space you play games, more often than field, which is used, or the ubiquitous word "PITCH", one of English's more revolting common examples of Polysemy.

Equally
Some sports vocabulary, like bullfighting vocabulary in Spanish,  is commonly used metaphorically in the ordinary language. The very word "CLUB" comes from "Golf club" (human collective) from "clubhouse" (buiding where the clubs etc were stored, then also where the members met)  from "(golf) -club" ( the implement)  from "club" ( the weapon = palo, cachiporra), and all these meanings are very much alive. All the following were used incessantly by the Bush administration,but are typical of American public life.
 Fairness means having a level playing field (Most ball games); focus is keeping your eye on the ball. (ditto) Send in the heavy hitters (Baseball,etc)if you want results. If sacrifice is called for, then take one for the team.(Any team sport or event)


But  beyond these two categories, where do you stop? At  500 words and expressions ? 5 thousand? 

Three rules of thumb:
Prioritize
Words and expressions common to many traditional and popular sports  above newer, less talked-out, more minority ones.Eg "Half-time"
Prioritize
Words and expressions equivalent to those you most commonly use want to use*, and hear used , in Spanish
.eg: you give the example, I´m not telepathic! * Many of you are bad at describing physical movements in English, but want to do this when you talk about sport
Prioritize
Words and expressions you have done in class or your teacher has pointed out in the textbook etc,( even when these are  like "skating RINK" ,(Rink is a word used for ONE sport only!) We teachers are human, so we will often tend to mark higher work produced in exams that show you paid attention in class, and lower  where the opposite is true.
By the way
"playing up to" the teacher is a standard part of "gamesmanship"( the tactics and strategies for doing well in this life! )

A note on Football.
Brits understand "Football" to be association football, or soccer.It is not  universal in England.
Many parts of England have a greater local tradition of Rugby football: Rugby, or rugger.
Americans understand football to mean "college football". Spaniards identify this with rugby. It isn't. It grew out of rugby, but has developed in its own way over more than a century , with different rules, body armour etc., only preserving the same sort of oval ball, pitch, and goalposts.


Ball games :

There is a lot of overlapping vocabulary in ball games.As such it gets used a lot metaphorically .
Players are divided  into forwards and backs, ofter further subdivided: centre forward, quarter- back , midfield, etc
There may well be a goal, and a goal-keeper.
Very often played on a pitch marked out on a field.
Subtypes of games are often referred to by the number of people in each team, or side : seven-a-side football for example.




Monday, 19 April 2010

Words, words; words!

I know you're desperately revising for exams. But.....





Click on this link   http://podictionary.com for some very good etymological talk about words.Each of the hundreds of  short articles  HAS  AUDIO ! Excellent practice.
I find many, not all, students are helped  with seeming polysemy problems when they see how modern uses all come from the same roots.And it also helps when they meet an unfamiliar application of the word.
This blog is chatty, anecdotal, and enjoyable, very much what I often aim at. Obviously, in the space, he can't cover everything, his entry for "jock" for example is limited. 
And - it's very close to the time we give you for an "exposicion individual"!
So. models to copy!




For some internet etc english go here: http://niproe.blogspot.com/2010/04/some-internet-english-and-internet.html
for my own post on terms like aka and gadget. It got a bit too deep for NI, really, but the question arose at that level.










If you enjoy words, AND have time to spare,click on the following
http://www.dictionaryevangelist.com/



 Also
http://www.urbandictionary.com/
I removed the link,( you can still cut and paste (=cortar y pegar)it, because although  you CAN find some meanings  here that you can't elsewhere,  the  problem  is that it's mostly very evanescant slang, and often generationally, gegraphically, and socially localized and sexual/tabu too.  Do you REALLY need to find out, say, something I have been in teaching for 42 years without knowing or needing, viz and to wit that a certain common English word is used in an expression  in NZ young people's (perhaps half a million antipodean people) street slang for a certain type of obscure homosexual activity?
This hardly opens a door to the whole angloshere!


















Sunday, 18 April 2010

Dear J******* L*******, go to

click below
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/apr/15/pope-mob-benedict-misreading-abuse


There is a lot of documentation under construction at click: Potsherd Jack

Tuesday, 13 April 2010

welfare state terminology

Blog Post fisked by Mike in smaller type etc for vocabulary purposes.

 

Norman Tebbit

Lord Tebbit of Chingford is one of Britain's most outspoken conservative commentators and politicians. He was a senior cabinet minister in Margaret Thatcher's government and is a former Chairman of the Conservative Party. He has also worked in journalism, publishing, advertising and was a pilot in the RAF and British Overseas Airways.

Britain, 2010: a land of quangocrats quango= quasi-autonomous non-government organization, bodies using public money and authority unaccountably, such as regulatory boards, publicly-funded "independant" pressure groups, etc - crats= their executives and hereditary welfare junkies People who have become addicted to public payments and benefits and are incapable of work or taking responsability for their own lives 

Lord Beveridge, the( Socialist) architect of the postwar welfare state, was no fool.
He saw the dangers, as well as the merits of a comprehensive welfare system. 
Sadly a lot of fools, or worse, did not listen to all of what he said. 
As he warned us, “The danger of providing benefits,(= welfare payments, sometimes benefits in kind, such as housing) which are both adequate in amount and indefinite in duration” is “that men as creatures who adapt to circumstances may settle down (=etablecerse o acomodarse)to them.”
He would be horrified at the extent of welfare dependency today. 
It is not just, as he put it, “men becoming habituated to idleness”.  There is a growing army of men and women, whether in or out of work, dependent on the state (that is the taxpayer) for their living. They are not all at the bottom of the stack of society. 
An increasing number are in the £100,000 a year class, with pensions to match.
It seems to me that, as Beveridge instinctively understood, the most habit-forming, dependency-creating, narcotic substance known to man is the milk which flows from the collective breast of the taxpayers. 
The number of addicts is rising every year. 
Many are now hereditary welfare junkies, born of junkie parents into junkie families, trapped by the welfare pushers into the poverty trap.(Most welfare systems have a poverty trap, that loss of benefits usually means that at some point you are actually poorer if  you work, or are married, or take responsability for yourself, etc)
They are offered no way out of the trap. 
Work leaves them worse off, for that means they would be taxed to feed their own addiction.
The pushers, as in the trade of other narcotics, are mostly reliant on the taxpayers’ milk, too. Many of them are nice hand-wringing Guardianistas.(followers of the Guardian newspaper mentality))
They would like things to be other than they are, but they could not afford it to be so. 
These are the upper class of those in dependency  ( Dependant, dependancy  etc are code words for addict and addiction )upon the taxpayer and they live a good life. 
Some will be found at Regional Government Conferences in agreeable parts of Europe. 
 There those of high social standing as “executives” in local government (mostly reluctant to let the poor old milch cow know how much of its milk they imbibe).
Then there is the quangocracy. They are all part of the dependency culture, with priority in the queue to nuzzle into the (until now) ample bosom of the taxpayer.
They are not all worthless scroungers. 
Many work very hard at jobs which need not be done. 
Others do jobs which need to be done, carrying out the essential functions of the state, and it is those (like soldiers) who are most at risk of being shouldered aside in the great milk rush.
However, that milk is a dangerous substance.( substance is the owrd used to describe drugs in law"illegal substances " etc )
The destruction of the House of Commons owes much to its addictive and mind-bending nature. Last week Members of Parliament concluded that at this time of a soaring budget deficit and inevitable cuts in expenditure, the most important, the highest priority expenditure which must go ahead regardless of our straitened circumstances, was about half a million pounds for a Parliamentary creche.
If Members of the House of Commons think that this should have priority over body armour for troops, or care for the sick and vulnerable, then surely it is them themselves who should be in the creche.
Alas, I fear that over recent years so many of the middle classes have been seduced into public sector dependency and found it  a secure, well paid and comfortable place.
I wonder if enough of those turkeys will vote for an early Christmas on May 6.


Thank you to (almost) all who post on this site.  I usually learn something from your comments.
I think “dirlada” was right. Any one in any walk of life may make honest mistakes, even sensible mistakes, but in that recent incest case it was over 100 people from 28 different agencies, all making some pretty obvious mistakes which was the worry. And right again, “Bionic Raspberry”. What about the offenders and the extended family too?
Oh, “crownarmourer”, what a temptation!  Me as Lord Protector.( The official title of Oliver Cromwell,Britain's last military Dictator, 350 years ago "Lord Protector of the Commonweath"-mike)  No, I do not think so. I sussed out how power corrupted him when I was a 15-year-old history student.
Again, I must tell “incensed” that I simply am not Mr Tebbit. I lost that title. I don’t mind Tebbit, Norman or, as cabbies usually address me, “Norm” but I am not “Mr”. And I hope that you still might see the difference between the EU and the USSR. Millions of Poles, Czechs, Slovaks and others who have experienced both can do so. Oh, and just a thought: were not the progenitors of the BNP ready to sell out to Hitler?
Spot on was James I. There should be no concessions for those immigrants who refuse to integrate. They are colonists.
And I am sorry, “djw2007” for wrongly attributing that communist jibe to you. I think that “Laveen Ladharem” is correct. The Conservative Party is right to modernise – but there is nothing modernising about going back to the 1960s-style lack of belief in anything except the “middle way”.
I was really concerned about poor David Dee. He still cannot understand that it was always open to Sinn Fein to win elections if they could persuade people to vote for them. But they could not do so, so they created the IRA to kill people who did not vote for them. Now the poor thing is upset because Sinn Fein cannot even win elections in the Republic. Never mind – he must be happy that “dissident republicans” are still busy killing people who do not agree with them.
He should try banging his head on the wall. It is better manners than the foul-mouthed abuse that springs from a fouled-up brain.
David Jay obviously has no memory of 1940-1941. France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Czechoslovakia were defeated. America and Ireland were neutral and USSR and Germany were allies. That was pretty lonely. Thank goodness for the Empire.
To be fair, we had one great advantage. We were not a multicultural society in those days.
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COMMENTS

  • RSSBut it is not just in Britain. Every time some ‘great’ policy is discussed, an array of groups chip in that we are funding through the EU or through the UN. It is government by QGOs these days (Quasi Government Organisations).
    Also it is worth looking at charities (another branch of QGOs) that comment on (ie push) policies in the UK, many of which are heavily funded by the tax payer.
    The NHS alone grants some £17,604,642 annually to “Voluntary Organisations”. See the NHS’ “Section 64 General Scheme of Grants to Voluntary Organisations 2008-09: Newly approved grants and continuing grants”
    Forget Parliament. That is no longer in charge.
    alfred on Mar 15th, 2010 at 12:44 pm
  • Another classic example of parliament wasting taxpayers money has to be IPSA (Independant parliamentry standards authority).
    I read my MPs expenses, it took me about 5 minutes. Had I needed to check the math, read the receipts and write the cheque, I guess it would take me half an hour tops.
    That would mean I could process about 16 per day, 80 per week, 320 per month. So, me and one other person could process the whole houses expense claims each month.
    I doubt many MPs would dare try fiddling their expenses now they are under such scrutiny. So why then, one must ask, is IPSA employing 80 staff at the cost of £6,500,000 or 13 Creches? What are the other 78 staff going to do each month?
    peteh on Mar 15th, 2010 at 1:04 pm