The US travellers among you will laugh at this comedian’s take on the recent (well, it’s been around for a while) trend in attaching imaginary question marks to everything you say. With some “you know”s and “like”s thrown in for good measure.
The language teacher says: raising your intonation at the end of declarative sentences will add that little extra bit of authenticity to an American accent. But remember: as with “like” and “you know”, a little of it goes a long, long way.
I was made very happy this morning by the discovery of Splendid Speaking, a podcast and website that is just about speaking skills for advanced learners of English (that’s you!). There is an amazing variety of resources here – spoken examples by learners, with a helpful critique by Peter Travis, the site owner. I particularly liked the Learn… page with great links, such as the free Daily Colloquial Expressions. Any of you interested in learning a handful of really useful expressions every day should bookmark that page.
Sometimes I wish I could learn English all over again. I’m overcome by ignorance nostalgia.
Who would have thought that cinnamon rolls could inspire nearly all the seven deadly sins? My favourite blogger, Pioneer Woman, is going into the holiday season at full steam, cooking calorific foods right and left and being very funny about it.
Have you ever had American cinnamon rolls at Starbucks? Pioneer Woman loves Starbucks (too bad she lives in the middle of nowhere on a ranch), but the sticky mass-produced rolls they serve pale in comparison to these cinnamon rolls. At least, I think they do. I’ve never tried making PW’s – I’m rather intimidated by their lusciousness.
Anyway. The Seven Deadly Sins. It is always a good idea to know them, so as to avoid them or so as to be able to show off… They are:
In British English, sloth and wrath are pronounced the same.
160 years after its first publication, this is still one of England’s most famous and popular novels. And believe me, it is famous for a reason: a romantic tale with elements of horror, an extremely plucky but not beautiful heroine and a broodingly not-quite-handsome hero with a dark secret. It is so well-known that I would go as far as to say that anyone with an interest in England needs to have read the novel in order to understand what everyone is talking about (this actually applies to America, too: Judy Abbott in Daddy-Long-Legs thinks up alternative endings for Jane Eyre).
At the beginning of the novel, Jane is a ten-year-old orphan who is treated badly by her relatives and eventually sent to a school that is so horrible that even Charles Dickens, who wrote about truly dreadful schools, must have been impressed. With the help of a few good women, Jane survives, but as soon as she is grown up, has to find work as a governess and lands at the rather spooky country mansion of Thornfield Hall. This is where the plot really takes off, because soon the owner of Thornfield Hall, Mr Rochester, shows up (in an unforgettable scene that involves a very large dog) and Jane falls for him.
Just writing this review makes me want to read Jane Eyre (“Eyre” is pronounced like “air”) again*. Of course, it is not exactly an easy book, but it is so worth it. Over the years, there have been countless TV and movie adaptations, most recently one done by the BBC. Seeing a film first is not at all a bad idea, but make sure you don’t miss out on the actual novel.
Genre: A classic romance novel; some horror; has a cult following
Boy appeal: My husband thought it was great.
Girl appeal: VERY GREAT!
You will like this book if: you really want to be shaken up by a book that’s shaken up millions before you.
Bonus: Once you’ve read Jane Eyre, you will be able to read Jasper Fforde’s hilarious book The Eyre Affair.
* I am actually re-reading it now and it is even better than I remembered.
Some of my students wanted to know what Glaswegian sounded like and why I had such a hard time understanding it. The example linked here is not exactly hard to understand, but if you go to the excellent Sounds Familiar Collection put together by the British Library and click on the other Ayrshire speech examples, you’ll know just what I mean.
This page is pretty addictive, I’ve got to say. I could spend hours listening to all the examples, reading up on the latest developments in Received Pronunciation or Caribbean English…
The BBC has a rather good section on British History on its internet pages that I very much recommend, although some of the links are still broken after an overhaul. This morning, I discovered something new there that I’d like to share: The History of the English Language Timeline.
The coolest thing is that it includes some audio clips of English as it was spoken in the past – the fool in the top right-hand corner will tell you insults, riddles and other stuff that people said at the time.
The Queen always needs new hats, of course, but does she ever change her English?
The Daily Telegraph (often referred to as the Daily Torygraph because it is so conservative) ran an article last year about how the Queen had become more democratic in her speech over the last 50 years.
She did her dutay then and does her dutee now – listen to the Queen here.
And read about how Alan Bennett imagines the Queen here.
I love the Queen. When she dies, I will cry. Boo-hoo.
To continue with the Thermopylae topic, here’s a little children’s rhyme to illustrate further the fun that is to be had with English pronunciations of Latin and Greek:
Brutus adsum iam forte,
Caesar aderat.
Brutus sic in omnibus,
Caesar sic inat.
Translation, anyone?
Yes – it’s September 19th again, Talk Like a Pirate Day! If you need instructions on how to do it, look at the hilarious video below.
Pirate Talk on the Internet becomes ever so much easier if you have the special pirate keyboard (“avast!” meaning “stop” in pirate lingo):
