Some words are older than they appear...

This is a great article about many slang words which are much older than most people think.

Check it out:

http://www.mentalfloss.com/article/51857/16-words-are-much-older-they-seem

Enjoy,

Phil

When it rains it pours...

Have you guys heard this saying before? 

We use it when many bad things happen to someone all at once. It means that when it rains it isn't just a light drizzle it is a torrential downpour!  So people use it when suddenly many bad things happen to them at once and they'll just say "When it rains it pours..." meaning that is life, bad things tend to all happen at the same time.

Ah man, my bike chain popped off, I missed my train and now I'm late for work!!~! This sucks! When it rains it pours!

Any questions?

Phil

English pronunciation poem

I found this as a status update one of my friends shared on Facebook. It is an interesting poem full of words that are spelled the same but pronounced differently. Unfortunately, it is kind of long...

Are you up for the challenge of reading it aloud?

By English Language Coach

If you can pronounce correctly every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world.

After trying the verses, a Frenchman said he’d prefer six months of hard labour to reading six lines aloud.

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Fe0ffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.
Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.
Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.
Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
Pronunciation (think of Psyche!)
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.
Finally, which rhymes with enough,
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

English Pronunciation by G. Nolst Trenité

A black joke..? huh? - Katakana English

Hey everyone, today while I was at work I heard my co-workers talking in Japanese and they used a Katakana English word in their conversation. I was kind of shocked because they said black joke.

Now, from they context I could see they meant a kind of dark joke about death or some other horrible event. BUT in English a black joke meands a racist joke about black people!

It is not politically correct and not funny. I told my coworkers they should have used a different expression because people may get offended if they hear you saying black joke... instead use one of the three following terms

black humor

Whenever something bad happens I also use black humor to lighten the mood.

dark humor

Tom has a really dark sense of humor, he's always joking about death and other tragedies.

gallows humor

This is when people make jokes about death before a coming battle, execution(gallows are the execution platform for hanging) or other terrible event happens.

So tomorrow we all lose our jobs when the factory closes, I guess it is time for some gallows humor...

Be careful guys! Sometimes katakana English can be misunderstood and get you in trouble~!

Phil

familiar to vs. familiar with

For the first lesson this month, I am going to look at the difference between familiar to and familiar with. These two expressions have almost identical meanings only what you are emphasizing is different. They are both saying that someone has knowledge about something, they know about it.

familiar to -------->

This means that the person after familiar to knows about something.

topic + familiar to + person

I'm sorry you're name isn't familiar to me, have we met?

Magic: The Gathering is really familiar to me, I used to play it in high school.

<-----familiar b="" with="">

This means that the person BEFORE familiar with knows about what comes AFTER.

person + familiar with + topic

Are you familiar with computers?

I'm familiar with the Korean writing system, I used to live in Seoul.

She's familiar with unarmed combat, she's done judo since she was 5.

Have a good week,

Phil