Friday, September 25, 2009 at 3:05PM Speak English with confidence!
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"...it's very rare to see such natural language." Andy Baxter, British Council LearnEnglish Team
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Tuesday, April 21, 2009 at 5:04PM I've just returned from a long weekend visiting relatives in the Republic of Ireland. Not in any of the scenic, touristy parts, but up near the border with Northern Ireland, where there are just farms and factories.
Like the rest of the eurozone, Ireland is now fiercely expensive for Brits, due to our pitifully weak currency. Thanks, Gordon! Just what we needed!
Ignoring the eye-watering cost of everything, Ireland is still interesting to visit, for many reasons, one of which is to listen to the rich use of English (or so it sounds to me). Irish people have a range of quite different expressions to the English, and I like also to try to spot different accents and guess which part of Ireland people are from.
I'll write a longer article about that sometime, but just to start you off, here's a picture of my favourite shop:
I'm sure you can work out (a) what the sign means and (b) why it's mildly amusing - although I imagine the amusement wore off many years ago for the owners.
Incidentally, I've been in the shop and they had some really nice shoes - and the staff were extremely helpful!
Sunday, April 5, 2009 at 9:34PM At the weekend, I overheard this:
"Are those grapes for anything?"
"No, they're for anything."
Bizarre, eh? The answer seems to be the same as the question, and so we'd expect to hear "Yes, they're for anything."
So, what else do we need to know in order to understand why this strange exchange made sense to the people speaking?
Is it the context? The two people talking were preparing food for a party - but knowing that doesn't help us.
The clue, of course, is in the way the sentences were stressed. They were spoken like this:
"Are those grapes for anything?"
...which means 'Are those grapes intended for something specific?'
"No, they're for anything."
...which means 'No, they can be used for anything.'
Neither speaker noticed anything odd - I guess this means that we listen to stresses more than we might think.
Tenuously-related fact:
"Questions? Answers! Answers? Questions!" is the title of an album from the 1970's by a Dutch rock band called Focus.
Thursday, April 2, 2009 at 4:54PM I went to Cardiff yesterday to the IATEFL conference.
There were lots of people there from all around the world, and I talked to quite a few folk about what we could do with Linguagum (I even got a few interesting answers!).
I also found two really interesting web services which some of you might like.
Speechinaction.com is an outstanding (and astonishing) web site to help you with the rhythms of real English speech.
It's for advanced English students. You can sign up and try it for free.
The chaps at Speechinaction.com have recorded real life conversations, spoken by people from different regions of the UK, and USA and Canada. They have dug into these recordings for examples of the ways in which we English speakers gloss-over and compress some of what we say.
You listen to the conversations and see visually which words are being spoken. You can actually see what's being said, as the speaker says it. Highly recommended - and created by people obviously passionate about their work, which is always great to see!
At Languagelab.com you can practise English with real teachers and real students - in a virtual environment (Second Life).
I saw only a quick demo, but it seems that there are virtual banks, shops and so on, in which you can speak to other people learning English. Languagelab has teachers 'managing' these shops and banks - which is comforting!
I don't know how much it costs, but it's interesting (and inevitable) to see language training going virtual in Second Life.
And finally...
Cardiff is in Wales, which is part of the United Kingdom (UK = England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; Great Britain = England, Scotland and Wales).
In Wales, a little over 20% of the population speak Welsh, and that number is increasing, apparently.
Welsh is a fascinating language with complicated-looking words, like Heddlu (police) and Llwybr cyhoeddus (public footpath).
It also has, famously, a town called Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. It's a town with a railway station but it might be tricky buying a ticket - how would you pronounce that?
The name is often shortened to Llanfairpwllgwyngyll (still difficult to pronounce because the double-L is not an L sound) and sometimes shortened even more to Llanfair PG (which even I can almost pronounce).
Anyway, Cardiff's great - so if you're ever over here, go and visit.
Monday, March 30, 2009 at 11:48AM 
Just received our almost-edible new business cards.
My photography and art-direction skills don't really do the cards justice - the colours are lovely and they really do look ready-to-eat. If only they weren't made of cardboard.
These double as one-month vouchers (we got a different code printed on the back of each one) and they've arrived just in time for us to give some away at IATEFL this week.
If you want some of these to give away to your students, do get in touch!
(We got them from Moo.com).
