Seasick Steve

Source: http://www.speakup.com.br

Language level: A1 Basic

Speaker: Jason Bermingham and Chuck Rolando

Standard: American standard 

 source of the picture: guardian.co.uk

Have you heard of Seasick Steve? He is the biggest surprise in the music business today. He’s 70 years old, he looks like a homeless person, and he plays the blues on an old guitar with only three strings. His CD I started out with Nothin’ and I Still Got Most of it Left went high in the UK album charts. If you buy a copy, you can discover the magic of Seasick Steve.

BLUE MAN

Steve suffered a serious heart attack in 2004 and decided his music career was finished; but when he recovered, his wife convinced him to record his songs for posterity – just him  and his guitar. He made the CD Doghouse Music in his own kitchen in front of the fire, and the thought that was the end of it. He was wrong he was invited to appear on the BBC television show. Jools Hollands’ annual Hootenanny, on New Year’s Eve 2006, and he instantly became a star.

ON THE ROAD

Steven Gene Wold, who was born in Oakland, California in 1941, really was a homeless person. He left home when he was 13 years old to escape from his violent stepfather, and spent the next years travelling around the USA on freight trains and working on farms. In the 1960s he played gigs with legends like Lighnin Hopkins and Son House. He remembers. “The old blues-men all suddenly became famous. It lasted a couple of years and then they disappeared back to the farms.”

STREET LIFE

In the early 1970s Seasick Steve himself disappeared to Europe and became a homeless busker on the street of Paris. He later moved to Britain and worked as a sound engineer and session musician. He later went back to the USA and headed to Seattle, where he worked with Grunge bands like Modest Mouse. In the 1990s he lost his enthusiasm for modern music and moved to Norway –his wife is Norwegian. What does he think of his sudden success? “It’s a surprise for an old guy like me,” he says. “All these young people coming to see me that’s a real honor!”

See Seasick Steve’s  “Hootenanny” performance on: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNoPNC3ebYQ .   

IRELAND, DOORS OPEN

 DOORS OPEN

Source of the picture: www.destinoviagem.com

Source: www.speakup.com.br

Language level: C1 Advanced

Standard: British accent

U2 WERE HERE

In recent years Ireland has enjoyed an economic boom, even IF that stopped with the credit crunch of 2008. Yet life goes on in Dublin’s redeveloped docklands area. Here you will find the headquarters of financial and high-tech companies, such as Google, Facebook and Linkedin. The area also has plenty of new housing and there is a massive concert venue, the O2. Yet, as Loretta Lambkin of the Docklands Development Authority explains, the current economic crisis presents a challenge:

Loretta Lambkin

(Irish accent)

We also run a lot of events during the year, we have a huge event called the Docklands Maritime Festival, where we have tall ships and markets and street entertainment, so that we try and…enliven these areas all the time. So it’ll take a long time, and for Ireland to climb back out of the recession, it’s gong to take some time as well, and that has had a huge impact on us, but, you know, we continue to try and programme things to try and…and run things within our own capacities.

TOWER RECORDS

And it seems that even the legendary Dublin rock group U2 have felt the effects of Ireland’s current economic downturn:

Loretta Lambkin

U2 have always been synonymous with the Docklands area, they’ve always recorded all their albums down here. They started off in Windmill Lane, which most people would know. They now record most of their albums down in a studio in Hanover Quay. The plan was that we  would build a building called the U2 Tower and it would be one of the tallest building in the city, and at the top of that, the top two floors, would be where U2’s recording studios would be based: hence the name the U2 Tower. Now unfortunately, given the current climate, the economic climate in Ireland, we’ve had to postpone the project. So it is very much a live project in our plans for the future: however, it will be a couple of years away at this point. 

IN THE NAME OF POP (the Sixties)

Standard:British accent

Language level: Lower-intermediate

Speaker: Justin Ratcliff

Source: she-sins.blogspot.com

Source: www.speakup.com.br

IN THE NAME OF POP (the Sixties)

      Pop groups choose names to be memorable or stylish. These names become so familiar that we no longer notice their meaning. When you hear Genesis, do you think of the Bible? Do you think of water in the desert when you see Oasis?

      The names of great bands often have hidden meanings. Here we take a look at these origins, to understanding the music and fashions of recent decades.

INSECTS

      “Many people ask what are Beatles? Why Beatles? Ugh, Beatles, how did the name arrive? So we will tell you. It came in a vision – a man appeared on a flaming pie and said unto them ‘From this day on you are Beatles with an ‘A’.” That is what John Lennon wrote in the Liverpool music magazine Mersey Beat in 1961 (this was before the Beatles were famous).he had tried various names: the Quarry Men, Johnny and the Moondogs, the Silver Beetles, the Silver Beats. His final choice plays on words, suggesting insects, like Buddy Holly and the Crickets, but also “The Mersey Beat” (The rock’n’roll scene of  Liverpool’s River Mersey and “the Beat Generation.”

      Insects would not come back into fashion until the 1980s, with Adam and the Ants. But the Beatles certainly influenced two groups’ name. The Byrds and the Monkees. Playing with spelling has been common ever since. Def Leppard, Megadeth, Black Crowes, Phish.

LIKE A ROLLING STONE…

      In the early 1960s, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards started playing with guitarist Brian Jones. They took their name from a blues song by Muddy Waters, “Rolling Stone” (Later, in 1967, it would also be used as the name a new rock magazine). The phrase comes from a proverb: “A rolling stone gathers no moss.” It’s a classic rock’n’roll sentiment: always keep moving, never settle down.

      Other band names capture that rock sensibility. The Animals sound wild. The Kinks sound idiosyncratic and sexy. “There’s nothing Kinky about us, “said singer Ray Davies. “Kinky is such a fashionable word: we knew people would remember it.”

SURF MUSIC

California band The Pendletones took their name from the Stylish Pendleton shirts. Imagine their surprise when they opened their first single. “Surfin,” to discover that the producer had renamed them the Beach Boys!

      Another classic band began as The Detours, then became The High Numbers, it is said that, while they were trying to think of a new name, guitarist Pete Townshend (who is now dear) kept saying “The Who?” They became The Who and the hits soon followed.

THE SUMMER OF LOVE

The late ‘60s’ brought psychedelic music, with the influence of sex and drugs. The Doors took their name from Aldous Huxley’s 1954 book on drugs. The Doors of Perception. Lou Reed’s group, The Velvet Underground, were inspired by a book on sadomasochism.

      Influenced by The Beatles’ psychedelic album, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, many chose names reflecting their experimental music: the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. Captain Beef heart and his Magic Band. Pink Floyd’s name comes from blues musicians, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council: their original name, the Architectural Abdabs, was much more bizarre.

THE SEARCH FOR SIMPLICITY

      New bands reacted against this complexity. Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker considered themselves the best blues musicians, so they called themselves Cream. Other simple names include Yes, Free, Rush, Wings, Squeeze and Kiss. Freddie Mercury chose the name Queen for its ambiguous royal and transvestite connotations. Peter Gabriel nearly called his band Gabriel’s Angels, but decided Genesis sounded fresh and new. Van Morrison changed the Gamblers name to them.

      

THE CELTIC CONNECTION

The Celtic Connection

Language level: Advanced

Source: www.speakup.com.br

Every January Glasgow is home to “Celtic Connections,” a two-week Festival with over 1.000 performers from around the world. In many respects it is remarkable that this event is taking place in Scotland because, in the past, many Celtic traditions were kept alive elsewhere. For example, when Scottish step-dancing was banned in the 18^th century, the tradition was continued in Nova Scotia in eastern Canada by Scottish immigrants. So, many of today’s Scottish step-dancers have learned the moves form Canadians! During the Festival, visitors can learn about Scottish lullabies, Irish pips or whisky-tasting in one-day workshops. More importantly, the Festival puts Scottish children in touch with their rich cultural heritage. Education manager Tom Daizell explains how this works:

Tom Daizell

(Glaswegian accent):

We also do instrumental workshops, which we call “Come and Try” workshops, where we go into a school, we’ll work with of a whole class or about 30 kids, and we’ll take over the school dinner hall or sports hall, and we’ll go into a school with a Clorsach tutor, which is the Scottish harp, or a fiddle tutor, a bodhran tutor it’s the Irish drum, and a tin whistle player. We take over three corners, so there’ll be a tutor in each corner, and the kids will come in, we’ll put them into three groups, and they’ll have a shot, they’ll go round all the instruments, have about 20 minutes doesn’t sound an awful lot on an instrument, but it’s amazing, because, for instance on a tin whistle, in 20 minutes we can teach them one or two tunes.

THE BEAUTY OF FOLK MUSIC

One of the Festival’s star performers is Gaelic singer Ishbel MacAshkill. She was born on the Hebridean island of Lewis and, unlike the school kids of Glasgow, came to traditional music at an early age. She gave her first concert in her local village hall when she was four. Today she has a varied repertoire, from beautiful pipe ballads, though fast moving “mouth music to the light hearted “walking songs” of women tweed workers:

Ishbel MacAskill:

The songs were made by people like us, for people like us, who worked hard, certainly in peasant societies, worked hard, they suffered triumphs and disasters, and sorrows, and of course, it’s an experience that they had and would write about. And it was a wonderful way of recording the life that they led at that time. And I think this is partly why folk music has such an appeal, because there is a thread running through it that appeals to all nations and…because music, after all, is the universal language, and folk music, particularly, it strikes a chord in people, with their suffering and their joys.

A DYING LANGUAGE

Ishbel MackAskill was recently on tour in Australia and Canada, promoting the music and language of her home country. Back home in Scotland, sadly, the number of Gaelic speakers is at an all-tie low. Only 60.000 use the language on a daily basis.

However, more and more parents now choose to send their children to a school where every subject is taught through Gaelic. For MackAskill, who in the ‘90’s acted in a Gaelic-language soap opera on Scottish television, language is the key to Scottish identity:

Ishbel MackAskill:

I wouldn’t like us to rely purely on the music to keep our culture alive because, if you lose the language, you are losing the culture and we are left with just music. I think Ker Breton is an example of this, and they are fighting extremely hard to keep the language alive. And thee’s a Gaelic prover that says: “Tir gun canan, tir gun anam,” “a country without the language is a country without soul.”

More information:

Ishbel MackAskill’s website is http://freespace.virgin.net/ishbel.macaskill/

Her CDs, such as Sioda (Silk) from 1994 can be ordered through www.folkmusic.net or www.scotsloads.co.uk , where you can also listen to selected tracks. 

THE BODY SHOP

Source: Rachel Roberts
Standard Accent: British
Speaker: Rachel Roberts
Language level: Basic


THE BODY SHOP

Anita Roddick

Anita Roddick is a unique woman: she is both the founder of the multi-national chain the Body Shop and an activist for a thousand causes. She has also worked for the United Nations, lived with tribes in Africa, edited several books, and brought up two daughters.

ON SALE

Why is Roddick still a controversial personality? She recently sold The Body Shop to the French multi-national L’Oréal, for £650 million, or € 950 million. This angered many fellow activists because LÓréal is partly owned by Nestlé, a company that is boycotted around the world for its animal testing and its marketing of baby milk substitutes. Roddick admits that it’s true, she has sold her company to the enemy, but she says The Body Shop is now a Trojan horse that will change LÓréal from within.

How did it all begin? Back in 1976, Anita Roddick’s husband, poet Gordon Roddick, left the family and their small hotel business and set off on a two-year quest: he rode a horse across South America to raise money for charity. Anita was left with their two children to support, so she decided to open a small cosmetics shop in Brighton. Ironically, she painted the shop’s walls green to cover marks caused by damp, and used small recyclable bottles because her mother had taught the family the importance of recycling. The rest in history: The Body Shop now has over 2.000 shops in 52 countries. Roddick says, “Success is more than a good idea. It’s timing, too. The Body Shop arrived just when Europe was going green.”

POLITICAL ACTIVIST

Roddick campaigned through her shops all over the world: she supported Amnesty International, environmentalist groups and the fair trade movement. She fought against cruelty to animals, especially animal testing in the cosmetics business.

Today Roddick is still very active: she’s calling for the release of the Angola 3 – three American prisoners who have spent 34 years in solitary confinement for a murder they didn’t commit. “Get informed, get angry, get inspired, get active!” shouts Ruddick. Visit her website ( www.anitaroddick.com ) and discover the many issues that interested this tireless campaigner.

  

Roddick on Roddick

Anita Roddick speaks about cosmetic and The Body Shop: “Running a shop is about creating a product that’s so good, people will pray for it.” “Anti-ageing creams are a nonsense. The only real way to get rid of wrinkles is surgery.” “The end result of kindness is that it attracts people to you.” Roddick’s favourite quote: “If you think you’re too small to have an impact, try going to sleep with a mosquito.” (Phillip Elmer-DeWitt).

The Future of English the Big mix and miscellaneous of Languages

Source: www.speakup.com.br

As a matter fact English is a miscellaneous of Languages, it was born due the need of the World Population communicating each other. Check out the text THE FUTURE OF ENGLISH, THE BIG MIX. And le me know what do you think of.

The owner of the text by William Sutton.

Imagine a situation where diverse cultural groups are thrown together. They need to communicate for trade and technology. Many of them speak more or less the same language, but variations in vocabulary and grammar cause misunderstandings.

Sounds like the internet today? Not at all: this is a description of theBritish Isles in the first millennium.

FROM SMALL BEGINNINGS

English had tiny beginnings. In 500 A.D., it was spoken by perhaps twenty thousand people – less than today speak Cherokee Indian, an endangered language.

The Angles invaded from Angeln in Schleswig (modern Germany) in the 5^th century AD. Other Germanic tribes, the Jutes and Saxons settled in the south, while the Angles took the rest, as far as Edinburgh.

The country became known as “Engla Land” (Land of the Angles) and their language as Englisc. From the older languages, Celtic and Latin, only place names survived: Avon is Celtic for river: Chester, Leicester and Lancaster from Latin “castra,” camp. Indeed the word Wales derives from Old English for “foreigners.”

Old English provides all the most common words in modern English: the, is, you, man, house, drink, here, there. It gives us almost all our numbers, personal pronouns, auxiliary verbs, prepositions and conjunctions. Likewise, fundamental concepts: life and death, day and night, month and year, heat and could, love and hate. It is also responsible for irregular past tense and unpredictable pronunciation.

CHANGING TIMES

Alfred the Great, king of Wessex (that is, West Saxon), was the first great promoter of English. he translated St. Augustine’s Latin for his countrymen to read. He also made peace with invading Vikings. As the Norsemen settled peacefully across England, they because the first to need instant E.F.L. lessons.

Although simplified, Old English was enriched by Scandinavian words: happy, ugly, wrong, die. This gave us synonymous pairs: besides Anglo-Saxon wish we have Norse want: we have craft and skill, rear and raise.

FRENCH RYING

Everything changed when the Norman invasion of 1066 subjugated English. consider the language of food. Words for the meat cooked for the Norman aristocracy – beef, pork and venison – derive from French , domestic animals remain distinctly Anglo-Saxon: cow, pig and deer.

The words city, palace and residence are French; but town, house and home are English. Tradesmen have English names: baker, builder, fisherman, shoemaker. But skilled artisans derive from French: carpenter, painter, tailor.

Synonyms from this period are revealing: freedom and liberty, love and affection, truth and veracity. Still today, people regard words of Anglo-Saxon origin as less intellectual than words with French and Latin origins – and therefore more trustworthy.

NEW HORIZONS

As the Age of Colonialism brought English to new shores, native languages form Canada, Australia, South Africa and India colonized and enriched it with new animals (kangaroo, chimpanzee), plants (tea, tobacco) and clothes (pyjamas, anorak).

Back home, the Enlightenment lifted scientific words form Greek and Latin. Musical language was taken from Italian. Martial arts have come from the Far East. Still today, neologisms from around the globe are added to dictionaries every year.

Will English be ruined by this new input? Should we raise the alarm? Ban foreign words, as the French and Germans have? Surely not. There may be no such thing as a pure language, but English is even less pure than most. From the first, it was a means of communication for diverse ethnic and linguistic groups, a mixed-up mongrel. This ability to absorb and mutate may give it just the right pedigree for the challenges of a global future.

Graffiti to Glasnost: The Origin of English Words

Modern English is half Germanic and half Romance, but it has acquired the largest vocabulary of any language by freely adopting and adopting words from countless languages.

Old English (Anglo Saxon): England, man, child water, house.

Old Norse (Viking): Seat, window, ill, ugly.

French: Royal, beef, menu, hotel.

Latin: Family, wine, school.

Greek: Telephone, grammar.

Italian: Crescendo, vibrato, belvedere, grotto, extravaganza.

Spanish: Cannibal, guerrilla, mosquito, tornado, vanilla.

Portuguese: Marmalade, flamingo.

Dutch: Yacht, boss, cookie, apartheid, commando, trek.

Gaelic/Irish: Hooligan, clan, slogan, whisky.

Japanese: Kimono, tycoon, hara-kiri, samurai, tsunami.

Hindi: Guru, jungle, cheetah, shampoo, pyjamas, polo.

Persian: Paradise, divan, lilac, bazaar, caravan, chess.

Aboriginal Australian: Kangaroo, wallaby, boomerang, budgerigar.

Hebrew: Cherub, hallelujah, messiah, jubilee.

Arabic: alchemy, alcohol, assassin, cipher, syrup, zero.

Norwegian: Ski.

Finnish: Sauna.

Czech: Robot.

Turkish: coffee, kiosk, caviar.

Chinese: Tea.

Malay: Ketchup, bamboo, junk, orangutan.

Polynesian: Taboo, tattoo.

Inuit (Eskimo): Kayak, igloo, anorak. 

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St. George for England

Source: www.speakup.com.br

Language level: Intermediate

Standard: British accent

Speaker: Justin Ratcliff

St. George for England!

Most people would recognise the English flag, with its red cross on a White background. Some might also know that this is the cross of St. George, the patron saint of England, but how many would know anything about the history of St. George? The flag was an important symbol to the early Christian crusaders, says John Clemence, chairman of the Royal Society of St. George, but St. George really only became part of England thanks to King Henry V:

John Clemence

(Standard English accent):

In my more flippant moments, with regard to St. George, I always refer to him as a very early example of political spin because you see, George became the patron saint of England in 1415, at the time of the Battle of Agincourt. Now we were having a little bit of trouble with France at the time – I mean what changes! – and Henry decided that probably, well I like to suggest that he thought that the patron saints that we’d held before that were a bit of wimps, considering the pressure we were under at that time, and he wanted to look for a more militant saint, one that would more easily identify with allegedly English values. And St. George had appeared in our pantheon of saints from the earlier experience of those who went on the crusades. And he was always held to be a very fair-minded character, in (a) military since he was considered to, not only be fair, but to very brave and he had this reputation of giving his riches away to the poor, which he did before in fact he was beheaded for challenging the then Emperor’s Diocletian’s, request, or requirement, that Christianity cease and that all Roman citizens return to Roman values. So there were a lot of things there about him that then appealed at that time and he’s been our patron saint ever since.

AND THE DRAGON?

Little is known of the real-life St. George. As in the case with King Arthur, the modern-day myth is probably an amalgam of different historical figures. It is probable, however, that he came from the Near East, or Middle East. It is said that George was skilled cavalryman in the roman army who rebelled against the emperor and consequently lost his head on 23^rd April, 303 AD.

Hundreds of years later, obscure George became St. George, and his legend began to spread across the world. The most powerful part of the story is undoubtedly the tale of heroic St. George fighting and killing a dangerous dragon and rescuing a beautiful princess, although this is undoubtedly apocryphal.

St. George has never been a high-ranking saint. In 1969, the Catholic Church even downgraded St. George to the lowest category of saints! Nevertheless, he remains patron saint in many countries, including Georgia, Greece and Germany, as well as Lithuania, Palestine and Portugal. St. George is also the patron saint of riders, soldiers and archers, farmers, butchers and Boy Scouts. Wherever he was really born, St. George was certainly not English and never set foot in England. Perhaps this explains why St. George’s Day (23^rd April) has never become as popular with the English as St Patrick’s Day is with the Irish. Or is it just natural English modesty and reserve? There is another factor: the English flag has too often been associated with a more aggressive side of Englishness. But that is changing, says John Clemence:

John Clemence:


Well, I would have hoped that we’d got well past that stage. Yes, of course, it was associated with hooliganism abroad and so on, but only two or three years ago we had the Commonwealth Games here and England, like it or lump it, England puts a team in and they need their own flag and what was very interesting at those games is that you would see people of all religions and backgrounds in this country wrapping themselves in the flag at the success o the game. And that was very encouraging. It’s often said to me that  political movements, British National Party or whatever, run around threatening everybody with the flag of St. George. They don’t, actually they run around with union flag! So it’s unfair, in a way. It may suit one or two politicians not to see a rise of English consciousness, given that the United Kingdom is devolved, but that’s a different matter, but the flying of a flag to say that you’re English cannot be offensive.

More info: (no audio)

The Royal Society of St. George aims to foster a love of England and to spread an understanding of English history, traditions and ideals. Its patron is Queen Elizabeth II and the society currently has 107 branches worldwide including Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro! www.royalsocietyofstgeorge.com . 

The Dog Masters

The Dog Masters

Source: www.speakup.com.br

English level INTERMEDIATE

Speaker: Justin Ratcliffe

Standard: British accent

In 1989 Sylvia Wilson was working for RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to animal) in Australia and was become number of dogs that were being brought in to be destroyed because of behavioural problems such s barking, biting and tearing things up. She went on to develop a system that had almost immediate results in dealing with problem dogs, so she set up Bark Busters. Today Bark Busters is a worldwide organization dedicated to bridging the gap between dogs and their owners by using “dog psychology.” Carol O’Herlihy runs Bark Busters I the UK and explains that a dog psychologist is not the same as a dog trainer:

Carol O’Herlihy

(Australian accent):

A dog psychologist is somebody, I think, who bridges the gap between the two different species. It teaches…we teach people how to see what their dog is saying. Dogs never stop talking to you, their body language never stops, they never stop at it, unless they’re asleep. Happy dogs sleep most of the day, but dogs that are boisterous and overactive, they’re trying desperately to tell you something and we show owners how to interpret that properly.

LEADER OF THE PACK

As can be the case with humans, many problems for dogs are the result of the change of status and way of life. Dogs are used to living in packs, where there is a natural hierarchy. This is very different from their new life as part of a human family and it can lead to a lot of confusion between animal and owner:

Carol O’Herlihy:

What happens is, people read a dog’s body language as a human, and dogs read a human body language as dog, and the two are completely different, so you get this miscommunication between the owner and the dog and neither one of them knows what the other one’s doing. So, for instance, when a dog is jumping up and licking at owner’s mouth whenever they come back, the owner thinks, “He loves me so much he’s kissing me hello,” but the dog is thinking, “Vomit, vomit, you’ve been or a hunt, what you’ve caught on the hunt, I’m hungry!”

THERAPY

When we humans need to see the “head doctor,” we take ourselves to a clinic where we can talk about our problems, but for a dog psychologist there’s no such thing as the “psychologist’s couch.” Problematic dogs are best observed at home:

Carol O’Herlihy:

Well, we ask a few questions on the phone, not a great deal, but (they) most important thing is we go out and we visit the dog in its home because a dog’s very comfortable in its home and it’ll be displaying a lot of body language that tells us how the dog sees itself in a pack situation, where it sees itself, whether it’s the top or the middle or the bottom, and sometimes dogs that are at the top of the pack find it (a) very lonely place and it’s quite scary for them and they actually need to be down further, down in the pack and with the owners over the dog. So it’s all to do with pack hierarchy because that’s…the only way a dog thinks. A dog that’s shown aggression stands a higher change of being put to sleep, destroyed, killed, murdered…whatever you like. All animals will bite, but it’s only the dog who takes the big punishment for it.

Who You Gonna Call? Bark Busters!

Bark Busters, the organisation founded by Sylvia Wilson, now has branches in Australia, Canada, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Tawian, the UK and the USA. It is reckoned that over 300.000 dogs have been trained by Bark Busters since the organization was set up in 1989. Sylvia Wilson has written several books, including: Bark Busters: Solving Your Dog’s Behavioural Problems, The Bark Busters’ Guide to Puppy Rearing and Training, Train Your Dog The Easy Way and Bite Buster: How to Deal with Dog Attacks: For more on Bark Busters, visit www.barkbusters.co.uk  .

THE BORAT PHENOMENON

(No audio)

It will be interesting for you to see how our film industry’s highly skilled “dubbers” handle the challenge presented by the movie Borat: Cultural Learning of America for Make Benefit Glorious Motion of Kazakhistan, which is now playing in Glorious Nation of Brazil.

CONTROVERSIAL

The film, which stars a fake Kazakhstani journalist with a strong accent and a poor command of the English Language, has been a massive – yet controversial  - hit in the United States. Borat is played by his creator, British comedian (and Cambridge University graduate) Sacha Baron Cohen, who was also responsible for Ali G. an ignorant and politically incorrect interviewer who was a TV sensation at the start of the decade. Borat actually began life as a minor character on Do Ali G Show. Borat is even more extreme in terms of his misogyny and his virulent anti-Semitism (Baon Cohen is himself Jewish and seems to be obsessed with the issue).

LEGAL PROBLEMS

The humour of both Ali G and Borat lies in the fact that their victims don’t know that they are being set up. They are told that the interviews are for a foreign TV station and are mad to sign release forms. Several of the people who appeared in Borat are now suing its producers. Not surprisingly, the government of Kazakhstan has reacted badly to the primitive portrayal of their country, but Sacha Baron Cohen insists that the joke is on America. (no audio)

THE BORAT PHENOMNEON

SOURCE: SPEAK UP

Standard: British accent

Speaker: Mark Worden

A movie that has taken America by storm: Bohat: Cultural Learning of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. It stars Sacha Baron. Cohen, a British actor already famous for another memorable personality. Ali G. this time he plays Bohat Saddiyev, an outrageous Journalist who has come to discover the real America.” The intriguing thing is that all the other characters are real people who don’t know that they are being fooled.

Here Borat presents the film in a splendid parody of the promotional video. By the way, please don’t use Borat as a model, if you’re planning to improve your English!

Borat (Kazakhstani accent, the others are all Standard American accent)

My name Borat Sagdiyev, I here make promotion, talk to you about movie films I make. The Ministry of Information decide to make this film about America because we want to be like you, America have most beautiful women in world, for example, Lisa Minelli and Elizabeth Taylor. It also center for democracy and porno. I like!

Interviewer

It has been said, Mr. Sagdiyev, that your country is extremely oppressive.

Borat:

Yes, it’s true. Thank you, I met some very nice peoples on my journey across America. In New York Cities I meet this man who teach me how to drive a motor cars, yes?

Mike:

My name is Mike, I’m going to be your driving instructor. Welcome to our country, OK?

Borat:

My name Borat (he kisses, Mike on both cheeks).

Mike:

OK, OK, good, good. Well, I’m not used to that, but that’s fine.

Borat:

Look, there is a woman in a car. Can we follow her and maybe make a sexy time with her…?

Mike/

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Borat:

And get her, why not?

Mike:

Because a woman has a right to choose who she has sex with.

Borat: What?!

Mike:

How about that? Isn’t that amazing?

Borat:

You joke? It is very strange in America is that a woman is permit to drive a car. We say in Kazakhstan, “To let a women drive a car is like let a monkey drive a plane!” Yes? Yeah! We do not do that anymore, since the Astana air crash of 2002.

THE COMEDY COACH

Borat’s next victim is a comedy coach:

Borat:

What is a not jokes?

Comedy coach:

A not joke is when we try to make fun of something and what we do is we make a statement that we pretend is true but, in the end, we say in “NOT” which means it’s not true.

Borat:

So teach me how to make one.

Comedy coach:

Alright: so a not joke is, I would say:  “That suit is black…NOT!!!”

Borat:

This suit is NOT!!!

BLACK!!!

Comedy coach:

No, no, NOT!!! Has to be the end.

Borat: OK.

Borat:

This suit is black not.

Comedy coach:

This suit is black…

Pause. You know what a pause is?

Borat: Yes.

Comedy coach:

This suit is black…

NOT!!

Borat:

This suit is black…

NOT!!!

Borat:

This suit is black…

Pause…NOT!!!

Comedy coach:

You don’t say “pause.”

This suit is black…

That’s a pause…

NOT!!!

Borat:

This suit is black…

Comedy coach:

OK,  I don’t…I don’t…

I’m not quite…

Borat: NOT!!!

THE FEMINISM DEBATE

Yet “the Veteran Feminists of America” provide the perfect target for his politically incorrect humor:

Borat: so what means this feminism?

First Feminist:

It’s the theory that women should be equal to men in matters economic, social and…

Second feminist:

Now, you are laughing.

Borat: Yes!

Second feminist:

That is the problem:

Borat:

Do you think a woman should be educated?

Third feminist: Definitely.

Borat: But is it not a problem that a woman have a smaller brain than a man?

Third Feminist: That is wrong.

Borat: But a government scientist, Dr. Yamak, have proved I it ssize of squirrel.

Third feminist: he’s wrong.

Borat:

Give me a smile, baby, why angry face?

Second feminist:

Well, what you’re saying is very demeaning. Do you know the word demeaning?

Borat: No.

Second feminist:

We are saying to you that…

Borat: I could not concentrate on what this old man was saying.

Third feminist:

OK, hav ewe finished now?

Borat:

Listen, pussy cat (bad word), smile a bit!

Second feminist:

All right, that’s it, I’m done.