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.

THE WORLD OF ENGLISH

Well I have talked before the most important, for us Non-Native English Speakers is communicating, that's because there are a great diversity of accents, but there is a Standard to follow up. How different people, from different countries, accents and dialects communicating themselves, understand and being understood? Check it out and telling about your experience, have you been lived abroad in an English Speaking Country? Telling for us your experience abroad.




SOURCE: SPEAK UP
Speaker: Ben White
Standard: British Accent

THE WORLD OF ENGLISH

20 Years Later

You may be well under 20, or maybe you have a grandchild older than that. But whatever your age, you’re sure to agree that 20 years is a considerable amount of time. This year your favorite magazine is turning 20 –that’s something, for sure! To celebrate this Historic event, Speak Up offers some excerpts that show how the magazine looked (and sounded) way back when. For starters, he’s part of an article that was published in our inaugural issue. It was the first installment of a series called “The World of English” –and you’ll notice that our musical style was a lot different two decade ago…

(Original speaker introduces the pilot audio cassette) No Transcript audio

The World of English – part I One of an introduction and survey of the English Language and its native speakers, in which you will hear example of practical English in action as the international language of the modern world, plus the history and development of the language, from Old English to Modern English, with examples of its evolution drawn from its greatest literature through the ages, performed by leading professional actors of the English speaking theatre, television and films. No here is Richard Gale to introduce you to the World of English:

English contains many variations of accent and even dialect, but unlike Italian or German, the dialects are rarely different enough to make comprehension impossible. True, a London Cockney would have a very difficult time in a conversation with a steel worker in Glasgow, and a Carolina cotton picker might find difficult to understand and be understood by a sheep farmer from Australia, but a businessman from, say, Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S.A. would have few problems dealing with a businessman form Dublin, Ireland or Sydney, Australia, Auckland, New Zealand, Liverpool in England, Johannesburg, South Africa or Kingston, Jamaica. A reasonably educated Standard English allows comprehension and communication all over the English-Speaking world. Can you guess where these native English speakers come from?

Voice number one

…”and often breakfast cereals like porridge and cornflakes” was an English-speaking South African.

Voice number two

…”often even the boss is Mike or John and not Mr. So-and-so” was from the Republic of Ireland.

Voice number thee

…”I grew up only speaking English” was a West Indian from Dominica.

Voice number four

…”at least it’s certainly true where I come from” was an American from the East Coast of the United States.

Voice number five

…”these are foreign concepts, so we have to use the foreign words” was from Australia.

But the geographical spread of the English-Speaking world cannot entirely account for English beings the “lingua franca” of the modern world. The industrial and technological achievements, mainly of Britain and the United States, has made English the international language of many different fields, like:

International air traffic control:

Lufthansa pilot: Bahrain Tower…this is Lufthansa 146 cleared to descend to 1,500 feet.

Bahrain tower: This is Bahrain Tower. Roger

Lufthansa pilot: Turning into final approach, runway three zero.

Bahrain tower: Wind three two zero degrees. One five knots. You are cleared to land – runway three zero.

Sea navigation (Morse code between ships)

The complex jargon of computers and space technology:

Armstrong: Houston, this is Tranquillity. We’re standing by for a go for cabin depress, over.

Mission Control: Tranquillity Base, this is Houston. You are go for cabin depressurization.

Armstrong: O.K., the hatch is coming open…

O.L. Houston, I’m on the porch.

Mission Control: Roger, Neil. O.K. Neil, we can see you coming down the ladder now.

Armstrong: I’m at the foot of the ladder. I’m going to stepoff the L.M. now…that’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. 


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Nuclear Power, No Thanks!

BRITAIN





Speaker: Justin Ratcliffe
Standard: British accent
Language level: Advanced
Source: www.speakup.com.br 

Nuclear Power,

Today there is considerable concern about global warming, not to mention the world’s dependence on Middle Eastern oil. For these reasons nuclear power, which was seen as the great evil a generation ago, is being re-evaluated. In July the British government announced its intention to build more nuclear power stations. In order to get an idea of public opinion, Speak Up took to the streets of Cambridge and asked people the question: “Does Britain Need More Nuclear Power? “ The first person to speak, Andy Holcombe, is a marketing director:

Andy Holcombe

(Standard British accent):

I think that’s a difficult question to answer. I do feel frustrated that the government doesn’t pay anything like the level of investment in non-nuclear, sustainable energy sources that it does in nuclear. I’d far rather see investment in wind, tidal barrage, methane, biomass-type energy than I would in sustaining something that’s just increasing the risk. If we do have to invest in nuclear, then I’d like to see more investment in things lie fusion, which is an inherently safe form of nuclear energy.

Stephen Murphy is a musician:

(Standard Northern Irish accent):

No, because it’s dirty and it’s dangerous. It’s difficult to dispose of the waste. And it involves no investment in other renewable energy sources like wind and it doesn’t encourage people to look after their own energy requirements and get insulation and things like in their houses.

Nicola Buckley is a festival organizer. She is a supporter of renewable technology. So what are her misgivings about nuclear power?

Nicola Buckley

(Standard British accent)

Maybe a threat from terrorism, attacks on nuclear power stations. And just the long time for the waste to, you know…it’s still dangerous and has to be disposed of.

Last but not least, Carol Roberts is a reception manager:

Carol Roberts

(Standard British accent):

No, I’m sure there must be some other way of…helping us to get more power than nuclear. I don’t agree with nuclear power. We’ve got a sea out there. We’ve got the windmills. America’s doing, what is it, in the desert? We must…I mean, all the sunshine we’re getting now. There must be another way that nuclear power. Look at…Chernobyl: you don’t know if that can happen. It’s like one of those things, it’s something waiting to happen. And I’d rather not go down that road, I’d rather go, you know, more natural. With all the technology we’ve got, surely we can do better than nuclear.

The Shape of Things to Come? (No audio)

The tiny village of Dunwich lies on the exposed east coast of England. From the cliff to p here you see all of nature’s natural power before you: the restless ocean, waves, tide and wind. Five miles (8km) to the south, rising large as a full moon over tranquil Minsmere Bird Reserve, is the white dome of Sizewell B nuclear power station. Sizewell B was completed in 1995 and it now produce three per cent of Britain’s total electricity needs; enough to supply 1.5 million households.

Good or Bad?

Nuclear has been making headlines ever since the first headlines ever since the first power stations opened in the 1950s. It has been celebrated as the solution to the world’s energy needs, condemned as a health risk labeled a “toxic time bomb.” Last year, for example, marked the twentieth anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. 

No time to Lose

In Britain, as elsewhere, alternatives to fossil fuels are badly needed. By 2016, a quarter of Britain’s electricity generating capacity will need to be replaced. Tony Blair is an enthusiastic supporter of nuclear power, but its attractiveness as an alternative source of energy is undermined by the huge coast of building, supplying and maintaining nuclear power stations, not to mention extracting rare uranium and disposing of toxic waste.