English Tips Self-Taught

quinta-feira, 30 de dezembro de 2010

quarta-feira, 29 de dezembro de 2010

The Tower of Babel

The Tower of Babel

Source: Speak Up

A fifth of the planet speaks English competently. Another sixth is learning. 80 per cent of computer information is in English, as are Deutsche Bank board meetings.

Yet the notion of one language for all sounds familiar. Remember Genesis, Chapter 11? Humans build the Tower of Babel up to Heaven. God doesn’t like it. He replaces the single languages that let us cooperate with today’s multilingual babble.

Can English recapture monolingual paradise?

COCAINE GLUE

Automated translator, like Babel Fish (this strange name comes from Douglas Adam’s science fiction comedy, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galax) seem to offer instant solutions. But here’s a typical computer translation: “I apologize for my (bad) English: I am Brazilian and as it’s know, nobody is perfect. Kindly, is it comprehensible what do I have written?” In Brazil’s Fortaleza Airport, you’ll find Bleeding jar and Cocaine Glue on the drinks menu: meaningless translations for jar of sangria and Coca Cola. Worst still, Pepsi’s slogan, Come alive with pepsi, was translated into Chinese as “Pepsi brings dead ancestors back to life.”

FALSE FRIENDS

It’s easy to be fooled by Portenglish Anglicism. You cannot play baske or volley; the sports are basketball and volleyball. Outdoor means outside in English; big advertisements on the street are billboards. You don’t go to a shopping, but to a mall. Other nationalities have this problem, too. Italian speakers get confused with Britalian: slip is an old-fashioned English word for a lady’s under-garment, not boy’s underpants. George Pullman gave his name to the sleeping compartments for trains, not to buses. A showman, once people on TV are presenters or hosts. The French love investing nouns. Un parking is a car park, un relooking a makeover, un déstockage a clearance sale. These are not English, but Franglais.

CONFUSING MIXTURES

US immigration has created many hybrids. Hispanic communities have producer dictionaries to help your suffer the web, deletear a document and vacuumear you carpet. There’s even a Hollywood film called Spanglish.

The Dutch learn English in elementary school and watch undubbed films. Yet even they make mistakes. “That can instead of “That’s possible.” “I hate you welcome” for “I welcome you.” A Dutch prime minister confused undertaker with entrepreneur. The University of Delft awards a large sausage for the worst Dunglish errors. (“Worst” is Dutch for sausage.)

NEW ENGLISHES

Linguists speak of New Englishes: the healthy diversity of world English. But, as the pressure to learn English grows, these half-baked versions are proliferating. Computers can’t learn for us – not yet. With untrust worthy translation engines, dodgy internet courses, and troublesame false friends, the monolingual dream still sounds like babble of Babel.

The Tower of Babel Genesis, Charpter 11

And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech…And they said, Let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven…And the Lord said, Behold, the people have all one language; and now nothing will be restrained from them. Let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; confound the language of all the earth.

THE RED HAT SOCIETY

Language Level: Advanced

Source: SPEAK UP

Standard: British Accent

Girls Just Want to Have Fun

THE RED HAT SOCIETY

When Sue Ellen Cooper was passing a charity shop in Tucson, Arizona, one Day is 1998, she bought a bright red fedora hat, for no other reason than it was cheap and, she thought, quite dashing. A couple of years later she came across the poem “Warning” by Jenny Joseph, which begins: “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple, With a red hat that doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me. At that point she decided that she would give all her friends bright red hats when they reached the age of 50.

What started out as a bit of fun and frivolity for ladies has taken the world by storm and the Red Hat Society now has 1.5 million members worldwide. But while wearing a red hat may just be a bit of fun in the States, it used to mean something quite different in the UK, as Judy Brown, known as “Queen Wren Ruby Judy” to her chums in the “Belles aux Chapeaux Rouges” chapter in Blackpool, explains:

Judy Brown

(Northern English accent)

Traditionally, nice ladies do not wear red hats, and certainly in England, they don’t wear red hats.

Traditionally, women, “red hat, no knickers,” you see, it was ladies of the night, really, but now, Americans didn’t realise that, they just thought it was fun because people just don’t wear red hats.

A BAD NAME…

The wearing of red hats is no longer the sole right of “ladies of the night” or prostitutes. Indeed the women of the Red Hat Society are respectable older ladies who are seeking “friendship and fun.” The society has its own hierarchy. Members in their 40s are either lavender or pink red-hatters, while “graduation" – a variation on “graduation” – comes at the age of 50.

Judy Brown thinks that many members are discovering how to have fun for the first time:

Judy Brown:

So many women of our age always feel you have to do something for a reason, not just to go and have fun. I think men haven’t got that. Men can do something just for fun, women very rarely do that. You know, they actually don’t do anything for fun, there’s always, “Oh well, I’ve got to do the shopping on the way home” or something like that. Just to go and have fun, dress up, you know, wear a feather boa during the day, put a big red hat on and go forth and have fun with your friends and laugh and then go home again.

POST-FEMINIST?

Yet Judy thinks that the Red Hat Society actually has a more serious role to play:

Judy Brown

It’s done more than, I think, all the feminist movement did, in one sense, because women are friends wherever you are, and the emails I get, oh, my goodness me! it’s just one man’s work keeping up with everything.

No Rules (no sound available)

The Red Hat Society was founded by Sue Ellen Cooper, its “Exalted Queen Mother.”It is a “disorganization” with no fixed rules because, says the Exalted Queen Mother, “Most of us are really tired of rules.” Actually there is one rule: you need to be female and 50 in order to join. Women under 50 can become “pink hatters.” For more info, visit: www.redhatsociety.com

Like this post? Please share it for friends!