domingo, 9 de janeiro de 2011

Seriously: 'OK' Began as a Joke in a Newspaper in Boston in 1839 Part I

Source: www.voanews.com


AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: We talk with Allan Metcalf, author of the new book "OK: The Improbable Story of America's Greatest Word."
RS: And not just the greatest word, in his view.
ALLAN METCALF: "America's most important word. The most successful American export to the rest of the world. And also the embodiment of the American philosophy, the American way of thinking."
AA: "All this, packed into two letters."
ALLAN METCALF: "Yes, that's the beauty of it and that's the economy of it. One of the two aspects of the American view of the world is pragmatism, getting things done. Even if they're not perfect, they're OK. And the nice thing about OK is it doesn't imply that everything is perfect or beautiful or wonderful. In fact, it's a neutral affirmation. When you say 'That's OK' or someone asks you 'How are you?' and you say 'I'm OK,' it doesn't mean that you're in perfect health. But it also doesn't mean that you're sick.
RS: "OK [is] just two letters of the alphabet. Do they stand for something?"
Allan Metcalf
ALLAN METCALF: "Well, they do, as a matter of fact. One of the curious things about OK that makes it require a whole book to tell its story is that it began as a joke. It was on March 23, 1839, in a Boston newspaper, that the newspaper first used 'o.k.' and explained those as an abbreviation for 'all correct.' And, of course, the joke was that 'o' is not the beginning of 'all' and 'k' is not the beginning of 'correct.' So this thing supposedly all correct was not all correct."
AA: "Kind of a sarcastic joke, or what was it meant to be?"
ALLAN METCALF: "Well, it was not so sarcastic. It turned out that at that time in Boston there were all sorts of supposedly humorous abbreviations in the newspapers of that sort. And most of these abbreviations completely disappeared. And you could well imagine that they would, because they were rather stupid.
"But it turns out that in the next year, 1840, in the American presidential election of 1840, a man named Martin Van Buren was running for re-election. He happened to come from Kinderhook, New York, and so somebody thought of calling him 'Old Kinderhook' and then thought of founding clubs supporting him throughout the country, called OK Clubs. OK, Old Kinderhook, is OK, all correct or all right. And that suddenly gave continued life and prominence to OK.
"And then there was a third, very strange thing that happened. During that presidential election year, Martin Van Burne's predecessor as president had been Andrew Jackson, and so there was an attack on Andrew Jackson by an opponent of Van Buren. The attack said that Jackson couldn't spell, so that Jackson would look at a document and if he approved of it, he would write OK on it, meaning it was all correct. Now it turns out that that was a complete hoax.
"It turns out that Andrew Jackson actually could spell pretty well, and the curator of the documents of Andrew Jackson confirms that he never wrote OK on a document. But as a result of that story, within about twenty years people really began marking OK on documents, as they have done ever since. And so it took on a practical, down-to-earth aspect that ultimately developed into the OK we know today."
RS: But Allan Metcalf says the idea that OK began as a joke kept people trying to guess where it really came from.
ALLAN METCALF: "The OK-as-Andrew-Jackson's hoax was the first misleading statement of its origins. And then around the 1880s a professor decided that the true origin was from the Choctaw Indian language, where they had an expression like OK which means 'it is so,' and for various reasons that was proposed as the true explanation for OK. They spelled it 'okeh,' and the only American president ever to have a PhD, Woodrow Wilson, thought that was the correct explanation, so he would mark o-k-e-h on documents."
AA: And, as we will hear next week, there is more to "OK: The Improbable Story of America's Greatest Word." Allan Metcalf is an English professor at MacMurray College in Illinois and executive secretary of the American Dialect Society.
RS:    And that's WORDMASTER for this week. Transcripts and MP3s of our program are at voanews.com/wordmaster. With Avi Arditti. I'm Rosanne Skirble.

sábado, 8 de janeiro de 2011

Go

Source: Speak Up
Standard: British and American accent
Language level: Basic


Go words!

GO! GO! GO!

The English Language loves to take a simple Word and give it multiple meanings. Take go, for example, which doesn’t only mean to leave or travel from  A to B.

We meet a man in the street who complains his car won’t go! That means he can’t start the engine. The man is very angry; in fact, he goes bananas, that is, he becomes crazy. That’s just the beginning: a bomb goes off, or explodes, and yet fires go out, or stop burning. Food goes off, too, but that means it’s rotten. A young man can ask a girl to go out with him (be his girlfriend). They then go steady (have a long term relationship). Unfortunately, things go wrong. The girl goes off with another man (leaves him). So the boyfriend goes to pieces (has a mental breakdown). Yet life goes on (continues), even though it’s touch and go (an uncertain situation) for a while.

BURN, BABY, BURN!

Burn is another example: you burn wood or coal on a fire. The fire burns out when there’s no more wood or coal. Life is very stressful today and many people suffer from burnout: they are so exhausted, they don’t have the energy to go on.

Record companies are also stressed out: they’re losing money because so many people are illegally downloading music from the internet and burning their own CDs.

Finally, a piece of advice: if you are thinking of making big changes in your life, don’t burn your bridges – that is, don’t eliminate the possibility of a return.



Your dreams will come true...



Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwsvXdQ_HbU&feature=related


I wish may your dreams come true, a wonderful weekend, health, peace and love. Share it for friends, and all the best. See you tomorrow, of course, if God willing. 





In my view point VOA is the best content for Students of course I'm addicted to listen to the podcasts there, and my pleasure to promote this wonderful site on my blog, keep in touch with English tips and visit VOA's Site.

Source: www.voanews.com


Now, the VOA Special English program WORDS AND THEIR STORIES.

As we told you last week, every American state has a nickname. Here are some more of them.

Idaho is known as the Gem State. This is not because it has diamonds but because it believes it is the jewel of the western Rocky Mountains. Illinois is the Land of Lincoln. It is named for Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president who led the nation through the Civil War in the eighteen sixties. The Midwestern state of Indiana is called theHoosier State, but nobody is quite sure why.

One story is that the word was used to mean poor farmers or uneducated people. No wonder the state legislature instead calls Indiana the Crossroads of America. Iowa's nickname, theHawkeye State, is in honor of Black Hawk, an Indian chief who spent most of his life in neighboring Illinois!

Kansas also has a "hawkish" nickname: the Jayhawk State. Jayhawkers were free-state guerrilla fighters opposed to the pro-slavery fighters in the years before the Civil War.

Kentucky is the Bluegrass State. Bluegrass is really bright green but looks bluish from a distance. Louisiana is the Bayou State. A bayou is a slow-moving stream. Hundreds of them flow through this southern state, and many are full of alligators!

Maine, in the nation's northeast, is the Pine Tree State because it is covered in evergreen woods. And directly across the country, on the Pacific Coast, is the state of Washington. It also has lots of evergreen trees so, not surprisingly, it is the Evergreen State.

The eastern state of Massachusetts is the Bay State. This body of water separates most of the state from famous Cape Cod.

Six state nicknames are taken from native animals. Michigan is theWolverine State. A wolverine is a small, fierce mammal. The badger is a similar and equally fierce creature and Wisconsin is the Badger State.

Neighboring Minnesota, the Gopher State, is named for a much nicer animal that builds hills and tunnels. However, the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes is written on Minnesota's vehicle license plates.

North Dakota gets its nickname, the Flickertail State not from some bird, but from a little squirrel. South Dakota takes its nickname, the Coyote State, from an animal that thinks flickertails are good to eat!

And Oregon, the Beaver State, borrows its nickname from the large, flat-tailed rodent that uses trees to build dams.

Next week, we will tell you about more state nicknames, including one that is about people's feet!

(MUSIC)

This VOA Special English program was written by Ted Landphair. I'm Barbara Klein. You can find more WORDS AND THEIR STORIES at voaspecialenglish.com.

Petroglyph

Pedros' Expedition, Picui-PB

                                                                              Picuí-PB


                                                       Petroglyph, Inga PB
                                     
Surrounded by the Brazilian' countryside it's common to find out inscriptions known as according to Tupy Language Itaquatiara that it means (Engraving rock). Scientifically known as Petroglyph basically find out nearby rivers, natural swimming pools and waterfalls. Petroglyph are common also in several countries for instance in USA, to be more specific Utah. 
                                                                    Utah-USA


Most scenes are unrecognizable (abstracts), I mean, you cannot identify them, there are not so much studies about this tradition, in particular in Brazil the Petroglyph have about 2.000 until 6.000 years Before Present. 

JEFFREY ARCHER




Source: Speak Up
Language Level: Intermediate
Standard: British Accent


Jeffey and Judas

Jeffrey Archer, 67, is a decidedly controversial figure. His life has consisted of a series of highs and lows in which he has built a business fortune, gone bankrupt, built another fortune writing best-sellers and served a prison sentence for perjury. A former Conservative Member of Parliament, he is a member of the House of Lords, having received the title Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare in 1992 and, according to the latest Sunday Times Rich Kist, he is worth an estimated £ 70 million (100 million).

As a writer, Archer’s credits include thrillers such as Not a Penny more, not a Penny Less, Kane and Abel and First Among Equal. His latest offering, written in collaboration with Irish theology professor Francis J. Maloney, is a little different. It’s called The Gospel According to Judas by Benjamin Iscariot. When Jeffrey Archer met with Speak Up, we asked him how his regular fans reacted to his latest book:

Jeffey Archer
Standard British Accent:

Well, they aren’t running to the shops to buy it in the way they do a normal book, except in Ireland, where it went straight to number three, and the Brazilians are going mad about it, but the normal places , it’s been very steady, very solid, but only reached number three.

LIFE BEHIND BARS

Jeffry Archer was released from prison in 2003, after having served half of a four-year sentence. We asked him whether the experience of prison had influenced his latest book:

Jeffrey Archer:

No, I don’t think the time in prison made any difference at all. I was writing prison diaries then, I was far more interested in observing prison from the inside and writing what I saw in front of me, so no, I could say to you it didn’t affect me either way.

But we were curious to know whether prison had changed his own view life:

Jeffrey Archer:

Only in the sense that I’m aware what a privileged life I’ve had and continue to have and how many people who have no parental upbringing, no opportunity, are immediately disadvantaged. In that sense, yes.

THE MAGIC FORMULA

And yet, in spite of the disasters in his life, Archer has enjoyed immense success as a writer. In conclusion we asked him what was the secret:

Jeffrey Archer:

Hard work, energy, you need a bit of luck, in the sense that being able to write a tale, being able to write a story, being able to write a yarn, is a God-given gift. I mean, otherwise everybody would be doing it; so is playing the violin, so is painting a picture. So that side…but you’ve still then got to have the energy and determination and application to actually do it. I always say to young people: “Energy plus talent, you’re a king; energy and no talent; you’re a prince; talent and no energy, you’re a pauper.”

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Family Album, 25



Source: Family Album, USA