Category: This n That
REAL ENGLISH 1
First audio recording and exercise of real English.
Why real English? Because a lot of what we´re listening to, to practice are n´t real in the sense that it was a real conversation. Who does n´t enjoy a great TV series? And what a great way to keep up your English. Thing is, what you hear is scripted , it´s drama, and it´s carefully scripted with all the ums and ahhs and stutters an stumbles ironed out, making it very easy to understand. Then when you´re sitting there in your on line meeting listening to native English speakers you´re like “But are they really speaking English!”
If you want to listen to real English there is no better place to start than radio phone in shows. There´s no script, those phoning in are often nervous or angry and they really do have a point to make. The people that phone in to these shows are not polished Ted Talkers nor talented actors who know how to speak clearly. In fact these oddballs that bother to phone in are in very much the same position as those you come across in meetings, who are also angry and nervous.
Our first example comes from a football phone in. The three odd minutes recorded here contain everything: idiom, dialect, accent, and all manner of grammatical structures.
Wishy washy-ish language
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Adding –y or – ish to the end of adjectives and nouns
If you add these suffixes to the ends of words it means the thing described are similar to the adjective or noun used. In the FOOD TASTING post on my JUST LISTEN page the speaker describes the food he is tasting as mushroomy, so he is n´t actually eating mushrooms but he is saying that the thing he´s tasting as having a mushroom taste.
Then the other presenter tastes a crisp and says it´s soggy-ish. In other words, it´s a bit soggy.
You can use the -ish suffix with some adjectives to say the thing described is rather or quite whatever. What´s the difference between:
If you want a budget flight fly Ryanair, they´re really cheap.
Or
Easy jet are pretty cheap-ish too.
In my example I´m meaning Easy Jet are quite cheap, but Ryanair are the cheapest.
How about:
You´re too young to go discos love.
Or
You´re a bit young-ish to go to discos.
Maybe in the seond example the parent is n´t trying to come across as so strict as in the first one.
The -ish suffix The -ish suffix can be added to numbers too to mean “around that number”
I´m not sure of his exact age, I´d say he´s thirty-ish
Shall we leave five-ish?
It costs fifty or sixty-ish to get there.
Perhaps the ish suffix is rather redundant, I mean, one might say it´s a pretty easy – ish exam but not it´s pretty difficult-ish. Too many syllables in the later I suppose. Anyway, keep a listen out for
-ish words, once you´ve heard a few examples you might find yourself using them.
Back to the -y suffix. You´ll hear these words a lot in culinary circles. Sometimes the creation of the adjective from the noun is a common one: sugar – sugary you´d expect some foods to be sweet or sugary and you might hear “it´s too sugary”. Then there are other adjectives created from nouns which describe food in a more metaphorical sense. Whisky descriptions use words like “chocolatey” and “buttery” and clearly whisky does n´t contain butter or chocolate. Then we have words like “velvety” to describe lots of drinks from whiskies to wines. What does it mean, velvet (terciopelo) is a material! But it´s a luxury material and it´s lovely to touch, so perhaps a velvety drink is one which has a lovely touch as it swirls round the mouth.
Anyway, at the top there´s a wine tasting clip I found on You Tube. The young lady uses a lot of -y suffix adjectives. Some of them make sense for describing beer (yeasty) and others are obviously metaphorical (grassy).
Task have a look at the clip, note down those -y adjectives and decide which ones are metaphorical.
HER BOOTS WERE MADE FOR WALKIN´ AND SO WERE MINE
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Great song not just for the music and the lyrics but for improving your English. There´s KEEP + …ing to describe ingrained bad habits, GOING TO for intentions, WILL for promises, third conditional, modal OUGHT TO sang as it sounds OUGHTA, ellipsis of final consonants (messin´, gettin´), made up words (truthin´, samin´), slang (ain´t), idioms (playing with fire).
And hey, what a groovy tune! Starts off with just acoustic guitar strummin´, then comes in the walking double bass line with the snare drum, and finally the brass section, and over all that Nancy Sinatra´s distinctive talky but harmonius voice, just as with her dad´s. If you wanna hear good music, stave off depression and get high (spiritually and linguistically) listen to stuff from the sixties and seventies (or most country, ok, the music´s a bit tame sometimes but the lyrics are poetry), and if you have any depressed friends who are not only strugglin´ with English but even strugglin´to articulate what they mean in their own language tell them to ditch Ed Sheeran and the reggatin.
I´m re-posting an article which I wrote 18 months ago, I´m not quite as optimistic as I was back then, but, those boots are still going strong! If you´re inspired to write about an article of clothing or accessory that means a lot to you, I´d love to see it.
MY BOOTS WERE MADE FOR TALKING
My grandmother died in 1999. She wasn´t well off but she´d managed to put some money aside to leave to all of her grandchildren. It wasn´t a fortune, just five hundred pounds, but it touched me that she should have left me any money at all. What can you do with five hundred pounds as regards investment? I could indeed have put it in a savings account and today it would be worth about six hundred. Big deal! Besides, I´d have taken the cash out and at some point ended up laying it out on rent, or some other necessary but tedious payment.
So I decided to get myself some stuff which would last for a long time and really serve as keepsakes which, every time I looked at them, would remind me of my grandmother. I bought three things, a silver framed Moorish style mirror from a shop near the Alhambra in Granada, a similarly styled Moorish blanket, also from Granada, and a pair of boots. I had about fifty pounds left and I don´t remember exactly what I spent it on but I probably spent it on a night out. My grandmother was Scottish. Scots love drinking and when it´s your birthday they´ll often send you a card with a bit of money in it and the message “Have a drink on me”so I´m sure she´d have been chuffed that I splashed a bit of the cash out on booze.
I have no idea what happened to the mirror but I expect it got mislaid when I was moving house, which I do quite a lot. I still have the Moroccan blanket. It´s great, it´s a sort of fiery orange colour. And I still have the boots.
The boots have done a lot of walking and a lot of talking. I got a pair of Sendero Cowboy boots. Senderos will knock you back at least a couple of hundred quid but they´re well worth it, because twenty years down the line, they´re still going strong. I´ve had them re – heeled and re – soled a couple of times because they´ve trod a hell of a lot of asphalt and a lot of dirt – summer asphalt, winter dirt, rainy asphalt, night time dirt. In fact, they aren´t cowboy boots but motorbike style boots.
They´ve seen me through thick and thin. If I´d been a motorbiker, which I´m not, they surely would have saved my life. As it is, I think the boots are blessed because they helped me out in so many situations which I had to run away from or crawl away from, usually after a marathon drinking session.
I do remember my grandmother chatting to me, in front of the fire, one winter night, glass of whisky in hand and me with a face as long as a dark winter night because of some unrequited love and because I´d failed some exam, which was the norm. My brother and sister were going great guns. They had girlfriends and boyfriends, they´d gone to university, and they had a bright future ahead of them. My grandmother poured me a glass of whisky despite my protestations. “It´s medicine” she always said. “Son, I know you think you´re a failure, but be patient, because I know, out of the three of you, it´s you who is going to be the biggest success one day”.
Many many moons later, I´m feeling somewhat optimistic. So optimistic in fact that I´m thinking about a rather cool Suzuki motorbike that I´d like to own, to drive me up and down to the beach from the mountain top mansion where I´m currently living. Right now I haven´t got a dime. And I´m not really a superstitious chap. Except where those boots are concerned.
Those boots have ridden me out of much trouble and those boots are going to ride me to the mountain top.
YUCK!!!!
Yuck is in Calle Atocha, Madrid. It´s cheap and cheerful. In fact, it´s cheap, but it is n´t cheerful. Most of these Chines bargain stores and all night stores are anything but cheerful, they´re distinctively gloomy. Yuck is an unusual name for a shop, but quite fitting for said shop in Calle Atocha, because yuck is an exclamation we use in reaction to something to horrible or disgusting.
It´s often preceded by an interjection which is a bit hard to represent in writing but is something like uuuuuuuurrrrr!
Below there are a list of interjections and recordings of them, and under that are the situations in which we utter these phrases. They are not in the right order, so the task is match the interjection to the situation.
1. oi/oy 2. tut (pronounced like a clicking t) 3. oops/ whoops (pronounced ups/wups) (and sometimes followed the exclamation a daisy) 4. ahh
5. eyy? 6. ow/ouch
7. mmm 8. hmmm 9. aahhh 10. uh huh 11. hey or ey
12. shh (or sometimes the exclamation shush!)
a. Used when you have a small mishap or accident.
b. Utter disbelief
c. We utter this sound when they hurt themselves or experience a sudden pain.
d. Polite interjection to disagree
e. Be quiet
f. A reaction of tenderness to something inncocent and small, usually kittens or babies.
g. To show that you are listening.
h. Angry reaction to someone who has offended you or done something which has upset you and then they quickly leave.
i. Pleasure, often to food
j. This is said to oneself as a reaction of sudden exasperation, often it´s followed by a long sigh.
k. Sudden realisation.
l. To attract someones attention when they go off and they or you have forgotten something
Now listen to the recordings of these interjections and explain what is happening in each situation:
Finally, to practice making these sounds improvise dialogues with them.
FUCK ME!!!..sorry GOODNESS ME!!
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“Oh my Gaaaad”
“oh your WHAAAT?”
If a young American lady were trying sushi, and she found it delicious, she would say:
oh my gaaaaad, this sushi is to die for, it´s soooooooo gooooood.
If a beer swiggin´ lad were eating a post night out kebab and he thought it was tasty he´d say:
Fuckin´ ´ell, this kebab´s the fuckin´dogs bollocks, like.
The other day I bought some vegetarian sausages to try them out. When I tried them I exclaimed:
Bloomin´ ´eck mom, these veggie bangers taste like real sausages!
I would n´t have said “oh my gaaaad….” because I´m not young, I´m not American, and I´m not a girl. If I´d have said “Fuckin´ ´ell…..” I would n´t be sitting here writing this now, I´d be in hospital, even at 81 years old my mom still likes to put me in my place.
Us language experts call this socio-linguistics, which basically means women talk a bit different to men, youngsters to older folks, city dwellers to country types and posh people to commoners. But as the beer swigging lad would say “When in Rome do as the fuckin´Romans do” so if you´re a young chap out necking beers with your English workmates don´t ever say “Oh my god!”, they´ll never forgive you, but if you´re ever eating sausages with my mom, don´t use the f – word, or else my mom will be like “Bloomin éck son, ´ave yaw bin teechin úm them swear words agen?”
So, if you want to be cool, if you want to sound smart, if you want to join me in my mysoginistic, ageist, nationalistic, puritanical tirade against young, American atheist city girls, stop saying Oh My Gaaad!
Here are some expressions to express surprise or annoyance that you can use instead of oh my god. Just like in the video above for say what! the intonation has to reflect the meaning, so when you are surprised or annoyed you reflect that with your tone of voice as well as your words.
So, if you´re annoyed you can say damn or damn it.
Try saying it, like you are annoyed. Think of a situation that might annoy you, then say it.
To express surprise you can say My goodness! Think of something which might give you a pleasant surprise then say the expression like you mean it.
SECOND TASK: Go through the list and decide if the exclamation expresses anger/ annoyance, or surprise., or if they can be used for both (e.g flipping heck – flippin´ éck!) As you read out each phrase think about which words and syllables might be stressed.
I have added a few to the list, some of them are Americanisms, can you spot which ones?
Here are some more common (perhaps old fashioned) exclamations:
| ANGER/ ANNOYANCE | SUPRISE |
| Damn! | Wow! |
| FOR CRYING OUT LOUD /MY GOODNESS/ BY GUM/ JESUS H CHRIST/ HEAVENS ABOVE /WELL I NEVER /OH MY WORD /JEEZ /FOR GOD´S SAKE/ CRIKEY (flippin´/bloomin´) HECK/ HOLY MOLLY/ | GOODNESS GRACIOUS ME/ (gor) BLIMEY/ DAMN BLOODY HELL/ GEE WHIZ/ SAY WHAT GOOD HEAVENS/ GOOD GRIEF / JUMPING JEEPERS |
DON´T LOOK BACK
I´m looking back on 2020 as I usually do towards the end of the year. In previous years my looking back was often one of regret, you know, plans that had came to nothing, but this year my looking back is utterly different, for obvious reasons. It´s been a funny old year has n´t it? I´m at my mom and dad´s house in England right now, sitting in the kitchen in the same spot as I was back at the start of January when I switched on the radio to hear some foreboding news: America had killed Iran´s Military General and this action might well spark a huge regional conflict, with all the consequences for the world that that entails. At the end of the news bulletin there was something about some new virus in China. My thought, I´m ashamed to say, was well, they´re Chinese, that sort of thing that happens in those places. So, as they say….and the rest was history.
We´re a month away from Christmas. Normally at this time of year, like most folks, I´d be looking forward to Christmas, thinking about what presents to get, who I´d be visiting, what I´d be eating for Christmas dinner; and winding my work down, or more often than not, stepping it up, realising that a lot of the plans I had made had gone awry. This year´s different because I´m not looking forward to Christmas and I don´t mean that in the normal sense, like the person that does n´t look forward to Christmas because they dread being couped up with the in-laws for a week, but I´m saying it almost in a literal sense: I´m simply not thinking about something that´s not going to happen for a month, or maybe isn´t going to happen at all. And I´m certainly not looking beyond Christmas which is what a lot of us do with our resolutions, you know, I´m gonna get fit, gonna quit smoking, gonna be a nicer person.
It´s all pretty here and now for me at the moment and I´m sure it´s the same for most people. As I said, I´m in England, I´m staying with my folks, a good time as any especially as all my plans are on hold. My dad´s eighty one years old and over the last three or four years his decline has been staggering. He´s got every issue in the book: Memory problems, eye problems, mystery stomach pains and worst of all for him, some blood illness which means he has very little energy to do anything. Basically he just sits staring at the telly for the whole day and from time to time nips out into the garden to sweep up fallen leaves. If he can do that for ten minutes he feels he´s done a days work. I used to look up to him both literally and metaphorically. He´s much bigger than I am, and he´s been a whole lot more successful than I have, at least in material terms: Two big houses, one in Spain, two successful kids and myself, several cars, several different jobs, professions and businesses, and he still manged to stick with my mother, despite all the pressure and distractions which drive many marriages to the divorce courts. Going back ten years I still remember him chopping huge trees down and sawing them up for wood, digging holes, climbing up ladders, fixing drains, lights, plumbing, you know, a man in traditional sense, or doing deals with suppliers and financiers for his pub, where he would calm deal with drunk aggresive customers, one time even literally fighting with a bunch of football hooligans: They all ended up crying on the floor! I too was on the floor, as I say, literally looked up to him, he was a giant. And like most kids I looked to him to drive me about, to Scouts, to Judo classes, I looked to him to help me out when I was hard up, and to fix my bike and things.
But now it´s him that appears to be looking up to me. He seems to think I´m some sort of a huge academic. He never tires of telling people “My son´s done very well for himself, he´s a university professor” because I once spent two weeks giving English classes to Italian kids at a Scottish university. He also tells people “He runs his own successful business” That would be true save for the adjective. So he´s looking to my mom a lot lately, basically for everything, as I say, all he does is watches the telly and sweeps up leaves. She does the rest.
So, it´s been a strange year, I feel my outlook has completely changed, and I would n´t be surprised if many more people feel the same way as I do. Perhaps my outlook´s been changing anyway, wisdom that comes with experience. I spent so many years looking back. I could have done this, I should have done that, I would have achieved the other, if only….But, you live and learn, the “could” bit is definitely true, I wasted a lot of opportunities, the “should” bit is only true
in hindsight and the “would” bit is fantasy – how does anybody know for sure what would have happened? So now I´m not looking back, nor am I looking forward. And I´m not looking inwards that much either. I´m just going with the flow but looking out as I flow along for the pitfalls that tripped me up from before.
While I´m here, near the town I grew up in, I´m looking up a few old friends and aquaintances from the past. Strolling down the High Street to the bus yesterday I saw two homeless chaps lying in cardboard boxes and covered in blankets. That should n´t be surprising but it is because I´m in a tiny town here and previously I´d only seen down and outs in big cities. Last month I was in Madrid and now I´m seeing more homeless people there now than tourists. I always looked down on the homeless (both literally and metaphorically) Like a lot of people I always presumed the homeless were either addicts or just crafty chancers looking to rake in more money by sitting on their arses begging than grafting eight hours in a factory. But clearly things have changed. And not that I wish to feel or sound smug now, but my perspective, work wise at least, looking to the new year, is definitely rosy. As I say, I´m not dreaming about the future and I definitely don´t have a dream (You come to realise that all those pop songs that go on about not losing your dreams, or you gotta dream, just the same as all those songs that go on about how he/ she´ll always love you, are in fact just pop songs, if you want to grow up listen to country music, music for adults, not teenagers!) So yea, I´m making plans, I´m looking to run some English courses in real places with real people and real food, rather than smudgy images on Zoom or fuzzy voices on the phone. But right now, to be honest, like a good English man…..I´m looking forward to a nice cuppa tea and a biscuit!
Let´s take a look at some of the language therein used:
1. Look forward to something
There is no direct translation in Spanish for this term so perhaps that´s why I so often have to explain it. But I think there´s more to it. The essence of looking forward to something is dreaming, it´s about thinking about something really nice that´s going to happen and it´s ofetn used to contrast with your present situation:
I´m really looking forward to my holidays
Might not be said, but it will be thought by nearly everybody, in June, when you´re around a table and others are hammering out some deal and you peek over and out the window at the blazing sunshine and your thoughts drift off to the beach bar or the mountain retreat before your thoughts come back to the meeting you´re sweating through.
Think back to childhood. What did you really look forward to (apart from Christmas and your birthday)? In my case it was TV shows and certain sugary things. And what did you not look forward to (apart from exams and the dentist)?
2. Look down on versus look up to:
“Homeowners often look down on plumbers”
This odd example came from one of those on line dictionaries. The meaning is clearly literal, plumbers tend to work at floor level, though I don´t know if there´s any truth in the statement, I mean I´ve never regarded a plumber as some sort of a pathetic inferior being, if anything it´s the opposite, they turn up, turn a few screws, pop a new pipe in, the job´s finished in fifteen minutes and they wack you with a huge bill before leaving. If anything I look up to these sorts of folks, they aren´t mugs! I was trying to think if I look down on anyone. I´d like to think I don´t. I wouldn´t say I look down on waiters but often one forgets that though the person serving you might just be a waiter, they may well have a university degree and are just biding their time until they find a proper job. Can you think of any more examples?
I ´ve often looked up to teachers. Not all teachers but one or two I´ve had over the years. A student of mine really does look up to me. He compares me with the Vaughan legend! Well, I don´t look up to Vaughan as a teacher but as an English teacher that´s made money, I definitely look up to him.
Who have you looked up to? Who looks up to you?
3. Looking back – This notion serves to practice the third conditional. You can think about it from a position of regret (If only I had…) or as a learning curve. Here´s mine – Looking back, when I got laid off from my previous job I should n´t have taken it for granted that I´d find new work and clients so easily. As I said in the previous example, somebody might compare me to Mr. Vaughan but I certainly don´t have his marketing magnetism. So the lesson that I´m learning is I need to hone my sales skills, as well as keeping up the good work as a teacher. What about yourseves, looking back what lessons have you learnt?
4. Looking to do something.
One thing I´m looking to do in the immediate term is revamp this blog/ website because it´s a bit hard to find your way around. Technology is n´t my strong point but I´m enjoying doing the blog and I do feel pretty motivated to start getting my hands dirty tech wise.
The meaning I´m trying to convey with looking to is that you´re planning to do something from a rather enthusiastic hopeful standpoint.
What about yourselves, or what about your firm?
5. Look to someone to do something for you.
When I started out on my own I thought there might be people I could look to to help technology and sales wise. Thus far I have no one I can look to. I´m not saying that there is n´t anybody I can look to to give me a hand, but that so far I have n´t found them.
Who do you look for to do things for you? Who looks to you to do things for them? If you´re in a management or supervisory role their will certainly be people who you look to to do things.
6. Looking up people from the past
In my text above, I told a white lie. I have n´t looked up anybody yet since I came to England and
I´m not sure if I will do so because some of those people I haven´t seen for eons, I would literally have to look for them, so I´m talking about old school friends. Come to think of it, few people have looked me up and I´ve met a lot of people in my work. Is this because I´m giving off bad vibes about looking up ghosts essentially, I mean my childhood friends don´t exits because they are no longer children.
And yourselves, have old friends or colleagues looked you up? Do you enjoy looking people up or does it worry you?
7. Look out
Means be careful. If someone is about to cross the road when a car´s coming you´ll yell LOOK OUT! But if they´re about to get married, start a business, change careers, or make other
significant decisions, what pitfalls should they look out for (Look before you leap, as they say)
As ever, in bold I´ve highlighted other useful expressions that you´d do well to look up yourselves, and henceforth, look out for.
FOOTNOTE
The song at the top of this link is Van Morrison. Van, sporting a fantastic comb over (these day´s his heads always covered by a hat) wrote the song at just 17, pretty young even to think about looking back, and alongside him sits and growls the most bluesy the blackest the most African of the great blues men, John Lee Hooker. The song kicks in at 1.40 secs.
HOW TO TALK POSH 1: UTTERLY
I don´t say utterly or utter. I´m not posh. Neither is rap artist London rap legend Dizzy Raascal
who´s just won an award recognising his talent and which will be presented to him by Queen Elizabeth. You can imagine what Rascal would say if he got a silver plated knife (Knives are fashion items amongst London rappers) from his girlfriend for his birthday:
“Wo, yea babe, innit, fuckin´ awesome, right!”
Rascal isn ´t posh. But he isn´t stupid. If he said that in front of the Queen she´d call over one of her interpreters. What he would say, on being presented with his silver plated Master of the British Empire medal is:
“Maám, I am utterly astonished and utterly humbled that a young man of my background should merit such an honour”
So, you don´t have to be posh to talk posh, but if you want to earn respect from posh folks, learn to speak like them.
Joking aside, utterly is used like absolutely, to emphasise ungradable adjectives and nouns. A gradable adjective or noun is one which has varying degrees:
a bit hot, fairly hot, very hot
Non gradable adjective or nouns are those which express an extreme:
boiling, terrified, exhausted etc.
You can´t be a bit exhausted. If you say you are exhausted you mean you are as tired as is possible.
Utterly, aside from being used by the posh, is used in formal speech, so you will often hear utterly coming from politicians.
TASK
Choosing from the following list of adjectives or nouns combine utterly with an adjective or utter with a noun to react to the situations which follow.
wonderful, marvellous, fantastic, marvellous, amazing, divine, heavenly
awful, terrible, disgusting, wretched
trash, garbage, rubbish, nonsense
ridiculous, pathetic
hideous, frightful, dreadful
exhausted, worn out
delighted, delightful, over the moon
devastated, heartbroken
furious, livid
terrified, petrified
fascinated, intrigued
Example situation:
A friend has told you she´s moving to Australia. You say to her
“How utterly wonderful, I´m utterly delighted for you you´ve always wanted to live amongst marsupials”
On the other hand you might tell someone that you´re utterly devastated because she´s your best and only friend.
SITUATIONS
1. A friend probably has the flu though they won´t admit it. Tell them how they look and that they should go to bed right away.
2. A colleague who´s only been in the job a year and works alongside you has just been promoted. You´ve been going for promotion for ages without success.
3. You´re a doctor working on the coronavirus ward.
4. A new documentary unearths archeological evidence which could confirmthe existence of Jesus Christ.
5. You´re stuck in the queue in the supermarket because the customer in front is trying to buy chewing gum with a 200 euro note and the cashier does n´t have that much change.
6. Whilst out running in the woods you spy a huge snake on the path ahead.
7. Your cat has died. She was 17 years old.
8. You´ve just returned from dinner at Mr. Chicote´s new restaurant. Tell folks how it was.
9. You´ve just survived the third and longest lockdown yet. The government ordered everybody to stay put (stay where you are) wherever you may be. At the moment the lockdown was announced you happened to be in a meeting with your boss. The lockdown and the meeting went on for two weeks.
How to pronounce words containing the ea letter combinations.
Pronunciation of words with the ea letter combination PART ONE
The most common sound of ea is the same as the vowel in three.
PRACTICE
Read aloud the following sentences:
– Eat three peas please
– A cup of peach tea please
READ AND GUESS THE DEFINITIONS OF EA WORDS:
– Who helps you learn?
– They´re part of trees and plants
– What are breakfast, lunch and dinner?
– What´s the opposite of expensive?
– Where do we normally go for our holidays?
– What´s the opposite of strong?
– Another way to say “I don´t understand you”
– What do we use a microwave for?
– If something is not hard what is it?
– An animal that lives both in the sea and on land.
How to pronounce words containing the letters ea part two
There´s a small group of words with the spelling ear + consonant
Most of them are pronounced like in her or were
Here is an example:
Her pearls were stolen
Here is a list of the most common words with the ear + consonant spelling. Which are the two words which have a different pronunciation?
1. earn 2. earth 3. pearl 4. heart 5. early 6. beard 7. heard, 8. dearth 9. yearn
A dearth ofis a lack of.
The dearth of tests has made Coronavirus worse
To yearn for something is to miss something or long for something especially something that has been a. lost or b. has disappeared, or is c. very difficult to attain. The use is quite literary:
When one gets to middle age, listening to music from ones youth makes people yearn for those times.
Some babies yearn for their mums when they start back to work.
After several years in Spain I got a real yearning for England
Practice reading aloud the following:
a. Early learning is key
b. Earnings have risen
c. Down to earth/ The salt of the earth. Earthly powers
d. The early bird gets the worm
e. I heard a bird
f. Her heart yearns for more
g. The earth shook.
EA pronunciation groups 3 (ear) and 4 (bear)
Both of these sounds are
diphthongs
/ˈdɪfθɒŋ,ˈdɪpθɒŋ/
noun
GROUP THREE (as in ear)
Read this sentence aloud:
He gave me a present
The vowels in me a represent our target sound.
A lot of these words end with the letter l. – deal, heal, meal
A lot of words containing this sound end – ea + r , – clear, hear, dear. But not all words ending -ear have this sound. Bearis pronounced like the vowel in where.
PRACTICE READING THESE EXAMPLES ALOUD:
1. Meal deals – What´s a meal deal?
2. Veal meat – Have you ever eaten veal?
3. It´s the real deal
4. Any idea what real deal means?
5. This beer´s not very clear. – If beer is n´t clear what is it?
6. King Lear´s beard – Do you have any idea who King Lear is?
7. We sat at the rear of the theatre. – Do you prefer the front or the rear of the cinema?
How often do you go to the theatre?
8. We´re near the end of the year.
9. Sit here so I can hear you better.
10. Sear the veal (you know what veal is, so what do you think sear means?)
11. The deal is sealed (What does sealed mean?)
12. I can´t hear, I have a problem with my ear.
GROUP FOUR – Bear
Read aloud the following sentence:
I met a man over there
The vowel sounds in met a and there are the same but in met a there are two separate vowels and in there the two vowels are joined smoothly together into a diphthongs
PRACTICE READING ALOUD THE FOLLOWING SENTENCES:
1. I met a bear over there
2. Where did you meet the bear?
3. Over there, he was eating a pear
4. He was wearing a dress with a tear in it.
Ea pronunciation 5: dead, head..
In this group the ea sound is like the short e in bed.
Common combinations with this sound are:
1. d endings: bread, dead, head, lead, meadow, read (past tense simple), ready, tread
2. lt(h) endings: dealt (past simple of deal), health, wealth, stealth (by stealth = furtivamente)
Other common words with this sound:
weapon, breakfast, threat, deaf, heavy.
Practice by reading the followings sentences out aloud:
1. The bread is ready
2. Tread carefully through the meadow
3. Health, wealth and happiness!
4. The dead man suffered a blow to the head with a heavy lead weapon.
5. Your threats will fall on deaf ears. (caer en oidos sordos)
– Though we have seen how certain spellings reflect certain sounds you still might find a lot of inconsistency in the pronunciation of ea words so ultimately the best bet is to learn the pronunciation of the commonly occuring words and also learn those which are useful to you. To highlight inconsistencies lets practice reading the following sentences:
1. The next break after breakfast will be at 12.30.
2. “Why don´t you read this one?” “I´ve already read it”
3. I want you to lead me through the meadow
4. I lead her through the meadow but she was leading me on*
*she´s been leading him on for years = hace años que lo tiene agarrado de las narices dándole esperanzas
EA PRONUNCIATION CONCLUSION
The bear with the beard drank some beer
The bird with the beard drank some beer
The bear put his beard in the beer
Where did the bear put his beard?
He put his beard in the beer.
Then the bird with the beard put his beard in the beer
Did the bear eat the bird or did the bird eat the bear?
And to finish, bare (or is it bear?) in mind that for English vowels there are several ways to pronounce each one. You can see that in this line from the Ramones song where the highlighted letters all produce the same sound as in her:
Bird, bird, bird, bird is the word, haven´t you heard?
PARDON MY….GERMAN
The first time somebody punched me was perhaps my first or second day at Primary school. I´d uttered the word “girl” and it was followed by a blow to the head with other children egging on my hateful attacker. He did n´t like the way I´d pronounced girl, in Scottish English, with two syllable “gi-rel”. I think this must have been the first time I became aware of langauge differences.
My dad´s Scottish and I grew up in England but in a household of Scots, save my mom, who´s from Birmingham, England, so I surely picked up the Scottish accent and dialect living amongst them. A bit later on, when we were perhaps seven or eight, me and my brother would have a right laugh listening to my nanny (my grandmother) and my great grandmother who was completely unintelligible. We delighted in imitating my nan and one memorable phrase was her “Dreeeew thwai yll wek the weein”. She screamed it out every time my uncle Drew came in from the pub, a bit the worse for wear, at the weekends. It always woke us up and we´d look at each other and chuckle and imitate my nan´s peculiar way of speaking. We eventually worked out what she was saying was “Drew, be quite, you´ll wake up the children”. It just goes to show that we learn language through repetition and listening and context.
We used to go on holiday to Cornwall which is on the South West coast of England. I remember lying in my sleeping baglistening to the radio which was picking up French programmes. Then one day I said to my mom “Listen mom, I can speak French….jeeerrr oooh haaaa eeee haaaa yy aaar” and I was honestly convinced, and impresed with myself, that i could speak French. I think my mom replied “Don´t be silly son, that isn´t French, it takes years of hard work to learn a language”. Little did she know. In fact I learnt Spanish more or less that way, listening and then trying to repeat what I´d heard. Ok, it took some time, perhaps I´d have been better off sitting down and studying but for me at least, sitting down and studying has always been hard, mainly because I´m always on the go, so I learnt a lot through listening, radio and TV whilst I was doing other things.
At school everyone did French and after my early start you would have imagined I would have excelled at French but that was not the case, in fact they put me in the remedial group for French with kids who could n´t even read and write in English, which was probably a mistake, some teacher probably messed up the marking on Friday afternoon after his or her weekly pub lunch. I remained in that group for three years never passing the exams because, as I say, I can´t study, but in the final exam after the third year there was a speaking exam and the teacher was like ZUT ALORRS!!! I´d failed the written exam but had got 10 out of ten in the speaking test, a school all time record. I´d picked it all up through listening.
I got better at exams when I reached fifteen, maybe because I had a twin brother and my mom and dad´s motivation tool was buying us presents if we passed our exams. I really started getting into English at this stage, in fact my intention had been to study English Literature at university but as it turned out I completely cocked up the final exam, once again through my inability to sit still for more than ten minutes – the two hour English Literature paper was a nightmare. I finished it and sat there bored and fidgity for half an hour waiting to leave the exam hall. I didn´t do what the teachers always remind you to do “Read the question paper carefully and answer all the questions”. I´d mistakedly not answered a question and condemned myself to a change of university and subject: Instead of English Literature in the green valleys of Wales I did economics at rainy Salford, a sort of English Mostoles or Badalona.
At university I became very aware of my Birmingham accent. The students were either posh kids from London or posh kids from Manchester pretending to be working class and speaking that nasally Manc twang like Noel Gallagher from Oasis. Everybody took the mickey out of my accent because in England the Birmingham accent, as is the Liverpool one, is the preserve of comedians. However serious you try to be, if you say it in either of these accents people laugh at you. I had to drop my Brum accent and I did and exchanged it for a Northern Ireland accent to confuse everybody. I was going out with a girl from there and in the 1980´s and 90´s anybody with a Northern Ireland accent was immediately a terrorist suspect.
I eventually dropped the Northern Irish brogue and went for an amalgam Irish (I was listening to a lot of folk music from there) and posh -ish Manchester. It stuck and even today when I speak to other English people they can ´t work out where I´m from, some think London, others Scotland or Ireland, but nobody suspects I´m from Brum!
I finally made it here to Spain and my initial attempts at learning Spanish by listening to Tex Mex Hispanic music by the likes of Flaco Jimenez didn´t help, neither did listening to flamenco and noting down words like camelar and fragua and canastera. It was fun though, using that method where when you learn a new word and you have to insert it into conversation as quickly as possible so I´d be meeting people and having conversations like:
YO: ¿Compadre, a qué se dedica tu padre?
OTRO: ¿Es funcionario, y el tuyo?
YO : Mi padre no es funcionario y no trabaja en la fragua, pero si, trabajó de minero
or
Mi madre no es canastera sino camarera
or
GIRL: ¿Como te llamas?
ME: Graham, y creo tu me camelas, verdad?
Anyway, over to you folks. What are your first memories and experiences of other languages?
Postscript:
Just remembered the first couple of times I spoke foreign languages for real. The first and only time I spoke German was to some German kids on a campsite holiday on the Costa Brava. I think I was about eleven and they were a bit younger. My dad said “Go and make friends with those kids” so I walked up to them and at the same time as raising my left arm straight out at 45 degrees and stomping my foot on the floor I cried “Heil Hitler”. The kids were bemused and my dad was horrified. I grew up with war films and absolutely the only thing I knew about Germany was all Germans were Nazis and we´d beat them in the war.
The first time I tried to speak Spanish was in that most Spanish of institutions, MacDonalds. I stood there nervously behind a couple of other customers rehearsing the language in my head and studying what was on offer: Menu 1, Menu 2, Menu 3, Menu 4. I went over it a few times “Buenas tardes, yo quiero el menu numero tres por favor” I finally got to the counter and said:
“errr, Buenos..as tardes, hola…. Err…. yo quiero…. errr…..el menu numero err tres (signalling with my fingers at the same time) por favor…”
The Mac Donalds was in Torremolinos, Costa del Sol. The chap serving looked at me for a few moments then replied, in perfect English
“I´m sorry mate, I can´t speak Spanish, can you tell me in English?”
I sort of felt proud that I could speak better Spanish than someone actually living and working in Spain.
RingRingEnglish 