Adding to the power of music I was talking about last week, even in a different language, is the story of the Frank Zappa fan club in Lithuania. If you visit Vilnius, you will see the only sculpture erected in celebration of the musician. The following article will tell you the entire story and I recommend stopping [...]
Posts under ‘English’
Cultural differences
Ok, so how truly liberal is your country? Would you ever find a politician, an elected politician even, with quite high standing in the party, pose nude? I was quite shocked when I saw this had happened in Spain, and the most amazing thing? No-one cares. It was a story that lasted one day. The [...]
Language use on the Internet
I found some interesting statistics of the languages used on the Internet and I’m sad to say it’s rather biased towards English at the moment. According to the research, 29.7% of internet users are English native speakers, 13.3% Chinese, 7.9% Japanese, 7.5% Spanish, 5.4% German, 4.6% French, 3.1% Portuguese, 3.1% Korean, 2.7% Italian, 2.2% Russian, [...]
When languages mix…badly
Words are often taken from other languages and imported into your own, sometimes with funny results. In Mexico, I’ve been told that it’s become increasing common to say “vacunar la carpeta.” Now to English speakers, you might not be surprised by this, thinking it simply means to “vacuum the carpet” and that is indeed what [...]
Changing your perspective
It’s hard to avoid some exposure to the media in your country. Whether you believe what they say or not is another question. An interesting example of this is a recent speech made by none other than the US’s beloved George W. Bush. The NY Times focuses almost exclusively on the decision to send more [...]
The goodness of Dr Seuss
Everybody loves Dr Seuss, he’s a worldwide phenomenon, and even my spell-check knows how to spell his name. But should he be used to teach English? I had this discussion with a fellow teacher after one of my students bought one of his books. Sure, we loved them as kids, but I can’t say they [...]
What makes the news
Living in a foreign country, it can be interesting what makes the news. A recent example was pointed out by some US friends when Gerald Ford, a former US President, died. Now, I’m from New Zealand, so this wasn’t exactly a big deal to me either but what made it interesting was the other person [...]