Friday, January 26, 2007

Show 268 Friday 26 January


Watch today’s show at YouTube or BlipTV.

Hi, I’m Sarah. Welcome to The Daily English Show.

Today’s language is Swahili.

The video I studied today is from Watch Me TV – which is one of the sites where you can watch The Daily English Show.

It’s someone teaching Swahili in Japanese ... so yeah, maybe not that useful for study English. But anyway.

The video is made by Hide – who is a Japanese reality TV star. He was on a show called Ainori.

I really like Ainori. But I haven’t seen it for ages because we don’t have a TV and YouTube deleted all the Ainori videos. Evil YouTube. No, I’m kidding, I guess it’s fair enough.

Anyway what I like about Ainori is I think it’s a good mix of entertainment and education and doing something positive for the world.

It’s a kind of dating show - but they travel around the world and visit interesting places ... and I think you can donate money to the show – and then they do things like build schools in places where they don’t have schools.

Hide traveled around Africa on the show and he really liked it. So when he finished the show he went back and did some more traveling and then he started a business importing goods from Africa. And he has a shop in Harajuku. I actually went there once but I didn’t go inside because there was a really big queue. I think it was during Golden Week. And I never got round to going back.

Hide now has some videos on Watch Me TV and in one of them he is teaching Swahili.

Wikipedia says:
Swahili is the most widely spoken African language. It is spoken by over 50 million people, of whom there are approximately five million first-language speakers and thirty to fifty million second-language speakers.

Hide teaches two words in his video:
Jambo which means hello.
And shikamoo which is how you greet an elder person.



STICK NEWS

Kia ora in Stick News today a character in an in-flight movie said “beep bless you” instead of “god bless you” after a censor bleeped out all references to god.

Profanity is another name for a swear word.
Swear words are words that are considered by some people to be rude or offensive such as shit or fuck.
Profanity includes blasphemy. Blasphemous language is language that insults or shows a lack of respect for God or religion.
Saying “oh my god” is blasphemy – but saying “god bless you” isn’t.
A US company called Jaguar Distribution had the job of editing the movie The Queen to be shown on Delta Air Lines, Air New Zealand and other airlines.
A censor at was told to bleep out all profanity including blasphemy.
The censor was inexperienced and excitedly bleeped out every time a character said god – even when it wasn’t part of a profanity.


And that was Stick News for Friday the 26th of January.
Kia Ora.



the snow report

There wasn't much fresh snow today, so the snow was pretty hard.



conversations with sarah
#163 Have you seen The Lion King?

Step 1: Repeat Tracey’s lines.
Step 2: Read Tracey’s lines and talk to Sarah.

Sarah Did you know hakuna matata was Swahili?

Tracey Hakuna what?

Sarah Haven’t you heard that phrase?

Tracey No.

Sarah Have you seen The Lion King?

Tracey No, I haven’t.

Sarah Really?!

Tracey Yeah, I don’t really like Disney movies.

Sarah Oh OK. Well, they say it in The Lion King. I just Disney just made it up – but it’s actually Swahili.

Tracey What does it mean?

Sarah No worries.



Notes

Today's news.

Learn basic Swahili.

Great Swahili song! (Listening to this song put me in such a good mood).

Show 267 Thursday 25 January


Watch today’s show at YouTube or BlipTV.

Hi, I’m Sarah. Welcome to The Daily English Show.

Today’s language is Persian.
Persian is also called these two words. I’m not sure how to pronounce them.
Parsi and Farsi.

Persian is an Indo-European language spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan

And by minorities in these countries.

Uzbekistan
Turkmenistan
Pakistan
India
Azerbaijan
Armenia
Georgia
Southern Russia

And neighboring countries, and elsewhere.

Apparently Persian used to be even more widely used.

For five centuries prior to the British colonization of South Asia, Persian was widely used as a second or first language in the Indian subcontinent.
Only in 1843 did the British force the subcontinent to begin conducting business in English instead of the traditional Persian.


Persian is written in Perso-Arabic script which is a writing system based on the Arabic alphabet.
So it looks similar to Arabic.

And you can learn some Persian from messmanreturns on YouTube.

In this video he teaches some Persian letters and words.

Including these words:

tear
Japan
Circle



STICK NEWS

Kia ora in Stick News today the 2006 word of the year in Australia has been announced. It’s muffin top.

In Australia some people enjoy wearing low cut tight fitting pants and skirts.
According to the Australian government’s website around 67% of Australian men and 52% of Australian women are overweight.
The excess fat the Aussies are carrying around can’t fit into the tight pants – so it spills out over the top.
This creates an effect which looks like the shape of a muffin. So it’s called a muffin top.
Muffin top has just been chosen as the Australian word of the year. Judges chose the word because of its vivid imagery and sense of playfulness.


That was Stick News for Thursday the 25th of January.
Kia Ora.



conversations with sarah
#162 Have you ever seen a muffin top?

Step 1: Repeat Hide’s lines.
Step 2: Read Hide’s lines and talk to Sarah.

Hide Have you ever seen a muffin top?


Sarah Yeah – it was one of the first things I noticed when I went to Australia.

Hide Why do people wear clothes like that?

Sarah I guess they think it looks good.

Hide They think a roll of fat looks good?

Sarah Well, some people think excess fat looks good.

Hide Really?

Sarah Yeah. Have a look on the internet. There are some people who want to gain more fat. And they say it’s attractive.