Thursday, October 09, 2008

#849 Throw At Vs Throw To, Banana Boom In Japan, -ology


Show 849 Wednesday 8 October
Watch today’s show at YouTube or BlipTV.



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

Yesterday I was reading some of the comments under one of the videos about the naked man who jumped into the moat at the imperial palace.

There were quite a few comments in English by non-native English speakers. And one of them said something like this: The man threw rocks to the police.

What do you think is wrong with that sentence?
It should be: The man threw rocks at the police.

If you throw something to someone, then you want them to catch it. Like a ball or a pen or a lollypop or whatever it is that you throw to people.

Sam threw the ball to Tom.

But if you throw something at someone, then you don’t want them to catch it. You usually want to hurt them.

Sam threw rotten tomatoes at Tom. Tom threw a grenade at Sam.



Click Here

Today I recommend this site.
There are a whole lot of interesting materials for teachers and students there. And it’s all free! Thanks to taxpayers in the UK.
I was having another look at it today and I found a football quiz which I thought was quite cool.
You can score a goal if you get three questions right within 30 seconds.
I’ll put a link to that quiz on the blog.



STICK NEWS

Kia Ora in Stick News today there’s a banana boom in Japan. In an effort to lose weight, thousands of people across the country have ditched rice and miso soup in favour of bananas for breakfast.

Back in 2006, a couple introduced the “Asa Banana Diet” (朝バナナダイエット = Morning Banana Diet) on the social networking site Mixi. The Watanabe’s said you could lose weight by eating a banana and drinking water for breakfast. Since then the diet has been featured in magazines and in May this year the couple published a book which has sold more than 200,000 copies. Mino Monta is a TV celebrity who is very popular with housewives. He’s talked about the diet three times on his show (おもいっきりテレビ = Omoikkiri Terebi). Then on the 19th of September the diet was introduced on another popular TV show (ドリーム・プレス社= Dream Press-sha). They said that a former opera singer had lost 7 kilos thanks to the banana diet. This caused the banana boom to really take off. Supermarket chain Ito Yokado said they sold twice as many bananas as usual in late September. A spokesperson from another supermarket chain (Peacock Store), said bananas had been selling very well since the 19th of September. “These days, bananas are all gone by evening," he said. Most of Japan’s bananas come from the Philippines. Dole Japan is the country’s largest banana importer. A spokesperson said: "Unfortunately, even if there is more demand, we cannot supply more bananas immediately because it takes 10 to 15 months to grow them."

And that was Stick News for Tuesday the 7th of October.
Kia Ora.




Word of the Day

Today’s word is -ology.
Well, that’s not actually a word, but it’s a suffix, which is part of a word.

This Monday’s guest, Jon, said that he studied criminology at university.
Criminology is: the study of crime and criminals.

-ology in this sense, means: a subject of study.

Another example is: Biology, the study of life.

Wikipedia has a whole list of sciences ending in –ology.
Half of them I’ve never heard of, like:

Futurology - the study of the future
Ripperology - the study of Jack the Ripper
Garbology - the study of rubbish
Musicology - the study of music
Dendrology - the study of trees
Omnology - the study of everything

If you feel like making up a new word to mean the scientific study of something, you can just add -ology to the end of it.
Like: thedailyenglishshowology, the study of The Daily English Show.
Or maybe it would be better a bit shorter?



conversations with sarah
#525 What’s going to happen to him?

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

Doug That guy is lucky to be alive. If it was another country he would have been killed.

Sarah Mmm … I don’t know. I think police usually don’t shoot people if they can help it.

Doug If a naked guy ran into the White House they’d probably shoot him.

Sarah I don’t think so. If they thought they could grab him and arrest him then I think they’d do that.

Doug It’s so disrespectful doing that at the palace.

Sarah Yeah, it sounded like it might have been, kind of a prank, just reading the story and looking at the pictures. But when you see the footage, I think it’s obvious he’s not mentally stable – or he wasn’t at the time - so it’s kind of sad.

Doug What’s going to happen to him?

Sarah I guess he’ll be deported.

Doug Sent back to Spain?

Sarah No, England. I think he’s actually British. At first the media were saying that he was Spanish … but I think it turned out he was an English guy living in Spain.

Doug Attacking police officers is a pretty serious crime though.

Sarah Yeah, and doing that at the palace is pretty bad too, because it’s a kind of sacred place, so maybe he’ll get a prison sentence.



links

today's news
today's STICK NEWS picture

music

show start
artist: Boom Tschak
album: Indietronic CCBit.
track: More Chocolate, Please
from: Former Yugoslavia
MySpace

click here start
artist: #NarNaoud#
album: Green Vision
track: Oriental Standing
from: Gironde, France
artist at Jamendo
album at Jamendo
artist site

cws start
artist: Wolfgang S.
album: Indietronic CCBit.
track: Dynamite
from: Belgrade, Serbia, Former Yugoslavia
artist site
MySpace

qa start
artist: ioeo
album: triptracks
track: triptrack2
from: Saint Raphael, France
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site

qa bgm
artist: ioeo
album: triptracks
track: triptrack3
from: Saint Raphael, France
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site

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