Wednesday, July 28, 2010

#1256 Common Mistakes, Tatoeba.org, Talking Fish, On About, Telephone High 5

how 1256 Wednesday 28 July
Watch today's show at YouTube or BlipTV.

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

The other day I came across an interesting list:


This is a list of common spelling mistakes that native English speakers make.

1. accept / except
2. advice / advise
3. all right / alright
4. effect / affect
5. every day / everyday
6. its / it’s
7. passed / past
8. quiet / quite
9. then / than
10. who’s / whose

Every day is a common one and that’s one of my personal pet peeves. You might have heard me talk about it before.

The only one that I don’t really agree with is alright / all right.

Alright is an informal way of writing all right. But I wouldn’t say it’s wrong. And, in fact, I think I prefer it as one word and I think it’s definitely fine for most informal blogs.

But, still it is important to remember that alright is the informal or non-standard version, so if you’re doing some formal writing, then you’d better write all right as two words.



click here

The other day someone told me about a site called Tatoeba.
It’s basically a multilingual dictionary of sentences.

You can search certain words, and it will give you example sentences using that word.
For example, I put from English to Japanese, and typed in pumpkin.

And the example sentence it gave me was: What a big pumpkin!



And then I clicked on that sentence and I found it in three other languages too.

So if there’s a word you’re trying to learn and you’re struggling to understand how to use it, then you could try putting that in, and seeing what it comes up with.

And if you’re interested you can register on the site and you can contribute to the project by doing things like adding some translations.



STICK NEWS


According to news reports a University of Auckland marine scientist has discovered that fish can “talk”.
He says they communicate with noises including grunts, chirps and pops.
Apparently, fish communicate with each other for different reasons, including attracting mates, scaring off predators and orienting themselves.

And that was Stick News for Wednesday the 28th of July.
Kia ora.

1256 a
Hello!
Hello!

1256 b
And the fish said, "Pop, pop grunt!"
Was that before or after the special cookie?

1256 c
Did it hurt?
What?
When you fell from heaven?

1256 d
Bugger off!

1256 e
Where am I?



Word of the Day

Today’s word is on.

For such a small word, on has quite a lot of meanings, and quite a few idioms and phrasal verbs too.

One idiom using on is: to be on about sth.

It’s an informal idiom which means: to talk about something, or to mean something.

Last Monday I asked people if they had any radio shows or podcasts they recommended. And mothersuperior85 recommended Scott Mills Daily. So I subscribed to it in iTunes and I’ve been listening to it. I’ve listened to about 6 or 7 shows so far … and it’s pretty funny.

One of the segments on his show is called: What are those kids and old people on about?

And on the shows I listened to they played some audio of a young boy describing something, and the guests, the people who were playing the game, had to guess what he was talking about.
So: What’s he on about? means: What’s he talking about?



conversations with sarah
#802 The hand gesture?

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

Sarah You know what a high five is, eh?

Mari The hand gesture?

Sarah Yeah, like this, when you’re celebrating something.

Mari Yeah, I know what that is.

Sarah Well, on that show that I listened to, Scott Mills Daily, they do high fives on the phone.

Mari How do they do that? Do they slap the phone?

Sarah No. They push the 5 button. The announcer, Scott Mills, says to the guests at the end of the conversation, high 5, and they push the button.

Mari Is that common in New Zealand?

Sarah Oh this is a British show. But … no, I’ve never heard of that before. I think it’s something that he made up.




links



music

show start
artist: Kevin MacLeod
track: Future Cha Cha
from: Brooklyn, NY, United States
artist site

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: Kevin MacLeod
track: The Jazz Woman
from: Brooklyn, NY, United States
artist site

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

qa bgm
artist: Scoop
album: Dub Therapy
track: Victoire Rmx
from: Orleans, France
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo

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