35152
#ielts #toefl #gre #english_vocabulary #english
Funny Or Die (Youtube)
It's Inspection Day At Havoc Park (Havoc Park Episode 3: Hiding A Body)
This park is one violation away from demolition, so let's hope the maintenance inspector doesn't find a body floating anywhere.
Creator: Cliff Benfield
Subscribe now: https://www.youtube.com/c/funnyordie?sub_confirmation=1
Get more Funny Or Die
-------------------------------
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/funnyordie
Twitter: https://twitter.com/funnyordie
Instagram: http://instagram.com/funnyordie
TikTok: funnyordie" rel="nofollow">https://www.tiktok.com/@funnyordie
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Language Log
Auto-translated subtitles from auto-generated subtitles
Mark Metcalf learned something new this Monday morning: YouTube not only provides subtitles, but if the subtitles haven't been created in English, it can generate/translate them on the fly – at least for German. Doesn't seem to be available for Chinese yet.
Select 'CC' at the bottom left of the right side of the video window menu bar to auto-generate the German subtitles. Then click on the gear icon and select auto-translate, from which pick English. You should see English subtitles in near real-time.
The results are mind-boggling: fast as greased lightning and impressively accurate.
Mark tried it out on this interview with the Latvian mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča at the Wiener Staatsoper about her role as Kundry in Wagner's »Parsifal«. Mark noted that the auto-subtitle generator / translator seems to render the character name "Kundry" as "customer". He's right.
The mixup between Kundry and "customer" is interesting (and understandable). It's because in most of those cases — when she's not actually saying the name "Kundry" (the high messenger of the Grail in Wagner's "Parsifal") — she's saying the German word "Kundin" (fem. for "customer"), but which also has the secondary meaning of "character". (Of course, the auto-translator correctly renders German "Charakter" as English "character" when she uses the German cognate!)
It's fascinating to me that the same sort of informal usage of "customer" as "character" occurs in English:
(informal) A person, especially one engaging in some sort of interaction with others.
a cool customer, a tough customer, an ugly customer
1971, Herman Wouk, chapter 52, in The Winds of War:
Pug could just see Slote's pale face under his fur hat. "I don't agree with you on that. He's a pretty tough customer, Hopkins."
2020 January 2, Philip Haigh, “Ten eventful years and plenty of talking points”, in Rail, page 54:
This switch led to Philip Hammond becoming the Transport Secretary and he quickly proved to be a tricky customer, asking questions about rail spending and reining it back whenever possible.
(Wiktionary)
It was simply overwhelming for me to listen to Madame Garanča speaking German rapidly with nuanced emotion / emphasis / intonation and watch the corresponding English instantaneously fly across bottom of the screen.
Selected readings
* "Dubbing and subtitles" (10/21/21)
* "Why we all need subtitles now" (1/20/23)
* "Subtitles matter" (4/29/22)
* "The state of speech-to-text" (11/11/23)
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Word of the Day
chiffonier
Definition: (noun) A narrow high chest of drawers or bureau, often with a mirror attached.
Synonyms: commode.
Usage: Against the wall stood an exquisite chiffonier, on which were resting some cut-glass decanters and goblets.
Discuss
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Word of the Day
Word of the Day: scrupulous
This word has appeared in 36 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Language Log
Past Futures
From "Lost Futures: A 19th-Century Vision of the Year 2000", The Public Domain Review, 6/30/2012:
What did the year 2000 look like in 1900? Originally commissioned by Armand Gervais, a French toy manufacturer in Lyon, for the 1900 World exhibition in Paris, the first fifty of these paper cards were produced by Jean-Marc Côté, designed to be enclosed in cigarette boxes and, later, sent as postcards. All in all, at least seventy-eight cards were made by Côté and other artists, although the exact number is not known, and some may still remain undiscovered. Each tries to imagine what it would be like to live in the then-distant year of 2000.
Some of the images are related to linguistic communication, for example this Zoom-like interaction:
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/en1900Zoom.jpeg
Of course, given the wax cylinders and foot pedals, as well as the label "Correspondance", the idea was not actually real-time interactions, but rather an exchange of audio-visual recordings, sort of like sending DVDs back and forth via the post office.
The snail-mail character of the imagined network is even clearer in in this vision of "phonographic letters":
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/en1900VoiceMail.jpeg
And the vision (below) of "listening to the newspaper" — again delivered on wax-cylinder recordings — reminds me of the the AT&T executives in the 1980s, whose response to Bill Dunn's vision of networked digital news was to fund the development of "a cheap-enough piece of hardware combining a modem, a printer, and a cassette recorder, so that subscribers could download a personalized news feed in the wee hours of the morning (when telephone bandwidth was essentially free), and have their choice of a printed or spoken version waiting at breakfast time":
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/en1900Newspaper.jpeg
There are lots more remarkably confused predictions where those came from, so have fun!
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Language Log
Unknown language #17
Ok, let's see how easy this one will be — here's another little quiz!
What do you see here? What (kind of) writing system is this, what's the language? What does it look like, is it reminiscent of anything? (Hint: It's not necessarily what part of it looks like …) 1/ pic.twitter.com/J80E42Eyj9
— 波鴻漫錄 || Sven Osterkamp (@schrift_sprache) July 15, 2022
I see plenty of kanji and kana, but there are a lot of other things mixed in. Judging from what the Tweeter / Xer says in the parenthetical remark at the end of his introduction, it probably isn't Japanese.
Selected readings
* "Reading kanji in cursive script is devilishly difficult" (10/18/22)
* "'Collapsed' calligraphy, part 2" (9/19/22)
* "'Collapsed' calligraphy" (12/3/19)
* "Ornamental Manchu: the lengths to which a forger will go" (4/24/21)
* "Faux Manchu: Ornamental Manchu II" (6/23/21)
* "Uyghur as ornament" (9/19/13)
* "Pentalingual street signs in Kashgar" (7/12/20)
* "Gibberish Uyghur" (9/28/09)
* "Gibberish Tibetan" (10/6/16)
[h.t. Geoff Wade]
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
honky
a derogatory term in black American slang for a white person
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
pass up
If you pass up an opportunity or an invitation, you choose not to take the opportunity or accept the invitation.
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Language Log
Unknown language #16
From Beverly Kahn:
Here's a puzzle that I hope you (or fellow linguists) might solve. My neighbor showed me a wood carving of what is likely an American Indian. It is dated 1907. On the back one finds markings that are like a language. Can you determine what the language is and perhaps what it says?
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/kahn1.jpg
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/kahn2.jpg
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/kahn3.jpg
The (etched / burned) design-drawing on the front is exquisite. The writing on the back looks as though it was originally made with a resinous-pliable material that has dried up and partially fallen off in some places. It appears that the way the sticky (?) substance was applied made it difficult to draw tight circles.
Overall, I do not know what the language is, but I do see some symbols that look as though they could be sinoglyphs, e.g., 寿 an old simplified form of shòu 壽 ("longevity"), yáng 羊 ("ovicaprid"), a component consisting of two or three short, diagonally downward sloping strokes to the left above a perpendicular stroke, etc. Perhaps it has something to do with the birthday of the woman depicted.
Selected readings
* "Unknown language #15" (6/6/23)
* "Unknown language #14" (10/27/22)
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Funny Or Die (Youtube)
Ron Funches Had A Crush On Penny From Inspector Gadget
Subscribe now: https://www.youtube.com/c/funnyordie?sub_confirmation=1
Get more Funny Or Die
-------------------------------
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/funnyordie
Twitter: https://twitter.com/funnyordie
Instagram: http://instagram.com/funnyordie
TikTok: funnyordie" rel="nofollow">https://www.tiktok.com/@funnyordie
➖ Sent by @TheFeedReaderBot ➖
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Funny Or Die (Youtube)
Cartoon Crushes with Ron Funches (Bless These Braces: Episode 2)
Comedian Ron Funches (Trolls: World Tour, Gettin' Better) joins Tamara Yajia to talk abotu his childhood cartoon crushes, badly timed boners, and the magic of Bill Clinton playing the sax.
Get notified when we drop new episodes, news, and show extras: https://norby.link/ceiRm2
8:23 - Tam reveals the story of her first orgasm
9:58 - Ron talks about the crushes he had on cartoons as a kid
11:13- Tam's crush on Groundskeeper Willie
13:08 - Tam immigrated to the US during peak "Bill Clinton playing the sax" hype
13:55 - How kids used to hide their boners at school
15:55 - What it's like to experience your kids' coming of age as a parent
19:54 - The link between the Black and Jewish communities
21:37 - Ron's advice for his former self
Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/funnyordie?sub_confirmation=1
Get more Funny Or Die
-------------------------------
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/funnyordie
Twitter: https://twitter.com/funnyordie
Instagram: http://instagram.com/funnyordie
TikTok: funnyordie" rel="nofollow">https://www.tiktok.com/@funnyordie
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Word of the Day
tutelage
Definition: (noun) The capacity or activity of a tutor; instruction or teaching.
Synonyms: tuition.
Usage: Michael's crowning achievement, under Daughtry's tutelage, in the first days in the stateroom, was to learn to count up to five.
Discuss
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Word of the Day
Word of the Day: inconspicuous
This word has appeared in 26 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Learn English Through Football Podcast: Turn Around (The Game)
Читать полностью…
Language Log
Major romanization change coming in Japan
From Pinyin News (3/4/24):
"Japan to switch official romanization from Kunrei-shiki to Hepburn"
Japanese newspapers are reporting that Japan will officially switch from Kunrei-shiki romanization to Hepburn romanization.
In a front-page column last week, the Asahi Shimbun said, “A draft report recently published by the Council of Cultural Affairs pointed out that the Hepburn system is more widely used than the Kunrei system, and it is expected that the notation will be adjusted to reflect this. It is surprising because the writing system has not changed for about 70 years, but if confusion can be avoided, the change is to be welcomed.”
Some examples of differences:
Kunrei Hepburn Aiti Aichi Atugi Atsugi Gihu Gifu Hukusima Fukushima Sinzyuku Shinjuku Titibu Chichibu Tukizi Tsukiji
sources:
* Japan to revise official romanization rules for first time in 70 years, Japan Times, March 2, 2024
* Ruling may be near on how to best romanize Japanese, Asahi Shimbun, February 26, 2024
* Hepburn-Style Romaji Likely to Become Standardized, Japan News, January 31, 2024
This will make standard what most people have been doing for decades.
Selected readings
* "Japanese Romanization: they still haven't decided, part 2" (11/8/22)
* "Rōmaji dialog between 'bread' and 'tea'" (9/9/15)
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Funny Or Die (Youtube)
Havoc Park Gets A Visit From The Maintenance Inspector
This guy does not hold back with his inspecting. Check back for a new episode of Havoc Park!
Subscribe now: https://www.youtube.com/c/funnyordie?sub_confirmation=1
Get more Funny Or Die
-------------------------------
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/funnyordie
Twitter: https://twitter.com/funnyordie
Instagram: http://instagram.com/funnyordie
TikTok: funnyordie" rel="nofollow">https://www.tiktok.com/@funnyordie
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
nab
to catch someone doing something wrong
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
order around
If you order people around, you tell them what to do in a bossy way.
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Idiom of the Day
I shudder to think
It is too worrying or unpleasant for me to think about something that might happen or might have happened. Watch the video
➖ @EngSkills ➖
⚠️ Best of English Learning Channels
👉 @EnglishLearn
---------
Word of the Day
Word of the Day: eventuality
This word has appeared in 15 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Word of the Day
garboil
Definition: (noun) A state of commotion and noise and confusion.
Synonyms: tumult, uproar.
Usage: The crowd at the fair was noisy and rowdy, and in the midst of the garboil, I lost sight of my sister.
Discuss
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Idiom of the Day
not have all day
To be in a rush; to not have much or any time to spare. Usually used in the present tense. Watch the video
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Language Log
Concoction and elaboration
Notice in a men's room at National Central University (NCU) in Taoyuan, Taiwan: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/ncu.jpg (source)
First of all, let me say that I don't believe this notice gives a true account of something that really happened at NCU, namely, that the male students were peeing upward toward the ceiling. Below I'll explain what I think really happened.
Here are the romanization, transcription, and translation of the text:
Zhòngyào gōnggào
cháo tiānhuābǎn pēnsǎ niàoyè
shì wéifǎn Guólì Zhōngyāng Dàxué xuézé de xíngwéi
běnxiào cǎiyòng zhī tiānhuābǎn bìngfēi wéi xīshōu niàoyè suǒ shèjì!
mùqián shènrù de dàliàng shuǐfèn jí yánfèn zǎoyǐ bǎohé bìng jiāng kāishǐ dīluò.
hòuxù gēnghuàn jí wéihù de fèiyòng zhīchū jiàng fǎnyìng zài gèwèi tóngxué xià xuéqí de xué záfèi zhōng.
rúcè shí qǐng duìzhǔn xiǎobiàn dòu bìng jǐnjì NCU sānzì kǒujué
kàojìn xiǎobiàn dòu –> quèrèn bù huì pēn dào tiānhuābǎn –> rúcè
rú yǒu yíwèn qǐng zhìdiàn 03-4227151, xièxiè gèwèi tóngxué de pèihé
Guólì zhōngyāng dàxué
重要公告
朝天花板噴射尿液
是違反國立中央大學學則的行為
本校採用之天花板並非為吸收尿液所設計！
目前滲入的大量水分及鹽分早已飽和並將開始滴落。
後續更換及維護的費用支出將反映在各位同學下學期的學雜費中。
如廁時請對準小便斗並謹記「NCU」三字口訣
靠近小便斗 –＞ 確認不會噴到天花板 –＞ 如廁
如有疑問請致電 03-4227151謝謝各位同學的配合
國立中央大學
Important Public Notice
Spraying your urine towards the ceiling
is against the rules of the National Central University! The ceiling (material) that this university utilizes is NOT designed for absorbing urine! Presently, the immense amount of water and salt has already saturated (the ceiling) and is beginning to drip down from it.
The subsequent replacement and maintenance fees will be reflected in each of your tuition and fees next semester.
When you go to the toilet, please aim at the urinal and be careful to remember the "NCU" triliteral formula: Near –> Check –> Urinate.
(Near the urinal –> Check to make sure not to spray (your urine) against the ceiling –> Urinate)
I don't think this was spontaneous, that the boys at NCU just thought it up in their own devious minds to urinate upwards en masse. It turns out that urinating on the ceiling is actually a thing, a thing that is mentioned and depicted on Reddit, YouTube, and other websites, and it's been out there for at least five years (for examples of this disgusting, degraded behavior [and worse], see here).
In the infinite surfing of the web that university students are addicted to, sooner or later they are bound to happen upon just about everything that exists in the cyberverse, and some of them will give it a try.
Undoubtedly, the genesis of the notice on the bathroom wall at NCU was due to men using the urinals and not being careful about where they aimed (a topic of many a post on Language Log [see selected readings below]). This is a universal problem, not just for Taiwan!
One or two of the male students may have tried out the "ceiling" thing — perhaps on a dare from another student. This, coupled with the perennial problem of the custodial staff with sloppy, flagrant pissers (the Manneken Pis syndrome), led some frustrated humorist on the administrative staff to exaggerate what was truly going on in the men's room.
When I first read this notice in Chinese, I thought it was so improbable and ridiculous that some AI machine created this text at the request of a deviant client. Upon research and reflection, I came to the conclusion that SLMs (i.e., Small Language Models [human beings — my nonce definition]) could come up with such freakish scenarios by themselves. Selected readings
* "Be civilized when you urinate" (6/22/23) — with lengthy bibliography
* "Civilized urinating" (10/31/17)
* "Toilet Revolution!!" (11/26/17) — Xi Jinping's pet project of all projects; with an enormous and ever growing bibliography
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Language Log
The valence of husky voices
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/MaeWestPoster1.jpeg "Vocal Fry" has been in the media yet again, thanks to the recent flurry of interest over "TikTalk" (2/16/2024). As mentioned there, and in my 2011 post "Vocal fry: 'creeping in' or 'still here'?", this speaking style (and media interest in it) has always been with us, with a famous fry influencer from olden days being Mae West, as featured in the 1933 film She Done Him Wrong.
But there's a lexicographic aspect to this as well. According to Mae West's Wikipedia page, "Considered a sex symbol, she was known for her breezy sexual independence and her lighthearted bawdy double entendres, often delivered in a husky contralto voice." However, the OED's gloss for the relevant sense of husky is "Of persons and their voice: Dry in the throat, so that the timbre of the voice is lost, and its sound approaches more or less a hoarse whisper. (An effect of continued speaking, laryngeal inflammation, or violent emotion.)".
Huh? That "husky contralto" is on display in her most famous line, "Why don't you come up some time, see me?". But clearly, the cause is not continued speaking, laryngeal inflammation, or violent emotion. Listen and look for yourself:
Your browser does not support the audio element.
Here's an even huskier passage, from later in the same scene:
Your browser does not support the audio element.
(FWIW, the whole movie is here, and a selection of Mae West quotes is here.)
So how did the OED get the associations of husky voice so wrong?
Semantic drift, it seems — or at least connotational drift. I took a look at the results of searching the Corpus of Historical American English for "husky voice", and from the decade 2000-2009 there are 29 hits, a clear majority of which are Mae West-ish, e.g.
* All he could see were her eyes, fringed, wide and lovely. All he could hear in his mind was her soft, husky voice.
* […] a luscious mound of trouble played by Scarlett Johansson with a husky voice and neurotic little-girl smolder
* Selma was prone to sensuous scents; sensuous music too, her husky voice holding people hostage when she sang.
But from the decade from 1840-1849 there are 24 hits, and all of them fit the OED's gloss, e.g.
* "Who," he shrieked in a husky voice, turning to the throng — "Who hath done this murder?"
* "Advance, Brother from the New World," he cried in a husky voice — "The tablet marked with the Cross is yours!"
* "Cease! cease, my child!" cried the old man in a thick husky voice, raising her from her knees,
(Note also the shift in gender associations…)
It's not just the OED that's missed the lexicographical husky train — Merriam-Webster and Wiktionary don't do much better. However, the Cambridge Dictionary gets the modern connotation closer to right — maybe because of that dictionary's more recent origin?
https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/CambridgeHusky.png
I wonder whether there's been a similar evolution in words like French rauque, Spanish ronco/a, German rauchig or heiser …
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
hood (1)
a neighbourhood, especially in a poor, urban area
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
build on (2)
to add a new section to a house or a building
➖ @EngSkills ➖
Idiom of the Day
let me tell you
Used to emphasize a statement. Watch the video
➖ @EngSkills ➖
⚠️ Best of English Learning Channels
👉 @EnglishLearn
---------
Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
geezer
an old person
➖ @EngSkills ➖
