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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
weirdo
a strange, eccentric or weird person
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Idiom of the Day
have a light heart
To have a carefree, uplifted attitude; to be in a happy or gladdened state or condition. Watch the video
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Oedipa thinks that Trystero exists as a countercultural secret society with unknown goals.
She researches an older censored edition of The Courier's Tragedy, which confirms that Driblette indeed made a conscious choice to insert the "Tristero" line. She seeks answers through a machine claimed to have psychic abilities but the experience is awkward and unsuccessful. As she feverishly wanders the Bay Area, the muted post horn symbol appears in many random places. Finally, a nameless man at a gay bar tells her that the symbol simply represents an anonymous support group for people with broken hearts. Oedipa witnesses people referring to and using mailboxes disguised as regular waste bins marked with "W.A.S.T.E." (later suggested to be an acronym for "We Await Silent Tristero's Empire"). Even so, Oedipa sinks into paranoia, wondering if Trystero exists or if she is merely overthinking a series of false connections.
There's more, for which you could read the rest of the extensive Wikipedia article (and its links)— or just the original novella, which might even be shorter…
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
bugger up
to ruin, spoil, mess up
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Idiom of the Day
live the life of Riley
To lead a life of great ease, comfort, or luxury. The phrase is likely of early 20th-century Irish-American origin, but to whom Riley refers is uncertain. Watch the video
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Language Log
French Horn Church
Mark Swofford stumbled upon this church in Taipei:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/frenchhorn.jpg
The Chinese part of the sign reads:
fàguó hào língliáng táng
法國號靈糧堂
"French Horn Hall of Spiritual Food"
This may be a branch of Táiběi língliáng táng 台北靈糧堂, which calls itself "Bread of Life Christian Church in Taipei" and has a history that goes back to 1948-1958 in Shanghai. Another translation of "língliáng 靈糧" is "manna".
The next time I'm in Taipei I will go visit this church because the French horn has special meaning for me. I played it from the time I was in high school, including professionally in the Canton Orchestra and various bands. I even trekked it up into the mountains of Nepal where I was a Peace Corps volunteer for two years and people from valleys far away could hear me playing it.
The French horn is notorious for being the most difficult instrument to play since it is prone to burble (I think that's because of the tight, twisted acoustics of all that tubing), but I love the rich, smooth sound it produces when you control your embouchure perfectly. That takes a lot of practice, but when I was good at it, I could play melodies with my lips alone. I am grateful to my high school band director, Donald M. Kennedy, for guiding me to the French horn and helping get one of my own when I was a freshman.
By the way, you're no longer supposed to call the brass instrument under discussion a "French horn". It's supposed to be just a "horn". I don't know who decided that and why, but it's now the politically correct thing to do. It doesn't make sense to me, because there are so many other kinds of horns out there. Much as I am partial to it, why should this one alone be the horn? I still call it a French horn, but if someone made a good case (historical, musicological, or otherwise) for calling it a "German horn", I'd be open to such a proposal.
Selected readings
* "Les Baguettes à Pékin" (7/2/12)
* "Names and Systems of Naming" (4/18/08)
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Funny Or Die (Youtube)
Malcolm is out-bratting himself #CreatorsforKamala #DNC2024 #BratSummer
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Language Log
Is there a finite number of pronunciations for anything?
Below is a guest post by Corey Miller.
Azi Paybarah of the Washington Post quoted Trump as follows:
“There’s about 19 different ways of pronouncing it, right,” Trump said falsely, during a speech in Michigan on Thursday. “But Kamala is, at least it’s a name you sort of remember.”
The most interesting part of this to me is the assertion that it was a false claim. I suppose the intuition is that there are two common ways to stress Kamala, either initially/antepenultimately or medially/penultimately, so that Trump's "nineteen" is clearly hyperbolic.
What do we mean when we speak of a number of pronunciations for a word? One interpretation might be “how many ways can we represent the pronunciation of a word, as spoken by a fluent speaker interpreting the phonemes of a relevant variety of the language in question?”. Under this interpretation, three American English pronunciations of Kamala come to mind:
1. ˈkɑmələ
2. ˈkæmələ
3. kəˈmɑlə
Pronunciation 1 seems to be how the Vice President pronounces her own name and the preference of a majority of younger speakers at the Democratic National Convention. Pronunciation 2 is one I hadn’t considered, but noticed it was very popular among older speakers at the DNC; it seems to be on analogy with Pamela, which to my knowledge has only 1 pronunciation under the definition above. I assume Pronunciation 2 wouldn’t be considered an affront in the way Pronunciation 3 is, but this could be investigated further. As a final note on Prounciation 2, it is related to an interesting phenomenon I first read about in an article by Geoff Lindsey and that was further developed in my classmate Charles Boberg’s dissertation and discussed more recently by him here.
Pronunciation 3 seems to be the preferred pronunciation used by those seeking to needle the Vice President, but it seems like it can be used “innocently enough” given the predilection for penultimate stress in such words as suggested by the English Stress Rule as formulated in Liberman & Prince and elsewhere. For example, Malala (Yousufzai) seems to be a name that we hear uniquely with something like Pronunciation 3.
There is another pronunciation noted occasionally in the press for Kamala that is more “native” to the Sanskrit origins of the name, meaning “lotus flower”. Using standard American English phonemes and their IPA labels, this might be something like Pronunciation 4:
4. ˈkʌmələ
The first syllable could just as easily have been transcribed with a stressed schwa by those who admit such things. [ɐ] is used in the Sanskrit etymon for all vowels in the word in Wiktionary. This phenomenon of the “Indic short a” is also encountered in words like pundit and Punjab which are sometimes written as pandit and Panjab.
So, are there only four pronunciations? There are certainly other possibilities using IPA interpretations for various varieties of English, American and otherwise. The letter 'a' can also of course be pronounced as [ej], but perhaps using such a pronunciation in Kamala would be considered particularly outrageous. But maybe it could occur in the speech of someone less familiar with English, or someone learning to read?
Of course, there are indefinitely many pronunciations, if we consider "pronunciations" as the articulatory and acoustic signals implementing a word, rather than IPA-ish symbols. But I assume the lay view of what it means to be a pronunciation is more along the lines of the IPA alternatives I gave above, and this is reflected in a long line of pronunciation dictionaries like Kenyon & Knott or indeed the curious symbols used in American dictionaries.
In summary, I think Mr. Paybarah was right to call Mr. Trump’s claim of 19 pronunciations false; but I think it could be litigated…
Above is a guest post by Corey Miller.
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Language Log
"Bone Apple Tea"
The "ABOUT COMMUNITY" description from r/BoneAppleTea:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/BoneAppleTea.png
There's also r/BoneAppleTypo, and the #boneappletea Discord channel.
[h/t M.O.S.T.]
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Word of the Day
Word of the Day: circumvent
This word has appeared in 169 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
let out (1)
to allow somebody or something to leave a place
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Still no luck on chord M #vmas2024 @johnmayer
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Learn English Through Football
Newspaper Headline: Snakes bite
In this football language post we explain the newspaper headline, 'Snakes bite' from the Guardian newspaper about England's win over Ireland in the Nations League.
The post Newspaper Headline: Snakes bite appeared first on Learn English Through Football.
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
on the level
honest, truthful
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
come over (2)
to seem to be a particular type of person
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Word of the Day
gullible
Definition: (adjective) Easily deceived or duped.
Synonyms: fleeceable, green.
Usage: Maddie was a gullible young girl, and we easily convinced her that our homely history teacher was actually a runaway princess in disguise.
Discuss
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Language Log
"We Await Silent Tristero's Empire"
Abbie VanSickle and Philip Kaleta, "Conservative German Princess Says She Hosted Justice Alito at Her Castle", NYT 9/9/2024: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/vonThurnUndTaxis.webp An eccentric German princess who evolved from a 1980s punk style icon to a conservative Catholic known for hobnobbing with far-right figures said on Monday that she hosted Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. and his wife at her castle during a July 2023 music festival.
Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis also told The New York Times that she viewed the justice as “a hero.”
As explained in one of the comments, the article puts "Princess" in the wrong place in her name, and arguably should not translate it, any more than the "von" should be translated as "from":
While the titles of Fürst (prince), Herzog (duke), Graf (count), Freiherr (baron) etc. do not give you any privileges and are not used ahead of the first name (as in e.g. "Prince Charles of so-and-so" or "Countess Lisl von Schlaf"), the former title has become part of the family/last name. So her official name is Gloria Fürstin (princess) von Thurn und Taxis. That doesn't mean one has to address her as "Fürstin", but it is part of her name. http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/MutedPosthorn.png I was a bit surprised that none of the comments (nor any of the other mass-media stories) mention the central role of the Thurn-und-Taxis postal monopoly in Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, or that book's anticipatory echoes of today's political paranoia. As Wikipedia explains:
The shortest of Pynchon's novels, the plot follows Oedipa Maas, a young Californian woman who begins to embrace a conspiracy theory as she possibly unearths a centuries-old feud between two mail distribution companies. […]
In the mid-1960s, Oedipa Maas lives a fairly comfortable life in a northern Californian village, despite her lackluster marriage with Mucho Maas, a rudderless radio jockey and ephebophile, and her sessions with Dr. Hilarius, an unhinged German psychotherapist who tries to medicate his patients with LSD. One day, Oedipa learns of the death of an ex-lover, Pierce Inverarity, an incredibly wealthy and powerful real-estate mogul from the Los Angeles area, who has left her as the executor of his estate. Oedipa goes to meet Inverarity's lawyer, a former child actor named Metzger, and they begin an affair, which fascinates a local teenage rock band, the Paranoids, who begin following them voyeuristically. At a bar, Oedipa notices the graffiti symbol of a muted post horn with the label "W.A.S.T.E." and she chats with Mike Fallopian, a right-wing historian and critic of the postal system, who claims to use a secret postal service.
It emerges that Inverarity had Mafia connections, illicitly attempting to sell the bones of forgotten U.S. World War II soldiers for use as charcoal to a cigarette company. One of the Paranoids' friends mentions that this strongly reminds her of a Jacobean revenge play she recently saw called The Courier's Tragedy. Intrigued by the coincidence, Oedipa and Metzger attend a performance of the play, which briefly mentions the name "Tristero". After the show, Oedipa approaches the play's director and star, Randolph Driblette, who deflects her questions about the mention of the unusual name. After seeing a man scribbling the post horn symbol, Oedipa reconnects with Mike Fallopian, who tells her he suspects a conspiracy. This is supported when watermarks of the muted horn symbol are discovered hidden on Inverarity's private stamp collection. The symbol appears to be a muted variant of the coat of arms of Thurn and Taxis, an 18th-century European postal monopoly that suppressed all opposition, including Trystero (or Tristero), a competing postal service that was defeated but possibly driven underground. Based on the symbolism of the mute, [...]
Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
owe to (1)
If you owe something to someone, you feel that you only have it because of the person's help or support.
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Word of the Day
laic
Definition: (adjective) Of or relating to the laity.
Synonyms: lay, secular.
Usage: He was a laic leader, but many of his followers believed him to be a prophet.
Discuss
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Funny Or Die (Youtube)
Points were made #StonedDebate #Politics #Debate #2024Election
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Funny Or Die (Youtube)
Pennsylvania State Representative Malcolm Kenyatta Does Not Approve of Outside Clothes On The Bed
Malcolm Kenyatta, the first LGBTQ+ person of color to be elected to General Assembly in Pennsylvania, chats with us about indefensible topics, no brainers, and how to be better at the 2024 Democratic National Convention.
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Learn English Through Football Podcast: 2026 World Cup Qualifiers (September 2024)
In this football language podcast we look at some language from the recent 2026 World Cup qualifiers from both the South American and Asian regions.
The post Learn English Through Football Podcast: 2026 World Cup Qualifiers (September 2024) appeared first on Learn English Through Football.
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
dis | diss
to show disrespect to someone by saying or doing something insulting
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Idiom of the Day
a licence to print money
An activity, business model, or company that yields very high profits but requires little or no effort to do so. Primarily heard in UK, Australia. Watch the video
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Word of the Day
lore
Definition: (noun) Accumulated facts, traditions, or beliefs about a particular subject.
Synonyms: traditional knowledge.
Usage: He had taught the children something of the forest lore that he had himself learned from Tiger Lily and Tinker Bell, and knew that in their dire hour they were not likely to forget it.
Discuss
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masterclass on debate decorum #2024Election #HarrisTrumpDebate #WillFerrell #zachgalifianakis
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Word of the Day
Word of the Day: consternation
This word has appeared in 149 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
muck up
If you muck something up, you do it badly and fail to achieve your goal.
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