Consúltalo con la almohada

Para lectores compulsivos - o gente con narcolepsia . En el metro, el autobús, en el suelo...para echarse una siestecita o para leer con comodidad. Me voy a Seúl a buscar una ahora mismo. Queda encontrar una funda impermeable para echarle por encima y poder leer en la bañera. Más información en:http://jooyounpaek.com/pillowig.html

English

England is probably one of the only countries in which both Germanic and Latinate languages combined, fusing together. When the Normans conquered the Anglo-Saxons, both populations co-existed, the aristocrats speaking French and the peasants Anglo-Saxon until both languages blended.
Broadly speaking, the common English words are Germanic. "Function words", prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns, etc. are mostly Anglo-Saxon. Things and physical actions are also mainly Anglo-Saxon. So are most swear words or four-letter words. But professional vocabulary was brought to Britain in the Renaissance by the French, strengthening the notion that Latin-originated words are an indicator of education and endowing Latinate words with a sort of "higher status".
I remember a Spanish student telling me about her experience in the US - aside from being a fast learner, she was a big hit in her class because whenever she had to say a difficult word she did not know in English she resorted to a direct translation of the word in Spanish, the result being pretty close to the "Latinate" version of the real thing. The use of these words impressed her classmates, who did not use them in every-day language.
It is often frustrating for EFL language learners to realize that the perfectly correct English they learned in the classroom barely resembles what they hear in the streets of London or New York.
The use of Latinate words in English can jar the ear. When they are densely used, they give the impression of being an attempt to sound or seem upper class or cultivated. Whilst Germanic words are often considered to connote sincerity and frankness. This doesn't mean one thing is better than the other. It means we need both.

An extract of George Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language" illustrates the difference between Latinate and Germanic words. The Latinate words are in bold type.

Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. . .Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. . . . The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.


What Orwell would have thought of the great number of Spanish words currently making their way into the every-day English language, we will never know.

For Reading Out-Loud

(Yet another)In Memoriam (gasp!)
Wonderful Grace Paley died on August 22. The writer whose stories and poems celebrated women's voices, carrying them far beyond their Jewish-New York original setting will be sadly missed. Filled with humour and pathos, her stories and poems, I'm convinced, are meant to be read out-loud.

From Goodbye and Good Luck:
I was popular in certain circles, says Aunt Rose. I wasn’t no thinner then, only more stationary in the flesh. In time to come, Lillie, don’t be surprised — change is a fact of God. From this no one is excused. Only a person like your mama stands on one foot, she don’t notice how big her behind is getting and sings in the canary’s ear for thirty years. Who’s listening? Papa’s in the shop. You and Seymour, thinking about yourself. So she waits in a spotless kitchen for a kind word and thinks — poor Rosie. ...
“Poor Rosie! If there was more life in my little sister, she would know my heart is a regular college of feelings and there is such information between my corset and me that her whole married life is a kindergarten.

From Faith in the Afternoon
Childhood passes
Youth passes
Also the prime of life passes
Old age passes
Why do you believe, my daughters,
That old age is different?

Y de una traducción tardía de sus Cuentos Completos al español (2005):
La verdad, cuando encuentra su nivel, flota.

Larger than life, bigger than death

Image by: UNGA CUSTOMIZING ART

Redefining the dictionary

El temor y el rechazo que aún le provoca Internet a mucha gente me recuerda al debate social que produjo en su tiempo la lectura, en especial por parte de las mujeres. (Recomiendo el libro de Stefan Bollmann "Las mujeres que leen son peligrosas"). La lectura se consideraba un vicio y en 1791 Karl G. Bauer, pedagogo, llegó a decir: "La falta total de movimiento corporal durante la lectura, unida a la diversidad tan violenta de ideas y sensaciones sólo conduce a la somnolencia, la obstrucción, la flatulencia y la oclusión de los intestinos como consecuencias bien conocidas sobre la salud sexual de ambos sexos, muy especialmente, del femenino."
Al igual que la lectura, Internet ha transformado nuestras vidas y está aquí para quedarse.
Si tenéis quince minutos, echadle un ojo a este vídeo. Muy interesante a pesar de la publicidad que aparece al principio: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/161

Sweet

Intelligent cartoons: http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/angular_momentum.jpg

Thanks María, for the recommended visit: Hay Festival in Segovia (one hour bus ride from Madrid) www.hayfestival.com/segovia

Farewell Ingmar Bergman, Hello Paris Hilton

El verano se acaba, llevándose consigo a personas irrepetibles, admiradas y significativas para muchos de nosotros. Bergman, Antonioni, y más cercanos, Umbral, Ema Penella y José Luis de Vilallonga. Sin pena ni gloria.
Televisión Española, esa, la que es de todos, y las cadenas privadas, esas, las que son de unos pocos, realmente se han lucido. ¿Dónde están los ciclos de películas de Bergman o las resposiciones de actuaciones de la magnífica Emma Penella? ¿Y las tertulias literarias o periodísticas hablándonos de Umbral? José Luis de Vilallonga tal vez corra más suerte - su perfil puede amoldarse a los contenidos de algún programa de cotilleo (que si hay algo que hacen de maravilla es mezclar churros con merinas).

No es que haya olvidado la muerte de Puerta, (por si quedara alguien que aún no supiera quién es: se trata de un desafortunado joven futbolista del Sevilla) que coincidió o casi con la de Umbral; es que a él sí le dedicó la primera cadena de Televisión Española un programa homenaje de una hora en prime time. Pero el fútbol es el fútbol.
Es que morirse en verano es lo peor que te puede pasar. Y si llevas tiempo sin aparecer en la tele para contar con quien te acuestas y con quien te levantas, peor que peor.
Umbral y Vilallonga llevaban mucho tiempo enfermos y ausentes de la pantalla ¿quién lee la prensa escrita? y para qué hablar de Bergman y Antonioni, pobrecitos míos, que son para muchos unos totales desconocidos.
¿Cómo compararlos con la Pantoja y Paquirrín o con - cielos, casi lo olvido-, la hermana de Julián Muñoz cuyo entierro se transmitió por televisión con lujo de detalles?
Visto lo visto, ¿Volvería a repetir Umbral aquello de ""La posteridad no me importa en absoluto?"
No, que no es bueno morirse en agosto, a no ser, claro está, que seas Miss Culo del Año, Mister Tatuaje de Playa o Paris Hilton en persona.
Gracias a UNGA por la imagen: (ungaconexion@gmail.com)
www.facetoface-personalenglishtrainers.com