Multi-national personnel at North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters near Paris found English to be an easy language ... until they tried to pronounce it. To help them discard an array of accents, the verses below were devised. After trying them, a Frenchman said he'd prefer six months at hard labor to reading six lines aloud. Try them yourself.
Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
To go outside, and there perchance to stay Or to remain within: that is the question: Whether 'tis better for a cat to suffer The cuffs and buffets of inclement weather That Nature rains on those who roam abroad, Or take a nap upon a scrap of carpet, And so by dozing melt the solid hours That clog the clock's bright gears with sullen time And stall the dinner bell. To sit, to stare Outdoors, and by a stare to seem…
Once upon a midnight dreary, fingers cramped and vision bleary, System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor, Longing for the warmth of bedsheets, still I sat there, doing spreadsheets. Having reached the bottom line, I took a floppy from the drawer. Typing with a steady hand, I then invoked the SAVE command And waited for the disk to store, only this and nothing more.
Cracking an international market is a goal of most growing corporations. It shouldn't be that hard, yet even the big multi-nationals run into trouble because of language and cultural differences. For example...
The name Coca-Cola in China was first rendered as Ke-kou-ke-la. Unfortunately, the Coke company did not discover until after thousands of signs had been printed that the phrase means "bite the wax tadpole" or…
One of the fringe benefits of being an English or History teacher is receiving the occasional jewel of a student blooper in an essay. I have pasted together the following "history" of the world from certifiably genuine student bloopers collected by teachers throughout the United States, from eight grade through college level. Read carefully, and you will learn a lot.
The European Commission have just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than German, which was the other possibility.
As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5 year phase in plan that would be known as "EuroEnglish".
In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c".. Sertainly…
Geekonics
By John Woestendiek
Philadelphia Inquirer
Wed., January 8, 1997
NEWS BULLETIN: Saying it will improve the education of children who have grown up immersed in computer lingo, the school board in San Jose, Calif., has officially designated computer English, or "Geekonics", as a second language.
The historic vote on Geekonics -- a combination of the word "geek" and the word "phonics" -- came just weeks after the…
Let's face it -- English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple.
English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.
We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is…
The FUCK word!
Perhaps one of the most interesting and colorful words in the English language is the word "Fuck." It is the one magical word, which, just by it's sound describes pain, pleasure, love, and hate.
In language, "Fuck" falls into many grammatical categories. It can be used as a verb, both transitive (John fucked Mary) and intransitive (Mary was fucked by John). It can be an active verb (Mary doesn't really…
CLINTON DEPLOYS VOWELS TO BOSNIA
Cities of Sjlbvdnzv, Grzny to Be First Recipients
Before an emergency joint session of Congress yesterday, President Clinton announced US plans to deploy over 75,000 vowels to the war-torn region of Bosnia. The deployment, the largest of its kind in American history, will provide the region with the critically needed letters A,E,I,O and U, and is hoped to render countless Bosnian names…
