English Recordings

Coleman

How do you relate to other people so as to get along well with them?

I think human relationships are an essential element for us to live, and we can't get by if we avoid them.

No matter where you are, no matter what you do, you'll be with people most of the time. Of course you rely on human ties at home as well.

In my opinion, the most important factor of maintaining a good relationship with others is self-awareness and self-acceptance.

People often look away defensively get in touch with themselves, because they fear to see their downside.

You need to be courageous to take a close look inside yourself. Sometimes you'll be disappointed to find traits that you think are negative, and you might try to act as if you don't know you have them.

Bad beannie sellers always benefit from big nosed Aussies on a low travel budget.
Opening sets in Dunkin and in the streets of Myeongdong can make you feel like King Kong.
Many have heard, of the benefits of negging birds.
At the end of the day, it’s all trial and error
Life is just a dream. Nothing too extreme. It melts away like ice-cream.

I need this dialogue for my students who need basic listening skills. It requires 2 speakers.

Dialogue 3

A) Excuse. How do I get to the art festival?
B) Where is the art festival being held?
A) It’s being held in the Art & Culture Hall.
B) Ok, go straight for about 300 hundred metres then turn left when you see Family Mart, walk for another 100 hundred metres and then you will see it on your right.

I need this dialogue for my students who need basic listening skills. It requires 2 speakers.

Dialogue 2.

A) What are you doing tomorrow?
B) I’m going to the zoo.
A) Who are you going to the zoo with?
B) I’m going there with a friend.
A) What animals are you interested in seeing?
B) I want to see monkeys, lions, tigers and bears. But what is the best way to get there?
A) You should take the number 4 subway line and get off at the station Zoo Park. Then walk straight for 500 metres from exit 7 and you will see the zoo on your left.

I need this dialogue for my students who need basic listening skills in English. It requires 2 speakers.

Dialogue 1

A) What do you want to be?
B) I want to be a lawyer.
A) Oh, are you interested in Law?
B) Yes. I’m interested in Law and I think that if I become a lawyer I can help people.

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.

ENGLISH IS TOUGH STUFF
======================

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

-- Author Unknown

Do you like Japanese people calling you "Gaijin"?

"Gaijin" is a short form of "Gaikoku-Jin", which is translated as foreigner.

Here is the thing, when I introduced my American friend to my mom, my mother said to her " Oh, Gaijin-san, nice to meet you".

My friend immediately reacted to say, "no, I am not a Gaijin, I am an American". My mother was actually happy to see my American friend and did not have any intention to discriminate against her, but I thought that I should have told my mom not to use the word "Gaijin" for foreigners.

The Japanese word " Gaijin" is controversial. The use of this word is very sensitive, because it can sound offensive to some people. Moreover, the Kanji "gai " means outside. It has actually been banned in the publishing and media worlds.

I wonder whether or not, "Gaikoku-Jin" sounds offensive? "Gaikoku" means a foreign country. "Jin" means people.

Japanese people have a tendency to shorten long words like Poke-mon (pocket monster), Perso-com ( Personal computer) and Cos-Play ( Costume play). " Gaijin " is just a short form for " Gaikoku-Jin". It is not like the English term " Jap".

Then, what kind of people are called "Gaijin" by Japanese people? They are usually Caucasians or African-Americans. Japanese usually refer to Asian people by using their country name. For example, "Chugoku-jin" for Chinese, "Kankoku-jin" for Koreans, "Indo-jin" for Indians.

Let me say this again, "Gaijin" is just a short form of "Gaikoku-jin", which means foreigners. We have used this word without thinking seriously.

Some foreigners consider it an insult, I think it is because of the behaviors of Japanese people towards them, like staring at them or asking silly questions.

I guess Westerners are not happy being called "Gaijin", am I right?

Japanese people are slowly starting to understand this...

I'm not in the mood to write a daily entry today. I find I'm a genius at making up excuses for myself. I have a lot to do but have been putting them off. For example, "Oh! It's raining (or cloudy) today ... It's probably not a good time to do it." "Sigh ... I'm too tired today. It would be better if I rested rather than do it." Or, "You know, I worked SO HARD last week so deserve to do nothing today!" Or, "Today, I've got to work hard on B, so I'd better not even start on A." Or "Why do today what I could put off till tomorrow." And so on. Oh my God! Man, I need some serious help!

The Eleventh Doctor is the eleventh and current incarnation of the fictional character known as the Doctor, who appeared on screen in the long-running BBC television science-fiction series Doctor Who beginning in 2010. Matt Smith plays this incarnation, replacing David Tennant's Tenth Doctor in the 2010 episode "The End of Time, Part Two".

The Eleventh Doctor first appears in the final minutes of The End of Time (2010). The Tenth Doctor, succumbing to radiation poisoning, sets his TARDIS into orbit around the Earth and regenerates. The resulting energy causes the TARDIS's windows to shatter and the console room to burst into flames, parts of it even collapsing as a result. The Eleventh Doctor inspects his new appearance — briefly panicking about his long hair in the belief that he has changed into a girl and then innocently confirming otherwise — before realising that the TARDIS is crashing. He clings to the TARDIS console, shouting, "Geronimo!" as the ship falls to Earth. In the opening moments of "The Eleventh Hour", the TARDIS hurtles over London before finally coming to rest in the backyard of a young Amelia Pond. Amelia quickly befriends the Doctor - believing him to be a policeman who has come about the crack in her bedroom wall — and cooks him several meals in an attempt to satiate his post-regeneration hunger, all of which he rejects in favour of fish fingers dipped in custard. After his meal and a quick inspection of the crack, the Doctor is interrupted by the sound of the Cloister Bell, indicating that the TARDIS's engines are "phasing" and that it will soon explode. In an attempt to vent the engines by travelling five minutes into the future, the Doctor overshoots his mark and travels twelve years instead. When he returns, he reunites with an adult Amy and puts an end to the Atraxi's threat to incinerate the Earth if they cannot find Prisoner Zero, a multiform who had escaped an Atraxi prison through the crack in Amy's wall. After the confrontation, the Doctor accidentally travels two years into the future while wearing in the new TARDIS engines, and convinces Amy to come travel with him since she has "waited long enough." On Amy's first voyage in the TARDIS the two come across Starship UK, the floating population of the British people. The Doctor and Amy set free the last star whale, which the government had been torturing to fly the ship. After this, the Doctor gets a call from an old friend, Winston Churchill, asking for help while the shadow of a Dalek looms behind him.