English Recordings

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.

Doctor Who

Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a mysterious, humanoid alien known as the Doctor who travels through time and space in his spacecraft, the TARDIS (an acronym for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space), which normally appears from the exterior to be a blue 1950s British police box. With his companions, he explores time and space, faces a variety of foes and rights wrongs.

The programme is listed in Guinness World Records as the longest-running science fiction television show in the world, and as the "most successful" science fiction series of all time, in terms of its overall broadcast ratings, DVD and book sales, iTunes traffic and "illegal downloads." It has been recognised for its imaginative stories, creative low-budget special effects during its original run, and pioneering use of electronic music (originally produced by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop). The show is a significant part of British popular culture; in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, it has become a cult television favourite and has influenced generations of British television professionals, many of whom grew up watching the series. It has received recognition from critics and the public as one of the finest British television programmes, including the BAFTA Award for Best Drama Series in 2006, and five consecutive wins at the National Television Awards since 2005, in the Drama category.

The programme originally ran from 1963 to 1989. After an unsuccessful attempt to revive regular production with a backdoor pilot in the form of a 1996 television film, the programme was successfully relaunched in 2005, produced in-house by BBC Wales in Cardiff. The first was produced by the BBC and series two and three of the new series had some development money contributed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), which was credited as a co-producer. Doctor Who also spawned spin-offs in multiple media, including the current television programmes Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures, the standalone K-9 and a single 1981 pilot episode of K-9 and Company.

The Doctor has been played by eleven actors (though other actors have played the part in films and other productions). The transition from one actor to another is written into the plot of the show as regeneration, whereby the character of the Doctor takes on a new body and, to some extent, new personality. Although each portrayal is different, and on occasion the various incarnations have even encountered one another, they are all meant to be aspects of the same character. The Doctor is currently portrayed by Matt Smith, who took up the role after David Tennant's final appearance in an episode broadcast on 1 January 2010. A fifth series of the relaunched programme began on 3 April 2010, in which the Eleventh Doctor is accompanied by Amy Pond, portrayed by Karen Gillan.

'I am the very pattern of a modern Major-General;
I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral;
I know the Kings of England, and I quote the fights historical,
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical;
I'm very well acquainted too with matters mathematical,
I understand equations, both simple and quadratical,
About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot o' news,
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.
I'm very good at integral and differential calculus,
I know the scientific names of beings animalculous,
In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern Major-General.'

Vincent vowed vengeance very vehemently.

Vera valued the valley violets.

Ten tame tadpoles tucked tightly in a thin tall tin.

Two toads, totally tired, trying to trot to Tewkesbury.