28487
#ielts #toefl #gre #english_vocabulary #english
Funny Or Die (Youtube)
"The Landlord" with Beth Stelling (Inside The FOD Vault - Ep. 1)
On the first episode of our new podcast, "Inside the Funny Or Die Vault," we are joined by comedian and writer, Beth Stelling (If You Didn’t Want Me Then on Netflix). Beth has selected “The Landlord” from the Funny or Die Vault. She and our host, Marcos Gonzalez talk through starting out in comedy, stand up online, and the differences between internet and in-person performance. Whether you’re a seasoned comedy pro or just dipping a toe, Beth and Marcos have endless anecdotes to share.
Beth Stelling is an American stand-up comedian and writer. She has performed in the Netflix series The Standups and served as a writer for the HBO television series Crashing. Stelling has released two comedy albums, Sweet Beth and Simply the Beth, and two comedy specials, Girl Daddy (Hulu) and If You Didn't Want Me Then (Netflix). She also co-hosts the Sweethearts podcast with Mo Welch.
Instagram: @bethstelling
TikTok: @bethstelling
Key moments
02:53 Pearl The Landlord
06:43 Starting stand up
19:52 Social clips vs. full special
22:41 Women in comedy
26:14 Early inspirations in comedy
39:24 Going viral
42:36 The rise of crowd work
46:50 Combatting lack of confidence
Get all 10 episodes of season 1 now, and stay in touch for new episodes, news, and show extras: https://norby.link/ctdAJD
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
afters
dessert, sweet dish eaten after the main course of a meal
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Idiom of the Day
(it's) little wonder
It is not at all surprising (that something is the case). Watch the video
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Funny Or Die (Youtube)
Our new show INSIDE THE FOD VAULT launches tomorrow on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.
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Funny Or Die (Youtube)
Everything is Samuel L. Jackson's Fault (2013) Pt. 2 #samuelljackson #sketchcomedy
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Language Log
The languages of refugees fleeing to Bosnia
"A path towards freedom: the new route to Europe for desperate Chinese migrants
Revealed: a small but growing number of Chinese people are travelling to the Balkans with the hope of getting into the EU" Amy Hawkins," The Guardian (9/24/24)
In a sleepy Bosnian town, barely five miles from the border with the European Union, a crumbling old water tower is falling into ruin. Inside, piles of rubbish, used cigarette butts and a portable wood-fired stove offer glimpses into the daily life of the people who briefly called the building home. Glued on to the walls is another clue: on pieces of A4 paper, the same message is printed out, again and again: “If you would like to travel to Europe (Italy, Germany, France, etc) we can help you. Please add this number on WhatsApp”. The message is printed in the languages of often desperate people: Somali, Nepali, Turkish, the list goes on. The last translation on the list indicates a newcomer to this unlucky club. It is written in Chinese.
“Staying here is not a very good option,” one of the Chinese refugees says, but “if I go back to China, what awaits me is either being sent to a mental hospital or a prison.”
Fleeing from China to Bosnia is dangerous and expensive. So why do Chinese do it?
Part of the reason that Bosnia is an attractive staging post for Chinese migrants, is that like its neighbour Serbia, it offers visa-free travel. Aleksandra Kovačević, spokesperson for Bosnia’s Service for Foreigner’s Affairs, a government department, said that Chinese people were “gaining statistical significance as persons who increasingly violate migration regulations of Bosnia and Herzegovina”. She said that along with Turkish citizens, Chinese people were trying to use legal entry into Bosnia as a way to “illegally continue their journey to the countries of western Europe”.Part of the reason that Bosnia is an attractive staging post for Chinese migrants, is that like its neighbour Serbia, it offers visa-free travel. Aleksandra Kovačević, spokesperson for Bosnia’s Service for Foreigner’s Affairs, a government department, said that Chinese people were “gaining statistical significance as persons who increasingly violate migration regulations of Bosnia and Herzegovina”. She said that along with Turkish citizens, Chinese people were trying to use legal entry into Bosnia as a way to “illegally continue their journey to the countries of western Europe”.
Everybody who wants to escape from China has their own reasons for taking such a huge risk. Often it is a burning desire for freedom of speech or craving for access to information that is severely limited by the Great Firewall. From private and public sources, it is clear that these restrictions are growing increasingly harsh as time passes, so don't expect the volume of Chinese refugees fleeing to Bosnia to diminish during the coming months and years.
Since (as shown by a UNHCR graphic in The Guardian article), the numbers of Chinese seeking asylum in Europe rose dramatically in the years following 2012, you can put 2 and 2 together and figure out what the probable main cause is. Selected readings
* "RUN = wrong" (9/29/22)
* "RUNning away from Shanghai" (5/13/22)
* "Epochal Shanghai drone quote: 'Control your soul’s desire for freedom.'" (5/8/22)
* "Fissures in the Great Firewall caused by X" (6/10/24) — with a very long bibliography on censorship in China
[h.t.: many Language Log readers called this article to my attention]
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Word of the Day
Word of the Day: seismic
This word has appeared in 308 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
get out of (2)
to take off clothes because they're uncomfortable or inappropriate
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Word of the Day
overabundance
Definition: (noun) A going or being beyond what is needed, desired, or appropriate.
Synonyms: overmuch, overmuchness, superabundance.
Usage: Four-year-olds have an overabundance of energy and quickly exhaust even the most active, fit adults.
Discuss
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
itch
a strong desire to do something (n.) | to have a strong desire to do something (v.)
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Idiom of the Day
the lion's den
A particularly dangerous, hostile, or oppressive place or situation, especially due to an angry or sinister person or group of people within it. Watch the video
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Language Log
Gobsmacked!
Ben Yagoda's new book, Gobsmacked!: The British Invasion of American English, is "A spot-on guide to how and why Americans have become so bloody keen on Britishisms—for good or ill". The publisher's blurb:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/gobsmacked.jpg
The British love to complain that words and phrases imported from America—from French fries to Awesome, man!—are destroying the English language. But what about the influence going the other way? Britishisms have been making their way into the American lexicon for more than 150 years, but the process has accelerated since the turn of the twenty-first century. From acclaimed writer and language commentator Ben Yagoda, Gobsmacked! is a witty, entertaining, and enlightening account of how and why scores of British words and phrases—such as one-off, go missing, curate, early days, kerfuffle, easy peasy, and cheeky—have been enthusiastically taken up by Yanks.
FWIW, Amazon now ranks this book as the #1 New Release in Lexicography.
For a preview, see Ben's 9/26/2024 Guardian article "The other British invasion: how UK lingo conquered the US", which starts like this:
I am an American, New York-born, but I started to spend time in London in the 1990s, teaching classes to international students. Being interested in language, and reading a lot of newspapers there – one of the courses I taught was on the British press – I naturally started picking up on the many previously unfamiliar (to me) British words and expressions, and differences between British and American terminology.
Then a strange thing happened. Back home in the United States, I noticed writers, journalists and ordinary people starting to use British terms I had encountered. I’ll give one example that sticks in my mind because it is tied to a specific news event, and hence easily dated.
In 2003, it became clear that the US would invade Iraq. Months passed; we did not invade. Then we did. Journalists faced a question: what should we call that preliminary period? In September 2003, the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman chose a Britishism, referring to “how France behaved in the run-up to the Iraq war”.
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uage, and that Creole is in fact a sociohistoric concept (and not a linguistic one), encompassing displaced population and slavery. DeGraff & Walicek (2005) discuss creolistics in relation to colonialist ideologies, rejecting the notion that Creoles can be responsibly defined in terms of specific grammatical characteristics. […]
On the other hand, McWhorter points out that in languages such as Bambara, essentially a dialect of Manding, there is ample non-transparent derivation, and that there is no reason to suppose that this would be absent in close relatives such as Mandinka itself. Moreover, he also observes that Soninke has what all linguists would analyze as inflections, and that current lexicography of Soninke is too elementary for it to be stated with authority that it does not have non-transparent derivation.
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Learn English Through Football Podcast: 2024-25: Dark Arts
Читать полностью…
Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
get back (2)
If you get something back, it is returned to you after you've lent it, lost it, or had it stolen.
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Word of the Day
Word of the Day: abdicate
This word has appeared in 23 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
➖ Sent by @TheFeedReaderBot ➖
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
come under
to suddenly experience or suffer something dangerous or unpleasant
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Word of the Day
unexampled
Definition: (adjective) Without precedent; unparalleled.
Synonyms: new.
Usage: It was a time of unexampled prosperity, and the once poor family was able to move to a lovely mansion in an affluent neighborhood.
Discuss
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Funny Or Die (Youtube)
TRAILER: Inside The Funny Or Die Vault Premieres 10/1!
It’s like the Criterion Closet for internet videos. Our new show INSIDE THE FOD VAULT launches tomorrow on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts.
Get all 10 episodes of season 1 now, and stay in touch for new episodes, news, and show extras: https://norby.link/ctdAJD
INSIDE THE FOD VAULT is one part comedy deconstruction, one part career retrospective, and one part nostalgia trip through the first wave of internet comedy. Our guests pick a video from FOD’s storied history as a jumping off point to talk about all the ways the comedy landscape has changed since the days when TikTok was just a Kesha song. Host Marcos Gonzalez leads guests through their career trajectories and how their work was influenced by the best (and worst) the internet has had to offer. Gonzalez returns to FOD as our host, after interning at FOD a decade ago at the start of his own comedy career, which more recently included a stint as a writer/actor on the critically acclaimed series, Jury Duty.
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Language Log
Linear algebra and wine
A recent email from Jean Gallier to the members of Penn's Department of Computer and Information Sciences included this picture
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/GallierLinearA_Wine.jpg
…under the comment "Apparently the Greeks had already figured that there was a connection between wine and linear algebra." The connection to Linear A(lgebra) is provided by Jean's two-volume 2020 book Linear Algebra and Optimization with Applications to Machine Learning.
A glimpse of Jean's personal connections with wine is suggested by this page…
As for the Linear A symbol for wine, it's covered in Ester Salgarella 2020 article "A Note on the Linear A & B Ideogram AB 131/VIN (um)‘Wine’and Its Variants: References to Time Notation?", which includes Figure 1:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/SalgarellaFigure1.png
The Cretan version is in Figure 2:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/SalgarellaFigure2.png
And the Egyptian one is in Figure 3:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/SalgarellaFigure3.png
For the "Time Notation" part, I invite you to read the paper.
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Language Log
"She stopped every single one of them"
A couple of months ago ("A new Trump speaking style?", 8/10/2024), I gave an example to support my subjective impression that Donald Trump's speaech is becoming less fluent. The clip included some cases of word-finding difficulties, as in this characterization of vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz:
Your browser does not support the audio element.
She picked a
radical left
uh
man
that is uh
he's got things done that he's-
he has positions that are just not-
it's not even possible to believe
that they exist.
In a more recent 9/28/2024 rally speech, after another spate of re-starts and pauses, Trump produces a phrase that seems to be the opposite of what he means:
Your browser does not support the audio element.
Putting it in context:
Your browser does not support the audio element.
Earlier this year, while Rachel was out on a run
she was brutally raped and murdered by this
disgusting
illegal alien,
who was let into the United States
by Kamala
and her
lax law. She-
they- they-
every one of my killer-
we had the great-
she would have-
he would have never been able to get in.
She stopped every single one of them.
She was the border czar,
now she doesn't admit that.
In earlier years (see e.g. "Presidential fluency", 10/31/2017), I was struck by the fact that Trump rarely used filled pauses like "uh" and "um", or silent pauses ("dead air"), or rapidly-repeated initial function words like "she- they- they-".
I don't have systematic counts to show that things have changed — maybe later — but I'll register again my subjective impression of a difference.
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
meathead
a stupid person
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Idiom of the Day
liquid courage
slang The decrease in timidity or inhibition that comes from imbibing alcoholic beverages. Watch the video
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Language Log
Silent Suiters
A bluesky post linked to this reddit page showing a display of the "rack of consent badges at a furry convention":
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/FurryConsentBadges.png
Being ignorant of furry lingo, my first thought was that "silent suiter" was an idiosyncratic spelling for "silent suitor", but Google's AI Overview set me straight:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/AI_OverviewFursuiter.png
For more on the etiquette involved, there's the page "Do's and Don'ts of interacting with fursuiters" from 2024 Anthrocon.
And it turns out that there's a whole wikifur, whose Fursuit page seems even better than Wikipedia's. It also includes links to Furry Dictionaries and Furspeech.
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
known as
to be called a certain name, even though it mightn't be a real or official name
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Word of the Day
uncongenial
Definition: (adjective) Not suitable to your tastes or needs.
Synonyms: incompatible.
Usage: I married early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not uncongenial with my own.
Discuss
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Language Log
Gyro, part 2
There's a chain of about half-a-dozen fast food restaurants called Gyro Shack in Boise, Idaho, where I find myself now. They're cool little shops, just as Boise is a cool (big-)little city spread across a broad, flat plain (nearly three thousand feet in elevation) that lies at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
Several things about gyros perplex me. One is how the cones of meat on the vertical, rotating spit cohere and do not fall to pieces, but docilely hanging in place oozing their mouthwatering juices waiting to be sliced off, layer after layer. One traditional gyro meat recipe states: "Processing the meat in the food processor and overworking it ensures that the proteins in the meat stick together, like sausage." (source) I still don't get it, since sausage has a casing to hold it together.
Never mind about that physical matter for now, What really bothers me (and lots of other people), is how to pronounce that four-letter word.
Some people say "hero", others pronounce it as in "gyroscope", one person told me to pronounce it like the name of the official currency of the European Union, and so on.
Here are some phonetic transcriptions: /ˈjiː.ɹoʊ/, /ˈjɪɹoʊ/, /ˈʒɪɹoʊ/, /ˈd͡ʒaɪɹoʊ/
Audio recordings here.
Another puzzlement: like so many classical, canonical foods of the Mediterranean (baklava, kebab, kofta, meze, taramasalata, etc., etc.), is gyro a Greek food or a Turkish food — or ultimately Arabic or Persian (and which way?), with a bit of Italian tossed (!) in?
Here's the etymology for gyro: Back-formation from the plural gyros, from Greek γύρος (gýros); from the turning of the meat on a spit (as a calque of Turkish döner into Greek). Doublet of gyre and gyrus.
(Wiktionary)
sandwich made from roasted lamb, 1971, originally in reference to the meat itself, as roasted on a rotating spit, from Modern Greek gyros "a circle" (see gyre (n.)). Mistaken in English for a plural and shorn of its -s.
(Etymonline)
Once Gyro Shack breaks out of Boise, it may become part of the giant fast food industry, or maybe, like Nebraskan-Eastern European runza, it will remain an ethnic, regional specialty — except that gyros are already everywhere as street food. Somehow, they seem to resist industrialization and business models. They are the niche food of niche foods. Selected readings
* "Gyro" (6/26/20)
* "Nontrivial script fail" (5/18/11) — 7th comment
* "'Ingenious herd of charcoal fire'" (4/5/11)
* "Why Do Canadians Eat Donair?" (4/13/07)
* "If you're uneducated you say it right" (2/2/09) — in the comments
* "Ajvar and caviar" (8/1/22)
* "Respect the local pronunciation: runza and Henri" (6/13/24)
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Language Log
Is English a "creole language"?
The first two panels of today's SMBC: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/SMBC_KingArthur0.png The rest of the strip: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/SMBC_KingArthur1.png The AfterComic:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/SMBC_KingArthurAfter.png
The mouseover title: "Hoping the Welsh isn't lol."
The premise seems to be that King Arthur has arisen again, to deal with socio-economic crises in today's Britain. I'll leave interpretation of the Arthur legend to others, and focus on the description of English as "this weird French-German creole language".
We can discard the "weird" part as a humorous invocation of what all 6th-century inhabitants of the British Isles might have thought about its now-dominant language.
The introduction of French into the English stew was of course several centuries after Arthur's (fictional) time — but the question of whether English should be described as a "French-German creole language" is a small part of a larger controversy over what a "creole language" is, whether it is a category with sharp boundaries, which languages belong in the category (or belong where on a spectrum of creole-ness), and even whether the whole category is problematic.
The Wikipedia article starts with this definition:
A creole language, or simply creole, is a stable natural language that develops from the process of different languages simplifying and mixing into a new form (often a pidgin), and then that form expanding and elaborating into a full-fledged language with native speakers, all within a fairly brief period.
For a carefully-reasoned argument against Middle English (the French-German hybrid) belonging in the creole-language category, we can cite Manfred Görlach's 1986 chapter "Middle English – a creole?":
Among various new approaches creolistics, the investigation and description of pidgin and Creole languages, has proved to be a most stimulating, if to many scholars controversial, discipline. […]
The attraction that pidgin and Creole languages have held for many scholars has prompted historical linguists to look for earlier language states or situations comparable to those that led to the formation of pidgins and Creoles in post-Renaissance societies. Most Romance languages, Yiddish, Middle English, Bulgarian, or even the Germanic languages as a group within the Indo-European family of languages, have all been compared with, or even claimed to be, creole languages. […]
Unless simplification and language mixture are thought to be sufficient criteria for the definition of a Creole or creoloid (and I do not think they are, since this would make most languages of the world Creoles, and the term would consequently lose its distinctiveness), then Middle English does not appear to be a creole.
The Wikipedia article's section on Controversy offers a useful sketch of the issues. A sketch of the sketch:
Creoleness is at the heart of the controversy with John McWhorter and Mikael Parkvall opposing Henri Wittmann and Michel DeGraff. In McWhorter's definition, creoleness is a matter of degree, in that prototypical creoles exhibit all of the three traits he proposes to diagnose creoleness: little or no inflection, little or no tone, and transparent derivation. In McWhorter's view, less prototypical creoles depart somewhat from this prototype. […] Objections to the McWhorter-Parkvall hypotheses point out that these typological parameters of creoleness can be found in languages such as Manding, Sooninke, and Magoua French which are not considered creoles. Wittmann and DeGraff come to the conclusion that efforts to conceive a yardstick for measuring creoleness in any scientifically meaningful way have failed so far. […] Mufwene (2000) and Wittmann (2001) have argued further that Creole languages are structurally no different from any other lang[...]
Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
kisser
the mouth
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Idiom of the Day
a line in the sand
A figurative boundary that someone or some group refuses to cross or beyond which no further advance or compromise is accepted. (Used especially in the phrase "draw a line in the sand.") Watch the video
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