Thanks to the internet, there are seemingly endless ways to learn and practice English. Today, I’d like to focus on webcomics. Webcomics are very aptly named in the sense that they are exactly what they sound like; comic strips hosted on a website. Unlike newspaper or magazine comics, webcomics can be started by nearly anyone with an internet connection and basic drawing skills. The beauty of using webcomics to learn English is that nearly every webcomic deals with a different aspect of Western life. Some webcomics can be political or contain social commentary, such as Questionable Content and Scenes From A Multiverse. Some can be fun and educational (funducational?) like Hark! A Vagrant and xkcd. And some can be downright weird and hilarious like Wondermark, Dr. McNinja, and BOASAS.  Whatever your story preference is you can find a webcomic that fits the bill. Learn different English expressions and metaphors, as well as clever Western humor, all in three to five frames! Enjoy!

Turns out I still haven’t learned every word in the English language (but I’m working on it). Here are seven more words I came across recently that I had never seen (or at least remembered) before.

• Canard: a false or unfounded rumor, story, or belief 
• Furtive: done secretly, stealthily 
• Inchoate: being imperfectly formed or only partly in existence 
• Limn: to draw or paint on a surface; to outline in sharp detail 
• Spume: frothy matter/foam/scum on liquids 
• Sui generis: unique, particular, in a class of its own 
• Yegg: safecracker, robber

If you’re a chemistry enthusiast and/or huge nerd, you’re in for a treat! Mole Day, which is an integral part of National Chemistry Week, is the celebration of Avogadro’s Number. You may be asking yourself, “What in the world is Avogadro’s Number?!” As I am no chemistry devotee, I took the time to look this information up for you, dear reader. Avogadro’s Number (or Avogadro’s Constant, if ya fancy), named for famed Italian scientist, Amedeo Avogadro, is the number of molecules in one mole. I understand that you may be shouting “Now, what the heck is a mole?!” at your computer screen.  Fear not, dear reader, a mole is but the unit of measurement for amount of substance. Simply put, moles give chemists more accuracy when it comes to determining amounts of substances produced in a given reaction. Okay, maybe that wasn’t so simple, but the mole is a very useful unit of measurement. The measurement is approximately 6.022140857(74)×10²³ mol⁻¹   (and yes, I copied and pasted that formula). And so on this October twenty-third in the year two thousand and eighteen, and every October 23rd hereafter, between the hours of 6:02 A.M. and 6:02 P.M.,  we celebrate the mole. I recommend a visit to the American Chemical Society for more Mole Day activities and crafts to get you in the spirit to celebrate your favorite unit of measurement.

For those of us that are still confused; here’s a handy chart!:

Run in

• Meaning: Arrest
• Example: The guys who robbed the bank last week have finally been run in.

Run in

• Meaning: Use new machinery at less than full speed, preventing damage
• Example: I have to drive slowly for the first 1,000 miles to run the engine in.

Run into

• Meaning: Enter by running
• Example: He ran into the building.

Run into

• Meaning: Collide with
• Example: He lost control of the vehicle and ran into a tree.

Run into

• Meaning: Encounter or meet unexpectedly
• Example: I ran into your cousin the other day.

Run into

• Meaning: Cause to blend into
• Example: You can use the paintbrush this way to run the colors into each other.

Run into

• Meaning: Reach a large figure
• Example: By the end, the cost of the project ran into the millions of dollars.

Run low

• Meaning: Near the end of a supply of something; to be nearly running out
• Example: Our stocks of meat are running low.

RUN OFF meaning – Phrasal verbs with RUN

Run off

• Meaning: Flee or depart quickly
• Example: Don’t run off before the end of the event.

Run off

• Meaning: Make photocopies, or print
• Example: Please run off a couple dozen more flyers to pass out.

Run off

• Meaning: Write something quickly
• Example: Shakespeare could run off a play in just a couple of days.

Run off

• Meaning: Pour or spill off or over
• Example: They kept a barrel to store rainwater that has run off the roof.

Run off

• Meaning: Chase someone away
• Example: If anyone comes into this field, the bull will soon run them off.

Run off

• Meaning: Operate by a particular energy source
• Example: This radio runs off batteries.

Run off with

• Meaning: Leave with someone with the intention of living with them or marrying them
• Example: The chief accountant has run off with his secretary!

Run off with

• Meaning: Steal or abscond
• Example: He ran off with my wallet.

Run on

• Meaning: Continue without interruption
• Example: We can’t afford for the performance to run on for more than the specified time.

Run on

• Meaning: Using a certain time zone
• Example: I was still running on daylight savings time.

Run on

• Meaning: Continue talking for a long time
• Example: She ran on and wouldn’t let anyone get a word in edgeways.

It has been a really long time since I last watched a good horror movie. Now that Halloween is approaching, it might be the best time to get back into it. When I was just a wee little girl I remember the thrill I got from watching Jaws, Arachnophobia, and The Gremlins. I miss the adrenaline rush, getting goosebumps, jumping out of my skin, curling up and hiding under a blanket, and covering my eyes or ears because it’s too scary to watch or listen to. You know it’s a good horror movie when you’re too scared to go to the toilet on your own!

To name a few, my favorites would have to be The Exorcist, The Ring, Shutter, Thirteen Ghosts, The Grudge, Shutter Island, and Silence of the Lambs.

A student recommended I watch a more recent one titled A Quiet Place. What do you recommend I watch?

One of my favorite sports stories comes from the 1974 National Hockey League player draft. 

Back then, the player selection process was painfully slow and done via telephone. As a tongue-in-cheek protest to this, Buffalo Sabres general manager Punch Imlach and PR director Paul Wieland decided to use their 11th round pick on an entirely fictitious player.

That “player” was Taro Tsujimoto, so-named for a Tsujimoto grocery store just outside Buffalo. According to the Sabres, Tsujimoto was the star of the Japanese Hockey League’s Tokyo Katanas. While the JHL was a real league, there was no team in Tokyo at that time, with katanas being a subtle-sword nod to sabres. With no way to confirm his actual existence, the mystery pick was made official and Taro’s name appeared in newspapers and league publications.

When training camp rolled around that fall, Imlach finally revealed that the pick was a hoax. The official record now shows that the Sabres made an ‘invalid claim’ or no selection at all with their pick.

Even still, Taro continues to live on today: a local sports column goes by the name ‘Taro says…’, fans sometimes chant ‘We Want Taro’ when the Sabres are winning big, and occasionally you can see a Tsujimoto jersey in the stands at the KeyBank Center. 

Trying to learn Japanese when you’re an English teacher can be a challenge. When you teach English all day, the opportunity to speak Japanese is close to impossible. Luckily, with a little help from Netflix, I can hone my Japanese listening skills. I especially like the Netflix anime series Aggretsuko for it’s honest (if not exaggerated) portrayal of the Japanese workplace.

Aggretsuko, a combination of “aggressive” and “Retsuko”, follows the mishaps of a young red panda named Retsuko. By day, she silently suffers at her boring office job where she is overworked and under-appreciated. But by night, she releases her workday stress by singing death metal. Her musical ire humorously covers nearly every topic from her horrible boss to uncomfortable shoes to meddling shop clerks.

What I enjoy the most about Aggretsuko is the juxtaposition of the cute animals with the decidedly un-cute world of office work. The characters were created by Sanrio, which is world-renowned for Hello Kitty, Purin, and other adorable characters. But Kitty-chan and Purin-kun don’t work terrible office jobs; their biggest problems are what birthday present to get their friends or getting a stomachache from eating too many apples. Aggretsuko has the nostalgia factor and brand-power for young adults who love cute Sanrio characters, but are forced to grow up and start their own, possibly awful, careers. Plus, with an episode run time of 15 minutes, I can watch two or three episodes in Japanese before I go to bed. Who says learning a new language can’t be fun?!

Retsuko by day–calm, polite, and hard-working.

Retsuko ready to unleash her grievances.

And here’s a 15 minute compilation of all of Retsuko’s rage breakdowns. 

こんにちは、アミック石井校の辰馬です。

先日、英語のことわざについて書きましたが、その中にTime flies like an arrow.（光陰矢のごとし）というのがありました。

ジョークの世界ではこれに続けて、Fruit flies like a banana.という言い回しがあります。フルーツはバナナのように飛ぶ？ 一体どういうことでしょうか。

実は、flyには「飛ぶ」という意味のほかに「ハエ」という意味もあります。同様に、likeは「～のように」という前置詞に加えて、「～が好き」という動詞の使い方もあります。

なので、Fruit flies like a banana.は、「果物バエ（ショウジョウバエ）はバナナを好む」という事実を述べているんですね！

英語には同じ単語でもたくさんの意味があります。ふさわしい意味をピッタリとあてはめられるように、ぜひ色々な文章を読んでみてくださいね♪

今日もアミックブログを訪れてくれてありがとうございます^ ^

木々の葉が色づき始め、金木犀の香る季節となりました。
生まれも育ちも愛媛東予の私としては、10月は秋祭りで胸が騒ぎます。

でも今日は、愛する地元のお祭りの話ではなく、遠く離れたアメリカのシカゴについて。
大学時代から6年間慣れ親しんだ私の大好きな街です。

アメリカ中西部Illinois州最大の都市Chicagoは、五大湖から吹く風が高層建築の間を吹き抜けることでついた愛称Windy Cityを持ちます。

NYやLAに比べると日本人には馴染みの薄い街ですが、アメリカ第３の大都市なんですよ。
有名なものをあげると、スポーツ（MLBチームはWhite SoxとCubs, NBAはMichael Jordanで有名なChicago Bullsなど）、音楽（Jazz & Blues）、美術・博物館(アメリカ３大美術館のシカゴ美術館)、建築（ダウンタウンの高層建築はシカゴ派として知られ、近代建築史においても重要）etc.
オバマ大統領が上院議員を務めていた場所としてご存知の方もいらっしゃるかもしれませんね。

シカゴ郊外に位置するオヘア空港は、世界一の離着陸量を誇る世界でも最も忙しい空港の一つとも言われます。
また、シカゴ郊外のアーリントンハイツには日本企業が多く進出していることもありミニ日本人街が形成されています。

そんなアメリカ中西部の夏は５月〜８月と短く、9月には紅葉が始まり、10月にはぐっと気温が下がり始めます。
本格的な冬は12月〜２月の間で、平均気温はマイナス5℃。時にはマイナス20℃にもなりますが、ミシガン湖から吹く強い風の影響で、体感温度はもっと低く感じられます。

この季節、外を散歩していて冷たい空気が体に触れた瞬間、一瞬で遠く離れたシカゴへ記憶が連れて行ってくれます(*´ω｀)
感覚を通して、昔の様々な記憶がよみがえってタイムトラベルが出来るなんて贅沢です☆

今この瞬間も、未来への旅行切符かもしれませんね☆

アミック英会話

There’s about 15 punctuation marks commonly used in English: the period (.), comma (,), question mark (?), exclamation point (!), apostrophe/inverted comma (‘), dash (—), hyphen (-), colon (:), semi-colon (;), parentheses(( )), brackets ([ ]), bullet points (•), slash (/), and ellipses (…). If you extend this list to typography marks, you can also add the ampersand (&), at sign (@), number sign/pound/hashmark (#), asterisk/star (*), and underscore (_).

However, the full list of punctuation only begins there–in their lifetime, a regular English reader will occasionally encounter a number of other marks. However, they probably won’t be able to tell you their names, or maybe even their purpose. Case in point, these five fun punctuation marks with equally as fun names:

¶ (pilcrow)

The pilcrow is most often seen in word processors and design programs to show where the ‘Enter’ key was hit to jump to the next line of text. However, it also has several other uses:

• Proofreaders and copyeditors write it to indicate where a new paragraph should begin
• Legal writers write it where a citation to an article, statute, law, or similar needs to be made
• Church programs use it to indicate when the congregation should stand, sit, or kneel 

It also sounds like an awesome name for a comic book villain. 

÷ or †(obelus)

Commonly known by most as the ‘division sign’, the obelus of the same name but a more dagger-type shape is also used by editors and proofreaders as a way to indicate a character is dead. It is also sometimes used to indicate a footnote.

‽ (interrobang)

The interrobang is for people who are too lazy/efficiency-minded to write out ?! or !? when wanting to expressed confused surprise. The mark was invented in the 1960s by an American ad man that wanted a symbol to indicate a rhetorical question in his company’s advertisements. After becoming somewhat fashionable in the 60s and 70s (even making its way onto some typewriter keys), the mark has all-but disappeared from use. However, it can still be found in some common computer fonts and there’s even an inverted version (or gnaborretni–interrobang backwards) for Spanish speakers: ⸘

☞ (index, manicule, or fist)

What looks like an overly-detailed emoji is actually a printing mark that dates back to the 12th century. Originally used in the margins of manuscripts to indicate corrections or notes, today it is mostly used in non-fiction to direct the reader to an especially important passage. 

◊ (lozenge)

What most might call a diamond is actually the lozenge, which has many purposes other than just soothing a sore throat or writing about poker:

• To indicate the subtotal key on a calculator (~1960s)
• On public roads in the U.S. and Canada to mark a specific lane’s use (carpool, bicycles only, etc.)
• Math things that I don’t understand

And unrelated to writing/typography but still mildly interesting, the eponymous medicine earned its name because the first cough drops originally only came in the distinct shape.