少人数制で楽しく身につく英会話教室・英会話スクールなら「アミックインターナショナル」

Have you ever stared at a word so long or seen it repeated so often that you start to doubt that it’s actually a word? This morning I had to convert a few files into one pdf and took to naming the files “content 1”, “content 2”, and so on. That’s when it hit me–content is a really strange word. Has it always looked so strange? Is it pronounced with the stress on the first syllable or the second? Does the stress on the syllable actually change the meaning of the word? Was I even spelling it correctly? What the heck was a content anyway? I became convinced that I was making up the word. I felt that it looked deeply wrong despite not getting the squiggly red line under the word. What the heck was going on?! Before I had an epic word meltdown, I took a trip to Google to make sure I wasn’t the only one affected by this phenomena. 

According to Matthew J.X. Malady, an Slate columnist/super villain, this condition is called “wordnesia” and it happens to the best of us, even linguists and professors! According to Malady’s article, 

“James contended that our conscious experiences are made up of components he referred to as the nucleus and the fringe. The nucleus consists of sensory information that we discern easily and have no trouble perceiving (the individual letters that make up words, for instance) while the fringe entails more nebulous experiences or responses that help inform fully developed thoughts. Fringe-type sensations involving familiarity, significance, and correctness would appear to be critical in connecting all the dots when reading and writing, but in some instances the signals can get crossed. Sometimes, as Epstein says, “the fringe provides a sense of ‘wrongness’ when it should be providing a sense of ‘rightness.’ ”   

To put it simply, while we’re going about our reading and writing business, there seems to be a small hiccup in our brain that says “This word isn’t right!” To put it even more simply, no one knows definitely why this happens to us. The good news is that the symptoms don’t seem to last very long and I was back to converting files in no time! Has wordnesia ever affected you?

Raise vs rise

Both raise and rise refer to something going up, but there is a difference.

Raise
Raise needs a direct object – if you raise something you move it up. It has both literal and non-literal meanings and it is a regular verb, so it’s past and past participle forms are raised.

• I raise my eyebrows when I’m surprised.
• The government plan to raise taxes.
• He raised his voice at me in anger, but I forgave him.

Rise
Rise does not take a direct object – things rise or go up by themselves. Rise is an irregular verb so the past form is rose and the past participle is risen.

• The sun rises at 6a.m.
• The water level rises twice a day because of the tide.
• The bird rose into the air and flew away.

In English, there are many ways to have your speaking partner repeat themselves if you didn’t hear what they said. Some of these are pretty colloquial, but try out the following the next time you are speaking to a native English speaker and need them to repeat something. 

• “Can you say that again?”
• “What did you say?”
• “One more time, please.”
• “Can you repeat that?”
• “I’m sorry?”
• “What now?”
• “Can I hear that again?”
• “Pardon?”
• “I beg your pardon?”*
• “I didn’t catch that, can you say it again?”

*use only if you think the person is saying something offensive or surprising. 

Have you heard of this new Netflix show, Insatiable, that may or may not be coming out later this year? I watched the trailer earlier this week and it seems…problematic, to say the least. Here’s the official trailer so you can judge for yourself:

Yikes. I have many problems with this show just from seeing the trailer.

Patty is portrayed by Debby Ryan, a 25 year old actress who is playing the part of a high schooler. Patty is constantly bullied for her weight. She believes that if she were thinner, she could have a normal high school experience of dating boys and being friends with the popular girls. Patty’s life changes dramatically when she is seemingly punched in the face by a homeless man which causes her to have her jaw wired shut. She then loses an incredible amount of weight and seeks revenge on those that made fun of her in the past. Patty decides to get even by winning a beauty pageant. Patty and her classmates may or may not learn a lesson about inner beauty and that getting revenge on others is bad. 

Sigh. Here’s what I have a problem with:

I realize that this show was probably written by a team of people who have been out of high school for twenty-some years. Granted, I’ve been out of high school for about ten years, but I can almost guarantee you that no one makes fun of people for being fat. Have you seen the statistics of obesity in the U.S.? Newsflash: practically everyone is overweight.

That being said; Patty?? Who under the age of 50 has the name Patricia aka Patty? It seems pretty convenient that this story is about an overweight girl who just happens to be called Patty. Such lazy writing.

Additionally, the “Mean Queen Bee” of the high school trope is so played out. Think of the most popular girl at your high school; was she mean? No, right? Because then no one would like her. The popular girl in school is probably smart, athletic, and nice to her friends and classmates, and indifferent to everyone else. Additionally, the trailer shows that someone has spray painted “Fatty Patty” on Patty’s school locker. That’s destruction of school property! I’m pretty sure “petty vandalism” isn’t a popular high school girl’s list of hobbies. 

My biggest complaint is the entire premise of the show, really. A young girl (portrayed by an adult) is punched in the face by a man which causes her to lose a lot of weight. She wants to lose weight because she wants to be attractive to her peers and have a “normal high school experience”. The popular girls in her class constantly tease her for her weight and so after she loses said weight she decides to get her revenge on them by way of a beauty contest. 

Do you see what I’m getting at here? This show has opened a can of worms that can be so damaging for young viewers. Young people are already susceptible to body issues and might try to copycat Patty’s method of losing weight. I think there’s a possibility that this show could cause eating disorders or body issues as people try to seek validation through weight loss. 

It seems like the writers of the show have heard the recent backlash and have responded in kind. 

What do you think? Is Insatiable problematic or will you give it a try?

In with time expressions

In is a preposition of time. It can be used with:

Months

• I’m going on holiday in May.
• I’ll next see you at Christmas in December.
• I think we arrived some time in June.

Seasons

• In winter, it’s cold.
• I think this year I’ll have my holiday in summer.
• Mummy, do the leaves fall off the tree in spring or in autumn?

Years

• I finished school in 2000.
• The Titanic sank in 1912.
• I grew up in the 1930s.

Times of day

• I leave home in the morning.
• I get home in the evening.
• I’ll see you in the afternoon.

Be careful!

• I can’t sleep at night.

The past, present and future

• In the past, people died much younger.
• You need to learn to live in the present.
• In the future, you’ll learn everything from videos.

When I read, I make many highlights and underlines. Usually these are new words, interesting facts, or thought-provoking quotes. I put the best of those quotes in a dedicated Evernote document, which I look at from time to time if I am feeling down or in need of inspiration; here are a few of my favorites from that file.

“The superior man is distressed by his want (lack of) ability.” –Confucius 

“Freedom is not the absence of commitments, but the ability to choose—and commit myself to—what is best for me.” –Paulo Coehlo 

“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.” -Rumi

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances; if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” –Carl Jung

“Even if you fail at your ambitious thing, it’s very hard to fail completely. That’s the thing people don’t get.” –Larry David

“We are born here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.” –Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 

“The more you invest in yourself, the more other people invest in you.” –Unknown

“This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important.” –Gary Provost

This is totally nerdy but I heard this track on a Dark Souls live stream (a live stream on Twitch of someone I like playing Dark Souls   😛 ) and searched for it on Soundcloud right after. This is a sound I don’t usually listen to, but Lil Kuudere and his producer Sukoyomi really made something catchy and hard-hitting here and I can’t get enough of it recently. 

Joe

https://soundcloud.com/sukoyomi/alone

I recently stumbled upon a series of short videos from an American TV show called “What Would You Do?”on YouTube. The premise of the TV show is basically to put actors in compromising situations and see if the people around them will intervene. The host, John Quinones, feeds information and directions to the actors depending on the situation. He also interviews bystanders and asks their opinion on the matter and why they did or didn’t speak up. The show covers a variety of controversial topics from racism to shoplifting and everything in between. The show also repeats many of the experiments with actors of different gender and races to see if the results change. 

The following video is one of the tamer examples of “What Would You Do”: 

In this video, we see an actress posing as a young, spoiled, wanna-be social media star. She and “her mother” go shopping at a clothing store and the girl proceeds to be rude and irritating to a shop clerk. The girl throws clothes on the floor and verbally berates the clerk and the store. Her mother does nothing to allay the situation, leading to an uncomfortable shopping environment for the shop’s patrons. While all the shoppers show their amazement at the girl’s behavior, a few women confront her and tell her to be kind to the clerk. Everyone breathes a huge sigh of relief when John Quinones steps in. 

I would personally love to see this experiment done with a teenage boy. In America, we are bombarded with the trope of entitled, spoiled, rich girls. Entitled, spoiled, rich boys have yet to make an appearance (on Dr. Phil) so I wonder if the same amount of people would complain about his behavior. 

Most people would say that they would stand up to someone who was bullying or otherwise treating someone unfairly. It’s heartwarming to see that so many people will take action in these situations, even if they are scripted. 

Steal vs rob

Both steal and rob mean ‘take something without permission’.

Steal
Steal focuses on the object or the thing which is taken.

• Hey! Somebody just stole my phone.
• You once stole chocolate from a shop!
• She has completely stolen my heart.

Rob
Rob focuses on the victim of the crime.

• The men robbed a bank last night.
• Three guys robbed me while I was travelling home.
• She has been robbed three times this year.