There are a lot of controversies regarding if dubbing is to be considered a positive or negative influence. Some people consider it useful as they get distracted while reading. They also find subtitles interfere with the visual experience. Those who dislike dubbing consider that it minimizes the film’s magic. However most of the people agree [...]

Pamiętacie ten okropny moment, w którym po raz pierwszy poczuliście się naprawdę staro? Kiedy zdaliście sobie sprawę, że może nie jesteście już tacy młodzi, jak się wam wydawało? Że może, o zgrozo!, jesteście dorośli? Mnie ta okropna myśl dopadła po raz pierwszy, gdy dzieci sąsiadów zaczęły mi mówić „dzień dobry”. Uderzyło mnie to ponownie, gdy [...]

Do you remember the first time you felt really old? I mean the moment when it struck you that you’re no spring chickens anymore but, yes, as a matter of fact: adults. In my case it was when the neighbors’ children started respectfully saying ‘Good morning’ when they saw me and when my first pupils [...]

Tongue twisters are always a very effective and funny way to improve one’s pronunciation. Since Chinese is a tonal language, this adds another difficulty to the tongue twisters, because they also play around with in the tones while pronunciation eventually stays the same. Here is a popular and quite difficult example: 青青山上一根藤, qīng qīng shān [...]

绕口令是一个非常有效和有趣的方式，以改善一个人的发音。由于中文是一个充满高与低音调的语言。因此，中文绕口令比英文绕口令困难。下列是一个相当受欢迎的和困难绕口令, 当我在小学的时候, 我很喜欢跟同学鬥快： 青青山上一根藤, qīng qīng shān shàng yī gēn téng, 青藤底下挂铜铃, qīng téng de xià guà tóng líng 风吹藤动铜铃动. fēng chuī téng dòng tóng líng dòng 不够困难吗？来试试一个更加困难的: 吃葡萄不吐葡萄皮, chī pútao bù tǔ pútao pí, 不吃葡萄倒吐葡萄皮. bù chī pútao dáo tǔ pútao pí. 很难哦!!很难哦!! 我应该吐葡萄皮或不吐葡萄皮呢？来试试这个吧！！ 四是四, 十是十, sì shí sì, shí shì shí, 十四是十四, 四十是四十, [...]

I recently came across a written account of something overheard on the New York subway. A little girl and her mother are sitting on the subway when the daughter says, “Look mummy, a train” as a subway train passes in the opposite direction. The mother then promptly says, “No honey that’s not a train, that’s [...]

Ты любишь петь и знаешь все песни наизусть?Ты уверен? Иногда мы думаем, что знаем тексты песен , но то, что мы поем, на самом деле, далеко от того, что должно быть.Ты когда-нибудь слышал о мондегреени(mondegreen)? Мондегреен- это термин, который впервые появился на страницах журнала Harper’s в 1954 году. Американская писательница Сильвия Райт поведала историю о [...]

You love singing and you always know the lyrics? Are you sure? Sometimes we think that we know the lyrics until we see them printed in magazines or online. It happens because some words and phrases in combination may mislead by sounding completely different from what they are supposed to mean. Have you ever heard [...]

I recently ended up having a discussion on plurals, the absence of singular and plural form for certain words, and the general oddities of having more than one, or not being able to have only one, of something. It all started with the absurd question what the plural of “everything” was. That’s right, what if [...]

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