Practical Course of English: Cultural and historical sketches

пятница, 29 апреля 2016 г.

All that hokey cokey business

Recently I’ve come across an article in the Guardian online edition about the UK government’s education white paper on turning schools into multi-academy trusts and got interested in the use of the famous ‘hokey cokey’ word:

The new president will be highly critical of the Department for Education’s changes to assessments for primary school pupils, with controversial new assessments introduced and in some cases withdrawn through departmental error, such as the new key stage one spelling, punctuation and grammar (Spag) assessment.

“Do we now have the hokey cokey of assessment?” Johnson will ask. “You put the Spag test in, you put the Spag test out, you put it all online and wait for the children to shout: “I know the answer – what was the question? (http://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/apr/29/headteachers-union-chief-slams-government-over-academisation-policy )

Do you know where this ‘hokey cokey’ come from? Listen to the children’s song, watch the participation dance, and appreciate the originality of the stylistic device in the article.

The history of the song itself is also very interesting. Read about it at http://www.bbcamerica.com/anglophenia/2012/03/frasers-phrases-the-curious-history-of-the-hokey-cokey

четверг, 2 января 2014 г.

A NEW ENGLISH LANGUAGE

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU rather than German which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, Her Majesty's Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5 year phase-in plan that would be known as "Euro-English".

In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of the"k". This should klear up konfusion and keyboards kan have 1 less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with "f". This will make words like "fotograf" 20% shorter.

In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be ekspekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent "e"s in the language is disgraseful, and they should go away. By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz year, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords kontaining "ou" and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evrivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozer.

воскресенье, 20 октября 2013 г.

Madrigal singers

A madrigal is a secular vocal music composition, usually a partsong, of the Renaissance and early Baroque eras. Traditionally, polyphonic madrigals are unaccompanied; the number of voices varies from two to eight, and most frequently from three to six. It is quite distinct from the Italian Trecento madrigal of the late 13th and 14th centuries, with which it shares only the name.

Madrigals originated in Italy during the 1520s. Unlike many strophic forms of the time, most madrigals were through-composed. In the madrigal, the composer attempted to express the emotion contained in each line, and sometimes individual words, of a celebrated poem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrigal