I lived in Chicagoland in 6th thru 9th grade. In the summer it was frequently around 95 with 100% humidity. When you're that age, walking in the rain, which is almost as warm as the air, is a beautiful thing. In fact, it's better when it rains, cause if there's any kind of breeze, it cools you off.
I had a job interview yesterday and we had around 34°C. I went in there in suit and tie and hoped the first interview would not last longer than an hour. It turned out they gave me a test that took 2 hours followed by the interview of another 1 1/2 hours.
You need to act cool calm and collected, I would take the blazer off and either have it on my shoulder or place it on behind the chair, just shows that you are willing to adapt to the situation rather than boil your internals ....I would struggle with the temperature so high and dependin on the interview, may just go minus the blazer
It's been a pleasant 75 degree week here on the Oregon coast. Clear skies and cool afternoon breezes. Sat out on the back patio in the afternoon with a good book watching the squirrels and chipmunks trying to out maneuver each other for choice of foods while being dive bombed by woodpeckers. One afternoon we took the little motorhome parked on a cliff top just to picnics and enjoy the waves crashing on the rocks. We've been here almost a year now watching the weather news for the country each day. Ice storms, hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards on the "freeways," forest fires and now heatwaves. I think we've found a good spot here. Oh, horrors, just heard it will get up to 80 today. Oh well, a walk down to the farmers market this morning have lunch on the waterfront and back to the patio and the chase lounge this afternoon.
Yeah I took the blazer off as soon as I entered the building. The buildings here are not built and run like in the US where the AC is going all the time. So the AC was on and it was still hot as hell in there. And yes I sat through it and got the job. I dont know how accaptable this behavior would be in the UK or US but here you dont invite for a job interview and let them do a 2 hour test. I mean people could have other appointments in this time frame. Like for jumping into the next cold mountain lake or something
Probably. Especially if that's all you get from posts on a football chat site. Grandma nazi ism is a sickness. But you wouldn't do that.
Only with permission. One question, tho'...Did you type or did you speak into phone or other device? If you spoke, the spelling blip wasn't your mistake...it was the phone's. The whole reason for making the point is that I just finished reading Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue, and the book specifically mentions the fact that some words that come from French into English end up with more "English" pronunciations. It's random, tho'. We say "crapes" instead of "crepes", but we say "camoflazh", not "camoflayj". Lots of other examples. Interesting book.
Answer. I type with a stylus so all spelling is mine. Spelling is and always has been hit or miss with me. So much so I just don't give a shit any more. It are what it are. I read a lot of Bryson back in his day. Some I found interesting but I felt he always had a harsh edge to his humour. "Mother Tonge" I don't remember a lot of. Since 1066 Norman Fench has always been a part of the evolvement of the English language. That of course became the legal language of the time. It took over 100 years for the two side to begin assimilation. Not until the Angevin empire of Henry II and his sons. Henry, Richard, Geoffry and bad king John. Who rulled from Scotland to the Med. and the western half of what is "now" France. Did the Anglo Saxon and the Norman Barons become English As for French words in the modern English. As you mention are still sounded with and English bent to then. A simple one would be herb. Even here in the US it's sounded with what people think of as a Frenche Accent, dropping the H. Not so in England. Then camouflage for me was more of a J than G. Camoflarj. Rough phonetical. Even people names are more frenchified here. Such as Bernard to me its more like Berned. Here there's an H sound in it Bernahd like a French hairdresser. It's a funny old language innit and every one is right. I do go on......
Did you have any problems with Yanks understanding your accent when you first went to the US? I ask because my friend married an American. She’s bright, polite and well-travelled, but she flat-out can’t understand what most people are saying to her whenever she goes to Liverpool.
To be fair, i find it difficult sometimes to decipher the liverpudlian lingo....and I'm from the UK and have travelled to many areas with all sorts of accents
A bit, but it was usually given and taken with humour. I stepped of the Plane at LAX on a Tuesday suitcase in one hand toolbox in another. Didn't know anybody, the area or the country. Other than what I'd seen in John Wayne movies. Found a cheap motel. Wednesday looked for jobs in the paper and made some calls. Thursday went for a couple of interviews within walking distance. Started work on Monday for an aircraft company who took new planes in ballast and turned them into executive private palaces for the likes of Conrad Hilton, Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jnr had a few made money renting them out. A couple of Arabs. Oh and some feller called Hugh Heffner. Got to work with some good guys. I found Americans, for the most part were open, friendly and curious. Easy to chat with. Yeah I learnt to avoid Scouse slang. To talk slower, a lot slower and to brush off comments that could have been considered insulting, it's easier to laugh it off than take offence. I never had any trouble making friends. My wife is an Oregon girl smart as a whip and has a great humour. We've been "Home" together many times. Sometimes a word would catch her out but she handled it well. On story she loves to tell is about a young 14 year old cousin of mine that we brought back to Park City with us for a visit. Shy young Scouse who would talk in fast bursts of words. She was in the kitchen one day and he came in , waited for a moment and asked a question in a quick burst. She though she caught it and proceeded to explain how she was making the meatloaf. He studied his shoes for a moment, forced himself to slow down and said. I was wondering if i could go and play football before dinner.
Great explanation. I've found the pace and cadence of Scouse to be the biggest challenge for newcomers to the dialect. Slow it down, and you have a far better chance of "getting it". But that ain't Scouse. It's a machine-gun paced speech pattern.
I came to Toronto from Liverpool 44 years ago, and quickly realized - like usscsouse - that slowing down was the only way to be understood. I still bear it in mind today. although I did find that even talking REALLY slow doesn't avoid the kind of dropped-jaw look of total bewilderment you get, when you tell someone you went for a walk "wearing a big mac" because it was raining.
Way back in my LA life I dated an English teacher. (She had a nice Mustang, way cool in the 60s.) I was looking through one of her textbooks and remembered a passage. "Some words spelt differently often sound the same, example: Marry, merry and Mary." Horse pucky! I said. Or something like that. Other than starting with M they are nothing alike. Unless you compare the flat one vowel Caltalk to a 5 vowel Scouse.
Lots of folks pronounce those words the same. I've heard that you can tell where someone is from based on how they say them.
I guess that was my point. In Cal they are pronounced alike but all 3 have very different pronunciation in say, er, Liverpool I liked John Denver in the old days even when he sang a Beatles song. I recognized the melody but I didn't know what a "Leaded Bee" was.
Conor mcgregor v mayweather is a farce of a boxing contest, I would rather see Steven 'Stevie G ' Gerrard v 'Senegalese spitter' El Hadji Diouf....Diouf clearly has some beef with Gerrard with all the nonsense he spouts periodically to the press, I'm sure Gerrard must be at a stage where he's had enough
My wife and I honey-mooned in Scotland because we wanted to see some of Europe but wanted to go where they spoke English. Oy, vey...
I'm not optimistic, and I won't be watching, but it remains to be seen whether it lives up to expectations, dontcha think?
I think a lot of whether people have trouble understanding different English accents has something to do with how much they've been exposed to them. Someone who's lived only in one place and heard English (or whatever other language) spoken only with one particular accent is going to have a hard time matching an "odd-sounding" word with what they expect to hear based on the context of the conversation. That said, I've always found heavy Scottish and Indian accents difficult to follow, although I didn't have much trouble in Liverpool (but maybe they all were enunciating carefully for the slow American... ). With Indian speakers it seems to be more the altered cadence and putting emphasis on different syllables of words more than an accent per se. Imasyko, wife and I also honeymooned in Scotland, in the western highlands (between Oban and Fort Williams) back more than 20 yrs ago, and absolutely loved it. Where were you guys? We'll actually be going back with extended family this summer to Wales and Scotland in August. It'll be interesting to see how much harder it is to understand folks this time around. It does seem to get harder to "translate" on the fly, although I'm not sure if that's a hardware (hearing loss) or software (slower brain) problem.