Day 20: Improve Your English

[Ute42]

.

I've been letting my place in Germany for 16 years through all kinds of distribution channels. Until 2017 all my guests were German. In January 2018 I decided to start listing with airbnb and I thought, I might now get international guest, time to polish up my English.

At the time my english was kind of ok on a smalltalk-level, what I was completely lacking was the vocabulary around hosting, bedding, cleaning and the like. In order to improve my english in this specialised field, I decided to start reading in the english community center. Because refering words would pop up in this forum for sure and they did.

Whenever I found a word that I didn't know I looked it up in some online dictionary. Next thing I did I created a spreadsheet with all these new words, an airbnb glossary. This is how it looks:

Sometimes though an online dictionary is not sufficant to find out the meaning of a word or an expression. A while ago some Robin in Australia opened a thread entitled:

• Stirring the pot

I couldn't find out what that means. So I sent Robin a privat message and asked him flat out: Robin, what means stirring the pot? Here's his answer:

• I will answer one expression with another....Stirring the pot is linked with Playing the devils advocate!! When you 'stir the pot', you keep the contents on the move, you stop them from boiling over but you keep some action going on in the pot! To bring that into context here Uté it means you keep the thought alive and in others minds by reactivating a worthwhile discussion. You keep on bringing up the same conversation.

Ok – thank You, I've got it. But Robin didn't stop explaining. He continuoued:

• And by playing 'Devils Advocate' you deliberately bring alternative ideas to the conversation. You will state an opinion you don't agree with for the sake of promoting conversation on a subject! Mark Rutte the Dutch Prime Minister may say that no more funds should be made available for EEU bailouts and Angela Merkel may disagree with him and say Germany and France have a duty to support the European community! Although you Ute, agree with Angela Merkel you deliberately take the side of Mark Rutte in order to bring new ideas up that may make both sides agree.

This was not the end of his explanation. Then he talked about the expressiveness of the english language, that it's like a river flowing to the sea, about channels and ditches, empty streams,

tributaries, directions and the ocean.

You must know one thing: Whenever You drop @Robin4  two lines, he comes back with 37 lines. Robin loves to write, he's a great writer an many people in the CC love him for that.

By the way: I learned another word from Robin:

• Jibber Jabber

Have You ever seen that before? I found the word in one of Robins posts:

• But company 'jibber jabber' like that don't instill me with confidence.

I forgot which company he was talking about, but it doesn' matter in this context anyway.

I continued to read in the english CC and while cruising through the lines, again and again I came across the word „bleep“, and it was always accompanied with 2 asterix' in front and in the back:

• **bleep**.

It's easy of course to find out what bleep means, that's the sound a bird makes when it tweets. But **bleep** came up in so many places and in so many contexts and none of them was bird-relatet. I just couldn't figure out what the meanig of it was.

And then this happened: In 2015 I hosted a group of 4 young religious women. While checking them in they told me that they will not check in, because they didn't like my place. I was furious. This was the first time in one and a half decades that someone refused to check in. In 2018 I told this story in the Comminity Center. I wrote:

When I looked how it came out in the community center, I saw this:

• For the first time in 15 years, 4 young religious womed from **bleep**,
  all wearing a **bleep**, refused to check into my place bc they didn't like it.

Aaaahaaaaa, now I understood. Airbnb has a discriminating word detector in place and whenever such a word pops up, it get's erased and replaced by **bleep**. All of a sudden everything made sense. Ever since this incident, whenever I talk about people from that area, I refer to them as „People from an area that starts with „a“ and ends with „rab“. The airbnb detector never cought me on that.

My best source of new vocbulary is the lovely @Susan17  in Dublin. While an average english native speaker has a vocabulary of 20.000 word, I think she has 60.000 words to choose from and she does. Here's a list of words I found in her recent threads:

• incendiary, knick-knack, skedaddling, flashing shamrock deely-boppers, Begorrah, malice or sleight, misogynistic, funnelling, beano, feisty side, Geezer, pesky, besmirch, abdicate, villain, astroturfing,

I had to look all these words up. Meanwhile I have restrikted myself to not reading more than 2 Susanposts per day, because it's so much work for me. Same as with Robin in Australia, sometimes I cannot find out the meaning of the words she uses through a dictionary, so I have to ask her. Recently she used the word:

• jack sh*t

Did You see how clever she is? She's putting an asterix into the second word to fool the airbnb bad word detector. So I had to asked her and here's her answer:

• Well, "jack sh*t" is a slang term that originated from the poker world, and refers to drawing an opening hand of Jack, two, unsuited (of different suits - hearts, clubs, diamonds, spades) - and it's considered to be the worst possible hand you could start with.
  
  - Did you have a good hand?"
  - "No, I had jack sh*t"
  
  In terms of everyday use, there's not a whole lot of difference in the terms "sh*t" and "jack sh*t", and both are interchangeable.

So far we've been talking abount reading in the Community Center. Now what about writing?

If You are from South America, Asia, Greenland or whereever You may come from, don't be shy to write in this community center of ours. I have never seen anybody making a remark about someone elses english being poor. This really never happened. If You don't get something, look it up and if that is not enough, ask the Person who wrote it.

You may end up with a new CC-friend in Ireland or in Australia.

Schöne Weihnachten und ein gutes neues Jahr.

[Susan17]

@Robin4 

I saved the documentary below for you, after I originally saw your post Rob - but then, as always, forgot which thread it was on. I think you might find it interesting, considering your heritage and all that.. 😉

Burning the bones of the earth" was the old saying that the old lime burners of old used to describe burning limestone.

Lime has been used in Ireland for thousands of years. Historically, limestone was burned to produce quick lime which was used for building mortar and limewash, for tanning and skinning animal hides and for fertiliser in agriculture.

But quick lime also had a more sinister use - as told by Oscar Wilde in a description of an execution in the Ballad of Reading Gaol. A fist of quick lime was reportedly thrown in Parnell's face and it was said that had he not had his eyes closed, he would have lost his sight.

The documentary is based on an unpublished memoir and tells the story of the life and work of a lime burner- seen through the eyes of two told by Matty McCaulife from Kerry and ‘the limeburner of Churchhill’ - an imaginary village between Macroom and Charleville in Cork.

Interesting doc.. you might struggle a bit with the accents though, they're quite broad 🙂

pod-v-25101239m27sburningthebonesoftheearthdoconone-pid0-2367192_audio.mp3

[Susan17]

Oops, sorry - I don't think that worked Rob - not sure what I did wrong! Anyway, just go ogle RTE Radio 1 Documentary, Burning The Bones Of The Earth, if you want to have a listen. 

[Marg11]

or "Dry as a Cockie's cage".

[Emily352]

The English phrase "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" always makes me laugh, perhaps because the mischievous literal translation in Italian of this phrase is: "a di*k in the hand is worth two in the bush".

The English phrase corresponds to the Italian "Meglio un uovo oggi che una gallina domani" (translation: "better an egg today than a hen tomorrow").

In short, it's better to be content with something one has, or can be sure of, than risk having nothing at all by trying to get something more (two birds) or something else (a hen).

I’ll settle for a bird in the hand, I think...

[Mike-And-Helen0]

In my 20s I had one of these, @Ute42 and it was perfectly warm with the heater on!

I'm late to the party @Helen427 @Sarah977 @Emily352 @Robin4 but my Mum has some classic idioms (is the plural a latin one, have to check!)

"Like Piffy on a rock bun"

What does that mean, any ideas?!

[Ute42]

.

@Mike-And-Helen0 

Great car. This automobile runs without any software for sure.

[Stephanie]

I'm English and I have no clue... something local to Devon @Mike-And-Helen0 ?

[Helen427]

@Mike-And-Helen0. let's hope small cars come back in production, they take up much less road space.

Do you know who has your car know?
Maybe you can track it down and see if you can go for a spin in int if it's still in shape.

[Emily352]

@Mike-And-Helen0 

I love English idioms. English abounds in verbal idioms, of which Italian has comparatively few. Idioms proper are divided into logical and non-logical, the ones whose meaning is immediately (or almost immediately) clear, and those which have to be explained to be be understood. “Like Piffy on a rock bun” is one of these idioms and means a person (Piffy) ignored or that is sitting there (on a rock bun =  a rock bun is a cake, apparently) not doing anything. The common Italian expression is “Non stai facendo un piffero” (translation: “You’re doing nothing”). Can’t you see the uncanny similarity between “Piffy” and “piffero”?

[Mike-And-Helen0]

@Emily352 that is cool. Is it a complete accident?

[Helen427]

How many people have Lost in Translation the word, 'Shield'?

With English as a second language it can be confusing for some that there's various meanings including to shield a person from harm,  wearing a full face shield or carrying a shield like on a battle field.

There's also a shield like that of a winning Trophy.

English for some can be very challenging.

We can all do our best to be understanding and help break down language barriers with showing people items and context of each situation.