Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Show 132 Tuesday 12 September


Watch today's show at YouTube or BlipTV.

Intro

Hi, I’m Sarah. Welcome to The Daily English Show.

So in show 121 I talked about Shibboleths. And I talked about a few that were used during war. But there are also some that have less serious implications. Like the ones used to tell the difference between New Zealanders and Australians.

The example in Wikipedia is: Fish and chips.
“The accents of Australians and New Zealanders seem very similar, and the term fish and chips is sometimes evoked to illustrate a major difference between the two.”

So I thought I’d make a list to help you identify Australians and New Zealanders.

fish and chips
dance
beer
bear
pool
school
sydney

So in New Zealand: beer, bear ... same pronunciation. But I think it’s different in Australia.

So if you’re an Australian or New Zealander watching this and you have a camera it would be cool if you could make a video response reading that list of words. Then if anyone wanted to compare they could watch the different videos.



STICK NEWS

Kia Ora. In Stick News today, a blind man in England has been convicted of dangerous driving.

This man is blind. He lost his eyes in a bomb blast. He is also missing a finger, suffers from leg tremors and is partly deaf.
He doesn’t have a driver’s license. But that doesn’t stop him driving.
In April police caught him driving with his friend who was giving him instructions.
He was driving on the wrong side of the road at speeds of up to 56 km/hr.
Yesterday he was sentenced to 12 weeks in prison.


And that was Stick News for Tuesday the 12th of September.
Kia Ora.



conversations with sarah
# 86 What does take the piss mean?

Kenta asks Sarah why she’s laughing.
Step 1: Repeat Kenta's lines.
Step 2: Read Kenta's lines on the screen and talk to Sarah.

Sarah Ahh, that’s funny.

Kenta What is?

Sarah Oh, there’s a comment on one of my videos that says: “Shame about the accent”. And I thought ... ahh must be an Australian and I checked the profile and yip, sure enough ...

Kenta Why did they write that?

Sarah Um, just taking the piss. Australians and NZ always take the piss out of each other. It’s a kind of cultural tradition I think.

Kenta Take a piss?

Sarah No, take the piss. Take a piss means go to the toilet.

Kenta Oh. And what does take the piss mean?

Sarah Um, it means to tease someone.



Notes

Music on the show used with permission from magnatune.com and jamendo.com

Music
Artist: NeXuS
Album: Trance Planet
Track: NexXxuS Paradize
site
music at jamendo


Today's news
Shibboleth