Wednesday, June 03, 2009

#1049 TDES Japanese Vlog Experiment, Word Clouds, Mangle, Susan Boyle Loses


Show 1049 Wednesday 3 June
Watch today’s show at YouTube or BlipTV.

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

Wednesday is mistake day on The Daily English Show and today I’d like to tell you about an experiment I’m doing this month. I’ve been thinking about doing it for a while and I finally decided that yes, this is the month I’m going to do it – June 2009.

Every day this month I’m making a two-minute video blog in Japanese. And I’m asking people – people who can understand Japanese obviously – to leave a comment pointing out a mistake or two that I make. And the point is to see how much my Japanese will improve in a month just by doing that, just by making the video every day and by reading the comments.

It will be interesting to see because I’m not doing any other Japanese study at the moment – I haven’t done for a while. And the videos won’t be scripted at all - I’ll just think of a topic and ramble on about it for two minutes. So it won’t be very interesting, but that’s not the point. And my Japanese isn’t very good. It’s always full of mistakes. I mean, I can communicate basic ideas and I can attempt to communicate more complex ideas, but I never sound very good. So I have a lot of room to improve.

And as I said the point of the experiment is to see how much my Japanese improves. Because I think, and you probably know, and everybody always says that making mistakes is a great way to learn.

So I’ll be doing this for a month, until the 30th of June. And at the end of the month I’ll report back and tell you how it went, much my Japanese improved and what I learnt and whether or not I recommend it as something to do to improve your English.



click here

The site I recommend today is called Wordle.
This is another really fun site to play with words. You can copy some text into a box and then you just click go and it makes what they call a word cloud. And then you can play around with the fonts and colours if you like.

I made a few and printed them out.

This is from the transcript of Monday’s show.
This is yesterday’s conversation.
And this is the song we studied last Friday – Tell Her About It by Billy Joel.



STICK NEWS



Kia ora in Stick News today a tourist in New Zealand has had his passport stolen by a bird.

The Kea is a kind of parrot that lives in the South Island of New Zealand. The Kea is famous for being intelligent and curious. According to Wikipedia, their curiosity leads them to peck and carry away unguarded items of clothing, or to pry apart rubber parts of cars - to the entertainment and annoyance of human observers. Last week a Kea stole a Scottish man’s passport which was in a courier bag on a bus. According to Stuff.co.nz police have identified the thief but will not pursue an arrest or attempt to recover the document.

And that was Stick News for Wednesday 3rd June.
Kia ora.



Word of the Day

Today’s word is mangle.

to spoil sth, for example a poem or a piece of music, by saying it wrongly or playing it badly

I saw this word used in a comedy video called Don’t Stop Your Screaming. It is a parody of the 1981 song Don’t Stop Believing. It’s about people drunkenly and badly singing karaoke in a bar.


(From 2:08)
some will sing, some will booze
but none of them will have a clue
that you're mangling the words and notes
of this song



conversations with sarah
#663 Yeah, that was a surprise.

Step 1: Repeat Jane’s lines.
Step 2: Read Jane’s lines and talk to Sarah.

Jane I can’t believe Susan Boyle didn’t win.

Sarah Yeah, that was a surprise.

Jane How did they decide the winner?

Sarah I think it was by public vote.

Jane People voted by calling in?

Sarah Yeah, or maybe online. I don’t know.

Jane So the public didn’t like her as much as the dance group.

Sarah Yeah, I guess so. Or maybe they just got sick of all the attention that Susan Boyle was getting.



QuestionAnswer


Always On My Mind by Tiki Taane
Wordle
Show 967


Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell
Wordle
Show 741


How Bizarre by Otara Millionaires Club
Wordle
Show 650

Tell Her About It by Billy Joel
Wordle
Show 1044


Tom's Diner by Suzanne Vega
Wordle
Show 790



links

today's news
today's STICK NEWS pictures

tdes on Wordle

The Daily English Show 2 minute Japanese vlog experiment on YouTube

music

show start
artist: Kevin MacLeod
track: Future Cha Cha
from: Brooklyn, NY, United States
artist site

click here start
artist: #NarNaoud#
album: Green Vision
track: Oriental Standing
from: Gironde, France
artist at Jamendo
album at Jamendo
artist site

WOD start
artist: DJ iPep's
album: Home Mix 2007
track: Game Toy
from: EVREUX, France
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site

cws start
artist: Kevin MacLeod
track: The Jazz Woman
from: Brooklyn, NY, United States
artist site

qa start
artist: ioeo
album: triptracks
track: triptrack2
from: Saint Raphael, France
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site

qa bgm
artist: Cliffhanger
album: Soft n mellow
track: Ha, I hope u can follow
from: Sweden
artist at Jamendo
album at Jamendo

Did you notice a mistake in this script? Please leave us a comment and tell us! We really appreciate people pointing out our mistakes.Thank you.

Have you translated this script - or part of it - into your language for English practice and published it on your blog? Please leave a comment and a link so other people can read your translation. Thank you.