Poucas palavras:

Blog criado por Bruno Coriolano de Almeida Costa, professor de Língua Inglesa desde 2002. Esse espaço surgiu em 2007 com o objetivo de unir alguns estudiosos e professores desse idioma. Abordamos, de forma rápida e simples, vários aspectos da Língua Inglesa e suas culturas. Agradeço a sua visita.

"Se tivesse perguntado ao cliente o que ele queria, ele teria dito: 'Um cavalo mais rápido!"

sábado, 30 de junho de 2007

Ditados e Provérbios


* Dinheiro não cai do céu!
Money doesn’t grow on trees!

* Gato escaldado tem medo de água fria!
A burnt child dreads the fire”!

* Há males que vem para bem!
Every dark cloud has a silver lining!

* Mente vazia, oficina do diabo!
Na idle mind is the devil’s workshop!
* Tudo o que é bom dura pouco!
All good things must come to na end!

* Querer é poder!
Where there’s a will there’s a way!

* Para bom entendedor, meia palavra basta!
A word to the wise is enough!

domingo, 24 de junho de 2007

American History!


The Emancipation Proclamation


President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."


Despite this expansive wording, the Emancipation Proclamation was limited in many ways. It applied only to states that had seceded from the Union, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy that had already come under Northern control. Most important, the freedom it promised depended upon Union military victory.


Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not immediately free a single slave, it fundamentally transformed the character of the war. After January 1, 1863, every advance of federal troops expanded the domain of freedom. Moreover, the Proclamation announced the acceptance of black men into the Union Army and Navy, enabling the liberated to become liberators. By the end of the war, almost 200,000 black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union and freedom.


From the first days of the Civil War, slaves had acted to secure their own liberty. The Emancipation Proclamation confirmed their insistence that the war for the Union must become a war for freedom. It added moral force to the Union cause and strengthened the Union both militarily and politically. As a milestone along the road to slavery's final destruction, the Emancipation Proclamation has assumed a place among the great documents of human freedom.


The original of the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, is in the National Archives in Washington, DC. With the text covering five pages the document was originally tied with narrow red and blue ribbons, which were attached to the signature page by a wafered impression of the seal of the United States. Most of the ribbon remains; parts of the seal are still decipherable, but other parts have worn off.


The document was bound with other proclamations in a large volume preserved for many years by the Department of State. When it was prepared for binding, it was reinforced with strips along the center folds and then mounted on a still larger sheet of heavy paper. Written in red ink on the upper right-hand corner of this large sheet is the number of the Proclamation, 95, given to it by the Department of State long after it was signed. With other records, the volume containing the Emancipation Proclamation was transferred in 1936 from the Department of State to the National Archives of the United States.





sábado, 9 de junho de 2007

Each & Every


Hi folks...

Each and Every são parecidos no significado.
Podemos usar tanto um como outro:


*Each time/every time I see you, you look different.

*There's TV a in each bedroom/every bedroom of the house.


Porém, não são exatamente a mesma coisa.


Devemos usar each quando nos referimos as coisas separadamente, uma por uma:


* Read each sentence carefully.(Read the sentences one by one)


Each é mais usado para pequenas quantidades:


* There are two cars in the garage. Each car is a different colour.


Agora, devemos usar every quando nos referimos a um grupo de coisas:


* Every sentence must have a verb.(all sentences)


Every é mais usado para grandes quantidades:


* I would like to buy every book in that bookstore.(all the books)


Each (not every) usado para se referir a dois grupos:


* Palmeiras and São Paulo, each team has 11 players.


Também usamos every para dizer com que frequência as coisas ocorrem:


* She uses to go shopping every day.
* There is a train every five minutes.


Nota:


Everyone and every one:


Everyone(uma palavra), usado somente para pessoas = everybody.


Every one(duas palavras) é tanto para coisas quanto para pessoas:

* Everyone enjoyed the travel.(=everybody....)

* She is invited to lots of travels and she goes to every one(= to every travel)
That's all for now...bye bye




Escritores da Língua Inglesa


Robert Lee Frost (March 26, 1874January 29, 1963) was an American poet. His work frequently drew inspiration from rural life in New England, using the setting to explore complex social and philosophical themes. A popular and often-quoted poet, Frost was highly honored during his lifetime, receiving four Pulitzer Prizes.

Robert Frost (1941)

Poema, Poesia Contos


THE ROAD NOT TAKEN


by Robert Frost


Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;



Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,



And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.


I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.



The Road Not Taken" is a poem by Robert Frost, published in 1916 in his collection Mountain Interval. It is the first poem in the volume, and the first poem Frost had printed in italics.


Explanation and interpretations


The poem, especially its last lines, where the narrator declares that taking the road "one less traveled by" "made all the difference," can be seen as a declaration of the importance of independence and personal freedom. However, Frost likely intended the poem as a gentle jab at his great friend and fellow poet
Edward Thomas, and seemed amused at the slightly "mischievous" misinterpretation. "The Road Not Taken" seems to illustrate that once one takes a certain road, there's no turning back, although one might change paths later on, they still can't change the past.




Ortografia: Y




Observe com atenção as mudanças que você deve fazer na letra “Y” final das palavras da língua inglesa. Em caso de dúvida com relação a algum vocábulo que não consta da tabela a seguir, sempre consulte um bom dicionário de inglês.


Sufixos -ed, -er, -est, -able, -ment, -age, -ly, -ous. Exceções: PAY - PAID, SAY - SAID, LAY – LAID


Consoante + Y (Retire o Y e acrescente I + sufixo)




TRY - TRIED
EASY - EASIER
BUSY - BUSIEST
MARRY - MARRIAGE
HAPPY - HAPPILY
RELY - RELIABLE


Vogal + Y (Acrescente sufixo)

PLAY - PLAYED
GAY - GAYER
GRAY - GRAYEST
ENJOY - ENJOYMENT


Gerúndio (Acrescente ING)

TRY - TRYING
STAY - STAYING


Plural dos substantivos e 3a. pessoa do singular do presente


Consoante + Y (Retire o Y e acrescente IES)

STORY - STORIES
TRY - TRIESVogal + Y (Acrescente S)
TRAY - TRAYS
PLAY - PLAYS


Referência: "Dicionário dos Erros Mais Comuns em Inglês" de Ulisses Wehby de Carvalho - Editora Campus/Elsevier, 2005. Leia a resenha.


Falsas Gêmeas: THROW AT x THROW TO

Não confunda “THROW AT”, que tem o sentido de “atirar”, “jogar com força”, “agredir” etc., com “THROW TO”, que não possui essa conotação. “THROW TO” significa “jogar algo para alguém”. Como de costume, os exemplos a seguir complementam o aprendizado e nos ajudam a esclarecer eventuais dúvidas. Leia-os com bastante atenção.



* Don’t throw stones at the dog!

* Não jogue pedras no cachorro!


* Jimmy threw the ball to Cindy.

* O Jimmy jogou a bola para a Cindy.


Referência: "Dicionário dos Erros Mais Comuns em Inglês" de Ulisses Wehby de Carvalho - Editora Campus/Elsevier, 2005.

Preposições

Estudar com


Em inglês, a expressão “STUDY UNDER” é a mais indicada para dizermos que uma pessoa estudou com um determinado professor, principalmente em situações formais. Como a preposição normalmente usada em português é “com”, a tentação é grande de dizer “STUDY WITH” mas, em situações semelhantes aos dos exemplos a seguir, prefira usar “STUDY UNDER”.


* Erik Satie studied under the French composers Vincent D’Indy and Albert Roussel at the Schola Cantorum.

* Erik Satie estudou com os compositores franceses Vincent D’Indy e Albert Roussel na “Schola Cantorum”.


* When he was 17 Aristotle went to Athens to study under Plato.


* Quando tinha 17 anos, Aristóteles foi a Atenas para estudar com Platão.



Referência: "Dicionário dos Erros Mais Comuns em Inglês" de Ulisses Wehby de Carvalho - Editora Campus/Elsevier, 2005.

Film, Movie, Movies and Picture


It occurred to me late last night, while watching the Academy Awards presentation in English, that Oscar night has its own special lexicon.
For example, Americans say movie, and the British say film… But when it comes to the Oscars, the translation for Melhor Filme is Best Picture. Movies were once called moving pictures, which then got shortened to “movies”. The word picture remained, however, in the now formal-sounding term “motion picture” – hence the now abbreviated “Best Picture”.
The fact that we call the best movie of the year “Best Picture” is even more confusing when we get to the animated and foreign-language movies, called Animated Feature Film and Foreign Language Film (not “picture”), respectively.
Go figure.
And then there’s the music. We all know the word song, but in a movie the songs played are collectively called the soundtrack. But there’s no Oscar for “Original Soundtrack”. The Academy Awards only have categories for best Original Song and best Original Score. Huh? “Score?”, you ask? Yes, “score,” which in Oscar-ese seems to usually mean “music with no words”.
These specialized terms can even confuse native speakers – even people inside the “industry”. When Clint Eastwood stepped up to introduce an honorary achievement award for Italian composer Ennio Morricone for his decades of work writing music for movies, he was unsure about what to actually call him, saying he was the best “scorer” he’d ever worked with, and then questioned himself and the audience: “Um… ‘Scorer?’ Is that right?”
And then there’s the Oscar, um, himself. That little golden award is a kind of trophy, basically, in the shape of a statue, but it has a special name. When costume designer Milena Canonero received the award for her work in the film “Marie Antoinette”, she called the award a little “doll”. Most folks call the award a statuette.
Finally, I learned the origin of an expression last night which now seems so obvious, but which I’d never thought about before. Kate Winslet introduced the award for best editing, and she said, “I don’t know who first said the expression ‘cut to the chase’, whether it was…” and it hit me where this phrase, which I had uttered probably a thousand times in the last 38 years of my life, actually originated from. In case you don’t know, the phrase let’s cut to the chase basically means, “vamos ao que interessa”. The expression in English comes straight from movie-editing jargon, since film editors used to physically cut stretches of film that they didn’t want, and in action movies in particular, often directors and editors would want to cut out any boring parts and get to the “chase scene” (usually good guys chasing bad guys) …in other words, they would cut to the chase.
If you haven’t watched the Oscars, you should see it tonight if only to see how much it has evolved as an international event. Each year, the Oscars is looking less and less American and better reflecting this globalized world we’re living in.
By the way, my choice for Best Picture would have been “Little Miss Sunshine”. If you haven’t seen it, do.
Have a good week.
By Ron Martinez
Referência: Texto publicado originalmente na comunidade do Ron Martinez no Orkut, a "Como dizer tudo em inglês".

quarta-feira, 6 de junho de 2007

Escritores da Língua Inglesa



Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809October 7, 1849) was an American poet, short story writer, playwright, editor, critic, essayist and one of the leaders of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of the macabre and mystery, Poe was one of the early American practitioners of the short story and a progenitor of detective fiction and crime fiction. He is also credited with contributing to the emergent science fiction genre. Poe died at the age of 40. The cause of his death is undetermined and has been attributed to alcohol, drugs, cholera, rabies, suicide (although likely to be mistaken with his suicide attempt in the previous year), tuberculosis, heart disease, brain congestion and other agents.

"Mônica's gang".


Os gibis da turma da Mônica são traduzidos para o inglês. O título ficou como "Mônica's gang". O Cebolinha foi traduzido como "Jimmy Five" (por causa do número de fios de cabelo) já o "Cascão", ficou conhecido como "Smudge" e a "Magali" como "Maggy".

caso queira ler histórias da turma em inglês, basta ir ao sie oficial: http://www.monica.com.br/ingles/index.htm
Altamente recomendavel!

terça-feira, 5 de junho de 2007

Country profile:


Brazil


Brazil is South America's largest and most influential country and takes up almost half the continent. The economic giant is one of the world's biggest democracies.
It includes much of the world's biggest rain forest around the Amazon, whose exploitation has become a major environmental worry.


Its natural resources, particularly iron ore, are highly prized by major manufacturing nations, including China. Thanks to the development of offshore fields, Brazil has become self-sufficient in oil, ending decades of dependence on foreign producers.
But there is a wide gap between rich and poor. Much of the arable land is controlled by a handful of wealthy families, a situation which the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST) seeks to redress by demanding land redistribution. It uses direct protest action and land occupation in its quest.
Social conditions can be harsh in the big cities of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, where a third of the population lives in favelas, or slums.
A drive to move settlers to the Amazon region during military rule in the 1970s caused considerable damage to vast areas of rainforest. Deforestation by loggers and cattle ranchers remains controversial, but government-sponsored migration programmes have been halted. In 2005 the government reported that one fifth of the Amazon forests had been cleared by deforestation.
Brazil's Aids programme has become a model for other developing countries. It has stabilised the rate of HIV infection and the number of Aids-related deaths has fallen. Brazil has bypassed the major drugs firms to produce cheaper, generic Aids medicines.
Brazil is revered for its football prowess. Its cultural contributions include the music of classical composer Heitor Villa-Lobos and Bossa Nova icon Antonio Carlos Jobim.




FACTS
OVERVIEW FACTS LEADERS MEDIA
Full name: Federative Republic of Brazil
Population: 182.8 million (UN, 2005)
Capital: Brasilia
Largest city: Sao Paulo
Area: 8.55 million sq km (3.3 million sq miles)
Major language: Portuguese
Major religion: Christianity
Life expectancy: 66 years (men), 74 years (women) (UN)
Monetary unit: 1 real = 100 centavos
Main exports: Manufactured goods, iron ore, coffee, oranges, other agricultural produce
GNI per capita: US $3,460 (World Bank, 2006)
Internet domain: .br
International dialling code: +55


LEADERS
OVERVIEW FACTS LEADERS MEDIA
President: Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, popularly known as Lula, secured a second term in a landslide election victory in October 2006.


He promised to boost economic growth and to narrow the gap between rich and poor. In January 2007, Lula marked the start of his second term in office by announcing an ambitious investment programme.

Lula promises to help Brazil's poorest while pursuing growth
Profile: Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva
But with a weakened presence in congress, his left-wing Workers' Party may have to rely on political alliances to pursue planned tax, social security and political reforms.
Lula implemented tough fiscal policies in his first term, overseeing economic stabilisation and falling levels of inflation and foreign debt.


He changed the pension system and pushed through a modest increase in the minumum wage. Welfare programmes targeted millions of poor families. But he had to contend with a surge of land invasions by activists frustrated at what they saw as the slow pace of agrarian reform.
In 2005 his popularity was dented by claims of corruption in the ruling party, focusing on a cash-for-votes scheme in Congress. The president apologised and said he had known nothing about the alleged corruption.


Lula was born in 1945 in the impoverished north-east. His family moved to Sao Paulo when he was seven and he left school at 14 to become a metal worker.


In the 1970s, he honed his political skills as a fiery union leader in the industrial suburbs of Sao Paulo. He went on to help found the Workers' Party.


Vice-president: Jose Alencar Gomes da Silva
Foreign minister: Celso Luiz Amorim
Finance minister: Guido Mantega



South America's biggest media market is home to thousands of radio stations and hundreds of TV channels.


Media ownership is highly concentrated. Home-grown conglomerates such as Globo, Brazil's most-successful broadcaster, dominate the market and run TV and radio networks, newspapers and pay-TV operations.


Brazilian-made dramas and soaps are aired around the world. Game shows and reality TV attract huge audiences.


The constitution guarantees a free press; vigorous media debate about controversial political and social matters is commonplace.
Brazil is rolling out digital TV services; it aims to switch off analogue TV transmissions from 2016.

The press
O Dia - Rio de Janeiro daily
O Correio Brazilense - influential daily
O Globo - Globo-owned Rio de Janeiro daily
Jornal do Brasil - Rio de Janeiro daily
Folha de Sao Paulo - daily
O Estado de Sao Paulo - daily
Television
TV Band - commercial network operated by Grupo Bandeirantes
Rede Globo - major commercial network operated by Globo
Sistema Brasileiro de Televisao (SBT) - major commercial network
TV Record - major commercial network
NBR - operated by state-run Radiobras
Rede TV - commercial network
TV Cultura - public, educational and cultural programmes
Radio
Radio Nacional - FM and mediumwave (AM) network operated by state-run Radiobras
Globo Radio - commercial networks operated by Globo
Radio Eldorado - affiliated to O Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper, operates mediumwave (AM) news station and FM music station
Radio Bandeirantes - network operated by Grupo Bandeirantes
Radio Cultura - public, cultural programmes
News agencies
Agencia Brasil - state-owned
Agencia Estado - private, Sao Paulo-based
Agencia Globo - private

Slang



THE EARLY BIRD GETS THE WORM.
[Deus ajuda a quem cedo madruga.]
There will be a long line of candidates for the job, so you better be there early; you know, it is the early bird that gets the worm.
Vai haver uma fila grande de candidatos para o emprego, de modo que é melhor você chegar cedo, você sabe, Deus ajuda a quem cedo madruga.
Referência: "All the Dogs are Barking - Os animais na Língua Inglesa" de Martha Steingberg, Disal Editora, 2006.

Topicos para iniciantes e curiosos da Língua Inglesa


ENGINEER


Pode ser "engenheiro" ou "maquinista" - atenção ao contexto!I never went to college. I've spent my whole life as an engineer, driving trains and subways.Não fiz faculdade. Passei a vida toda como condutor (NÃO "engenheiro"!) de trens e metrôs.


1. engenheiro (vem de engine como "motor")If you are interested in designing trains, you can study engineering and become an electrical or mechanical engineer.Se você se interessa por projetar trens, pode estudar engenharia e tornar-se um engenheiro elétrico ou mecânico.


2. maquinista, condutor de trem (vem de engine como "locomotiva")If you are interested in driving trains, you can become an engineer.Se você se interessa por conduzir trens, pode tornar-se um maquinista.Fortunately, the engineer managed to halt the train in time.Felizmente o maquinista conseguiu parar o trem a tempo.


Referência: "VocabuLando" de Isa Mara Lando - Disal Editora.