Interesting videos

2007 video awards (you tube)

English Academy

knock, knock

- Buenos dias, ¿Puedo ayudarle?
+ Buenos días, ¿Es esto una academia de inglés?
- Uhm! If, if, between, between.

Video

video of a mascleta

Here you have an excellent video of Mascleta

video of fallas

look at it

Video of fallas

Have a look to this video.

Regards,
Ana

Italians

Some days ago we talked about other nationalities. I want you to see this video about how italians drive. Enjoy it!

FRIENDS: Rachel turns 30

See it in YouTube

First Scene
Lifting the car
The party

English teachers always complaining

You say potato, I say ghoughbteighpteau

Harry Bingham on why English rules the world of languages

About three years ago I started researching a book, This Little Britain, about the various ways in which we Brits have a history of being exceptional. In areas such as law, government, economics, agriculture, and science, we've often been a uniquely British exception to a general European rule: in such things as men's fashion, Victorian sewers, and, most especially, in our language and literature.

Start with spelling. George Bernard Shaw once commented that English spelling would allow you to write FISH as GHOTI (f as in rough, i as in women, sh as in nation.) But he couldn't have been trying all that hard, if that was the best he came up with. The fact is that with just 26 letters and 48 different sounds to cope with, there were always going to be problems. Besides the Great Vowel Shift, other pronunciation changes, and an appetite for foreign borrowings, and it's no surprise that English now has some of the most dangerously unpredictable spellings in the world.

With about one and a half billion non-native speakers, English has become the world's own language. Given that there will shortly be as many English language speakers in China as there are in the entire English-speaking world put together, that anglophone dominance is only set to grow.

If you wanted to learn all the words in the Oxford English Dictionary, you'd have to deal with about 500,000 of them (the last of which is zyxt, a splendid last word by any standards and an archaic Kentish term for thou seest( you see)). Having done that, you'd probably be a bit taken aback to learn that the equivalent American dictionary, Webster's, offers a further 450,000 words or so.

In the cultural realm, however, mere size is hardly likely to impress. In terms of Nobel Prizes for literature, the United Kingdom takes the bronze medal (beaten by gold-medallist France, and the silver-gong-holder, the US). We do, however, have the best thing: an index of authors whose books have been translated of all time. British authors take four of the top five places: Agatha Christie in first place, then Enid Blyton, Shakespeare and Barbara Cartland in third to fifth respectively. (The one interloper: Frenchman Jules Verne in second place).

In the end, it's hard to survey all these facts and not draw the obvious conclusion: that we Brits have some natural affinity to words and literature, the way that the Germans "do" music, or the French "do" visual art. Such things run both deep and ancient. The vernacular literature of Alfred the Great's England was the most developed in Europe. It's perhaps not surprising that the same is - arguably - still true today.

Gore wins Nobel Peace Prize for climate campaign

Click here to see the trailer the video in YouTube.

October 12, 2007

Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize today for warning the world about the dangers of global warming, and leading the campaign to persuade governments and individuals to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels.

The former US vice-president will share the £750,000 prize with the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations panel which has worked for two decades to establish consensus on the science of man-made warming.

Mr Gore said tonight that climate change is the most “dangerous and urgent challenge” the world faces at the moment and said it is time to “elevate global consciousness” about the challenges of global warming.

I will be doing everything I can to try to understand how to best use the honour and recognition of this award as a way of speeding up the change in awareness and the change in urgency," said Mr Gore, who will donate 100 per cent of his prize money to the IPCC.

“It truly is a planetary emergency and we have to respond quickly.”

With his wife Tipper grinning widely by his side, Mr Gore would not answer any questions after his statement, including whether or not he would run for President.

The prize puts Mr Gore's name on what is perhaps history's most illustrious list, alongside such campaigners for freedom, democracy and human values as Lech Walesa, Aung San Suu Kyi, Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King.

He is not the first environmentalist to win the peace prize, which was given to Wangari Maathai, a Kenyan campaigner for sustainable development, three years ago. The Norwegian Nobel Committee said however that Mr Gore was one of the first politicians to understand the risks of climate change, and described him as "probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding" of the challenge it presents.

Mr Gore said today that he was "deeply honoured" by the award. He added: "We face a true planetary emergency. The climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity. It is also our greatest opportunity to lift global consciousness to a higher level."

Mr Gore has become the international poster boy for the green movement, organising a chain of Live Earth rock concerts this year which attracted hundreds of music stars and celebrities to help raise the profile of climate change.

He is best known for presenting An Inconvenient Truth, the 2006 documentary laying out the risks of global warming - although a UK High Court judge criticised it this week as "alarmist". The film won this year's Oscar for best documentary.

Welcome

Hello dear students,

As anybody else, teachers of PALE also use new technology. This is going to be our blog in which I will upload articles, interviews, movies or audio files for you.

Bye...