Oh America!

I've never regretted giving the standard.at a "Like" on facebook, it always keeps me updated about recent events without buying the expensive printed version. But sometimes, it also informs you about the weird stuff going on the world. Last week, there were a couple of posts where I had to take a second look because I couldn't believe my eyes. All posts had one thing in common: the country. It just showed me one more time that in America, almost nothing is impossible. So, if you think you've already seen everything, may I present you the three posts I came across last week.

- AR Wear created a "rape-proof" underwear for women.
The inventors claim that this underwear prevents you from being raped. It should be worn during potentionally risky situations such as going out (on a date), going for an evening run or travelling. The special resistant fabrik with tiny locks makes it almost impossible for the rapist to remove, cut or tear it apart.
It is a debatable point whether the "Anti-rape-wear" actually makes sense to buy or if the company just tries to benefit from women's fear of being raped.

- Wife hunts with ammunition made of her husband's cremains.
Because her husband admired old weapons during his lifetime, his wife paid her last respects to her husband by giving his ashes to an ammunition company who filled 275(!) cartridges with them. She already shot 70 partridges, 23 pheasants, seven ducks and one fox.
How she came up with this strange idea? Her husband read about it somewhere and found the idea funny.
In America, this way of spreading ashes is not uncommon: There are even companies who make a lot of money with those special requests.

- Stupidity level: candidate of the US Senate
David Barton, a potential republican candidate of the US Senate claims that the American abortion laws are the cause of global warming. According to the candidate, not only droughts, tornados and floods, but also mass murder and pedophilia are referable to the abortion laws. In his opinion, the human being is responsible for all the catastrophes - he sees global warming as God's judgment .


Oh America, you really never cease to surprise me.



Links to the posts:
http://derstandard.at/1571291/Witwe-jagt-mit-Asche-ihre-Mannes
http://derstandard.at/1381370874469/Abtreibungsgesetze-schuld-an-Klimawandel-sagt-US-Senatskandidat
http://diestandard.at/1381371088139/Unterwaesche-die-vor-Vergewaltigung-schuetzen-soll

Homework correction: My favourite monolingual dictionary

My favourite monolingual dictionary 

Having looked at a number of monolingual print dictionaries in class last week, I have decided to buy the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary. The OALD is my first choice because I like its well-structured  and easy-to-read layout. Already on the outside, it convinces with the letters of the alphabet written on the foregde, which saves a lot of time when searching for the right letter. On the inside, your eyes can clearly distinguish between a word and its description, which makes it easier to find the word you are looking for. In addition, it does not confuse with many different colors, but is printed in a pleasant combination of black and blue. While other dictionaries provide colorful pictures on ervery page, the OALD uses small black and white pictures which help users to visualize words which are difficult to describe. Another very helpful tool is the pronunciation guide on every second page, which saves having to look it up on the front page. Last but not least, you can find very nicely illustrated pictures in the back, divided into different topics such as instruments, clothes and food. All these aspects together make the OALD a very clearly-structured monolingual dictionary worth buying.

Homework correction: Me as a language learner

Dear Fiona,

English is, ans always has been my favourite language. That is why I chose it out of many other languages without hesitation. Still, it is a long way to not only be one of thousands who speak English, but one of the best. To achieve this aim, I would like to inform you about my learning strategies, my strenghts and weaknesses!

I never considered learning languages as something I had to do, but something I really enjoyed doing. In my opinion, a positive attitude towards achieving knowledge, a new language for example, is a crucial part of the learning process. This positive attitude might be one of the reasons why I memorize vocabulary very easily. I would also count my open-minded and communicative personality as a strength of mine. I am not afraid to talk to someone in a foreign language. When talking, I can practcethe things I have already learned and enlarge my vocabulary at the same time. To mention some of my weaknesses, I have difficulties with the different tenses somethimes ans in terms of writing, I am not very skilled in text production and need a lot of time for it.

In order to improve my languages skills, I am trying to repeat everything that I have learned over and over again. To practice my listening and speaking skills, I will continue talking to native speakers whenever I have the chance to do so. Last but not least, I will focus on the parts of a language I still have problems with, such as tenses and writing. 

Best regards,

Kathi Luttenberger

Résumé of the dictionary recording

All in all, I am really pleased with our dictionary recording. We not only had a lot of fun recording, we also did a quite good job. Reading the comments, I got the feeling the people who watched the video liked it as well. Especially the idea of showing the speaker's face before explaining other important aspects of the dictionary found an echo. All of us agreed that it is nice to have a face of the person talking, it keeps people watching.

Of course, there were some things that could have been better. For example, I know that none of us would ever win the price for best cinematography but hey, we just had a lousy smartphone camera, so you better not search for the "watch in HD"-button and just enjoy our miserable but also exhilarating attempt to look professional.

Pronunciation and Grammar: We could've have spoken a little bit louder, sometimes we're hard to understand. For example, nobody got the difficult word at the beginning. Maybe we pronounced the one or other word wrong and forgot some letters here and there, but when there's a camera staring at you and you want to make a good job because you know a lot of people are going to watch it afterwards, your brain acts like you speak English for the first time in your life. True story.





Transcript:
Kate: Hello, I'm Kate and we're going to speak about online dictionaries, we've chosen the freedictionary and let's type some simple words in like walk. So we have the pronunciation of the word, the audio and different meanings of the word with plenty of example sentences and parts of speech. Also the phrasal verbs/words like walk out and plenty of example sentences.

Salome: Hello, I am Salome. So again walk. So we can see here the origin of the word like ....and punctuation. So there are also different parts of the word like then again walk is the word (examples) and the again the different definitions and so are idioms and the next part is

Giulia: Hello I'm Giulia and I'm going to explain the next part like the Thesaurus box in which you can find some useful information like synonyms and related words and antonyms. There are different colors so it's easier to find the word and we have also some pictures here one the right hand with different expressions and meaningS of the word.
So...

Kathy: Hey I'm Kathy and last but not least we have translations which you can choose. Different..different languages you can choose and references in classic literature which is not very common. And we decided to type in a difficult word...can you please do that?

Saolme: Say, what's the word?
Kate: Ubiquitous or something^^

Kathy: This word is not very common. And the structure, as you can see, is the same! Here..here...here..heere!!
Salome: Ok, ok, ok!

Kathy: the structure as you can see is the same, but because it is not that common there are fewer explanations and a fewer description...still synonyms and pronunciation...and translatiojns...and now about the main page!

Kate: So, what's inside, we have a lot of useful information here, for example medical dictionary, financial dictionary and more languages to choose.
First there are some interesting apps and also a weather forecast.

Salome: Also, we have here the word of the day, for example today's word of the day is headstrong, the next is article of the day, for example the Mi...also next is in the news, following postings are this day in history and last is today's birthdays.

Giulia: And then on the right side we have some...yeah some other boxes like the english language forum when for example you can share your knowledge other people or my word list to remember a different word you have looked at and also some games for example the famous hangman, Spelling bee to understand the spelling of the word, Match up, and at the end quotation of the day and some discussions about it. And then a stupid thing I guess: horoscope. But I guess it could be useful for someone.

Kathy: Ok so..all in all we chose this dictionary because it's clearly structured, has a lot of information and also some games to remember the words easier.

All: Thank you for your attention, bye!