Petschatschka or as other people call it: Pecha Kucha.

One autumn evening Martin and I and the rest of the English SUK3 class sat together and listened to Frank's lecture. But that evening he expected us to chose a topic to work on, on our own!

Martin and I chose Similarities between Austria and the Czech Republic, simply because we thought it would be an awesome topic and that we could write loads of stuff due to the fact that there was a article just about this topic in the "Kleine Zeitung". In retrospect this wasn't the smartest of ideas. And not only did we start to late, but also did we mainly talk about the similarities in culture and not about the language. After Frank's honest, appreciated but also devastating critique we were forced to change the big part of our topic in more or less one day. We managed to do so, and the next feedback wasn't as bad as the previous one, but due to the fact that i had to work for 8 hours the following day, i was exhausted. As I came home from work, i wanted to power nap, but instead I had to review the changes Martin had made according to Frank's review. There was quite a lot of new stuff on my part so i had to internalize it as soon as possible. I managed to grasp a lot of the newly added stuff, but i wasn't completely secure. After then getting picked up by Martin and sweating like crazy in the car i kind of went calm while reaching the university. Apparently that was the calm before the storm. Just before my presentation, I nearly had a mental breakdown. I started to shake uncontrollably due to the lack of sleep and the stress caused by this presentation. I kept forgetting the words and i couldn't concentrate on the topics presented by the preceding groups. As it was then time to go out there and do my job I honestly do not know what helped me cope with this situation. I am pretty sure people heard my voice shaking, which was caused by my body, which was shaking entirely. After presenting my first part I was immensely relieved as Martin took over and i could prepare mentally for my next part. This one went smoother, and as Martin started with his fourth part slowly my coolness came back to me and i could feel my body stopping to shake.
I do not know what happened to me, I blame it on my sleep schedule and my exhausting work.
I think overall we did a thorough job, i had some minor screw-ups, but I think we kind of did well.
Nevertheless next time I am sure to pick a topic which is not entirely foreign to me to keep that from happening.

And maybe I'll start a little earlier to work on it.
We'll see.

That's it folks, hope you enjoyed and:

Ciao
Fabio

Pronounciation

Disclaimer: If you are easily offended, do not read this article.
Not everyone find funny what I find funny.


Pron"u"nciation - or Pron"ou"nciation?


How do u pronounce it?

Why are there so many dialects? And why do some sound more sophisticated than others?
Why does the rural American-English always sound so, i don't really know how to describe it and not sound racist at the same time, redneckish? I think that films, documentaries, video games and stereotypes reinforce the presumption, that the dialect portrays the average IQ.
Personally I love making fun of every kind of dialect, be it the British English, which is mainly used while talking to my old chap Martin to persuade him to drink a pint or a cup of Earl Grey with some lemon. Just kidding. I hate Earl Grey. But you get the point. I picture myself a little bit like this every time I try to sound like a Brit.
You just have to love Hugh Laurie for this. 




Nevertheless, if I try to make my point in Redneckish Hillbilly English, I always get the feeling of sounding a little bit funny. I cannot help to think about this picture everytime i use my Southern State voice.
Please try to pronounce the text in the picture with the most southern accent you can do! I don't know why, but it always cracks me up!



And then there are the dialects which I love the most.
I will try to get some people to send me a short mp3 file to add it lateron.
I am talking about Germans, who have no idea how to speak English, Italians, who try to do it, but have to deal with the completely different location of stress in a word, and last but no least my own accent(s).

I worked for about a month in Paris, where i had some translation and interpreting to do, and by far the most fun I had while working was a German representative, who spoke on the voice mail. He really tried to hide his ignorance, but unfortunately he had to tell the guys in France, that a bill hadn't been paid. The problem was that he had no idea how to use the past tense. And I don't mean in the sense, that he got a little confused by past progressive and other forms of the pas tense. No! It seemed that he had no clue there was a past tense... I had to listen to the message a couple of times to really get what he was trying to tell us.
That's often the problem. If people have no idea of English and are forced to speak in front of an audience which expects you to know English.

CLICKY CLICKY: →  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9chyDy2quk


My other example is Italian English. I don't really know what to say, but the stresses in Italian are so much different than in English. And that's why Italian English is always fun to listen to.
I can relate to that, because I have relatives in Italy, and whenever they try to speak English it sounds like in the old mafia films.  - I will try to get some of my relatives to say something in English to your auditory pleasure.
                                                

                                                                                                                                                                                                             It's a me Mario!

And last my own accents. I am fortunate to be capable to distinguish between several accents, but unfortunately I cannot settle on one single accent. Sometimes I switch from average American English to high register British English in a matter of seconds. And that's what bugs me the most...  I hope to be able to change that in the future, but I am not really sure how to do it.


Well that's my post about pron"u"nciation.
That's it folks!
Ciao!

Vocabulary.com → Epic?

What I do to improve my English skills:

Due to the fact that for me, it is impossible, financially and time-wise to spend a few days in the UK or the US several times a month, i have come to a solution, which helps me enormously.

I started off by creating a vocabulary.com account, as Frank suggested, and started learning the porter words online. For me, this method is by far the most comfortable to do, simply because i can sit in my cushioned chair, can lay my feet on my PC-tower, in the left hand some pretzels or a Red Bull, and in the right hand my mouse.

As time goes on the words to learn get harder and harder, and in the beginning there was the possibility to have a joker, like the "Word in the wild", where you can see the word in context, or the definition, which made it easy to get it right if your brain refrains from working. But just as i expected, this was only available, either for a certain amount of time, or for a certain tries, because when it got to the harder words, there were no more jokers to choose from.

I did some exercises over the weeks, but lately i got into doing it, and tried to achieve something to brag about. So i sat down, started spelling-beeing the words, when it came to my mind. I wanted to get at least on the front page of the leader board.That meant doing a whole lot of exercises, but eventually i managed to get my score and i made it to number 43 on the daily leader board.

→ Proof at the bottom of the page. 

Another task that i had in mind was to start a vocabulary book. In the beginning I thought i would pull this through, but i just cannot make it. For me, it is just to boring to do...
So i had to search an alternative. And i found it on Vocabulary.com. I created a new list, and added to this point every word that I did not fully understand. It is still kind of odd to add words to it, because i have to admit that I am to stupid to know, and this scratches on my ego.


Summarizing, i still have to do a LOT of vocabulary training to extend my language skills, but i think that i can already see slight improvements here and there.


That's it folks.
Have a nice day and ciao!


P.S.: The proof as promised.