Pronunciation Part 2

As mentioned in one of my latest posts I tried to settle for one single accent.

Up till now this was not really marked by success, but I am trying my best.
I realised that i had to focus on one single accent and thus I decided to give it my best shot and tried to sound as British as possible. Several websites recommended watching television shows, listening to British radio shows, and so I started watching Top Gear, in my opinion the best show on TV at this time.
My approach to changing my accent to a British one is that I then proceed to repeat everything that is said on TV.
In the beginning it was very strange for me to repeat every single word the three hosts spoke, but after some time, like 2 or 3 episodes i got the hang of it and it was not as strange any more.

The funny part was when I had to explain my mother and my sister what exactly I was doing, because they heard me talking to myself for three whole hours... but at least they know now that I'm not completely insane! ^^
I chose the British accent, not because I do not like the american accent or the Australian one. It's simply because I prefer the sound of the British English.

Another thing I tried was to only speak English for a weekend. I wanted to extend this to a week, but it was simply not possible due to class, and my mothers ignorance towards English.
It felt odd for some time, but as mentioned before, slowly you get into it and it feels much more natural.

So that's basically what I did the last weeks to ameliorate my pronunciation.
I hope i could give you a little insight on my progress,

If you have any suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments!

That's it folks!
Ciao,
Fabio

Does Austria have an influence on the European Union?

Paper Introduction:

Introduction:

Everybody knows that the European Union has a massive influence on our everyday life. One can easily see that just by looking into the supermarket or into our homes. Everything has to be standardized, just look at standardized cucumbers or the everlasting feud between "Marmelade"- activists and "Konfitüre"-supporter.
In this paper I will show you, that Austria has, even if just a little influence on the European Union as it is right now, and that we do not have to bend our society just to fit for example Germany's ideas.
In the beginning of this paper I will explain in detail how much influence the bigger countries and the EU have on our everyday life. Afterwards I will focus on the aspect if Austria, as the little county it is, has influence on the European Union, and if it is proportionate to it's size or higher or lower in comparison.

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!

European Commission

Due to technological problems Fiona did not get our initial paragraph. 

We worked over our first drafts and in the progress deleted the original.

European Commission

As one of the main bodies of the European Union, the Commission represents the EU as a whole, manages the budget, sets objectives and priorities for action and enforces European Law in cooperation with the Court of Justice. Furthermore it ensures that laws are correctly applied by all member states and proposes new legislation to the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union. These proposals are made to meet obligations under the EU treaties, at the request of another EU institution, country, and stakeholder or, since April 2012, EU citizens. Before making a proposal the president of the European Commission - currently Portuguese Commissioner José Manuel Barroso - and the other 27 Commissioners, one representing each member state, meet to consult. Each Commissioner is responsible for a certain department, but due to the principle of collective responsibility, no one is able to take any individual decisions. The Commission’s staff consists of administrators, lawyers, economists, translators, interpreters, secretarial staff, etc. who are organised in divisions, so called Directorates-General (DGs). These are responsible for the day-to-day running of the Commission. Each member state holds branch offices but its headquarters are located in Brussels and Luxembourg.

All in all, the European Commission plays a vital role in the administrative behemoth that is the European Union.

Fabio Nitsche, Martin Tieber, Chloé Cloison 

Procrastinating or actually doing something? o.O

Funny how productive procrastinating can be...

I really wanted to do something productive so why not do something for my blog?
And simply because I have no idea what to put up here I'll start of with my struggle to decide which phone I am going to get next week.

Will it be
a) The Samsung Galaxy S4
or
b) The new Google Nexus 5.

I might put a post up here of my feelings towards Apple and it's products, but this day has yet to come.

I really do not know which one to pick. On one side the S4 is an awesome phone with a good battery, good camera (13mp) and a ton of features. Plus it is for now one of the fastest and most reliable phones on the market.
On the other side there's the Nexus 5. It is out for about a week, and is also plain awesome. The battery and camera are not as good as the ones in the S4, but it also just costs 400€. Well just is a little hypocritical. It's price in stores is around 400€ and the S4 is about 450 quid. Personally i was extremely excited for the Nexus 5, but after some reviews, and the camera being not as good as the competitor's, i was a little disappointed.
Now i am really just looking which one i personally prefer.
I might pick the S4 just because it's awesome, it has a better camera, and with the new update it may become even better, because the software will be adapted to the hardware.
But maybe I will choose the Nexus 5 just because of it's potential. I am not even going to post about the NSA or something that the google phone will keep track of my activities, because f*** it. Which phone doesn't do that?...
Yes, the Nokia 3310. Good old times.

But i guess it will come down to personal preferences in the end.

Suggestions?

That's all folks.
Ciao.

Progress - Does Austria have an influence on the EU?

Does Austria have an influence on the EU?

Well i haven't really done much research for this topic in particular, and just looked over the regulations which have been adapted by Austria on behalf of the EU. It is also kind of difficult to find something where Austria does influence the EU, simply because either the news do not report about this type of occurrence, or we really don't do anything. The only thing that i found was that Austria has "taken over" the lead of the Council of Europe - glad I didn't write any of the other councils-. The main focus areas are people trafficking, freedom of media, and data protection.

So that's just a quick overlook of what has happened in my field.
If you have any propositions where i could find more interesting stuff, feel free to comment.

That's all 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.