Monserrat Caballé passed away 6th October 2018 at the age of 85. RIP
Category: culture
50,000!
This tongue-twisting post is just to say how thrilled I am! A year and a half after having set up this blog for my English classes and it has reached 50,000 visits. Of course, this hasn’t only been my students, but people from all around the world and all walks of life.
Many thanks for sticking around as well as a warm welcome to all the new visitors that may find something useful in the blog.
Serena
To go berserk
Do you know what ‘to go berserk’ or ‘be berserk’ means and where this English word came from?
See how you score on the quiz below.
Viking words
The English language is the result of many different cultures moving into the British Isles throughout history. One of them were ‘the Danes’. At first, when this new group of people arrived, it was only for the purpose of plunder or rather, ‘to go a viking’ and this is the reason why these people were eventually called Vikings. The people from the British Isles were terrified of the violent attacks that these people from the north raged on them. However, not all the newcomers were violent and many stayed, settled down and farmed the land peacefully. They built towns, brought their own cultural aspects into the new land and of course, their language too. Here’s a very funny video from ‘Horrible Histories’ giving some examples of these Viking words that are in present-day English.
Why countries don’t use purple on their flags
Ever wondered why purple doesn’t appear on flags, or why there are always four strawberry flavoured yogurts in a packet of eight? I can’t explain the second question, but here’s a really interesting video that explains the reason why countries traditionally didn’t use purple on their national flags. The video is from After Skool Youtube channel. I hope you find it as interesting as I did.
Skara Brae
So you thought you knew all about interior design and comfort at home, right? You thought that we, modern-day humans, had invented comfortable beds, hygienic bathrooms and all those things that make our homes tasteful and cosy. Well I have some news for you, because that is what I thought until I discovered Skara Brae.
Skara Brae is a Neolithic settlement consisting of eight stone-built houses located on the coast of Mainland (the Orkney Islands). Its origin dates from 3180 BC and was occupied by families for about 600 years. The theories that explain why its inhabitants left the village are several. Some historians say that this was caused by an abrupt climate change, while others claim that a violent storm forced the inhabitants to flee from the village leaving behind many of their belongings. Whatever the reason was, the result was that the village remained covered with sand and earth for many centuries and was forgotten until 1850 when a severe storm hit Scotland, stripping a large tract of land off the coast and consequently, uncovering the village.
It was then when the locals discovered the settlement that was in such a good state of preservation that it has provided a wide insight into the lifestyle of the people who lived there. Thanks to this, we now know what these people ate and did for a living. We also know that they had stone-made furniture and a primitive form of toilets. These folks really knew about comfort!
Skara Brae gained Unesco World Heritage Site status and is probably older than the Pyramids of Egypt and Stonehenge. It is also known as the Scottish Pompeii and is a ‘must visit’ whenever going to Scotland. However, when visiting, have in mind that strict rules are applied to visitors as the settlement is extremely sensitive to the effects of these, which could cause irreversible damage.
The video is from Archaeosoup productions Youtube
Midnight Oil ‘Beds are burning’
I was listening to this song launched in 1987 by the Australian rock band, Midnight Oil and then realised that it would be a nice way to introduce the use of present continuous with ‘when and while’ for low levels of English and a bit of English and Australian history to explain the meaning of the song (for higher levels). The single, which belongs to the album Diesel and Dust, hit the charts in many countries however, few were aware that it was a protest song in support of giving the native Australian people their lands back.
In order to understand this, we’d have to refer to the issue of colonisation, concretely, British colonisation that came into existence during the sixteenth (Henry VII), but by the time the nineteenth century had arrived, a vast list of territories had been placed under the Crown (or should I say grabbed and forced?). Colonisation had actually little or nothing to do with ‘helping the world to become a better place’ as Kipling’s poem ‘The White man’s Burden’ claims. Rather than this, it was mainly a matter related to economic interests.
Australia, New Zealand and Tasmania came under British imperialism in 1770 when Captain Cook happened to discover the coast of Australia and claimed it for Britain (the first European sightseeing of Australia was by the Dutch). Up to that moment, the British had been sending their prisoners to the American Colonies but after the independence of the colonies, this was no longer possible. One day, some bright spark suggested sending them to Botany Bay (New Wales, Australia) and in 1788, Britain started sending boatloads of convicts. Years later when these prisoners were released, they obviously couldn’t go back to Britain so they started settling and pushing the Aborigines off their lands. During this time, settlements were established and, Australia, New Zealand and Tasmania, would become the home to thousands of British families in search of farming opportunities and a better life. This meant important changes to the environment but also to the lives of the native people who were being gradually pushed towards unwanted areas.
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, policies forced and relocated groups of native people to different areas while laws were passed to eradicate the indigenous culture. That is, people were not allowed to speak their native languages and children were taken from their parents to be brought up by white families (Stolen Generations).
Midnight Oil is singing against such policies and is denouncing situations such as the relocation of the Pintube who in 1984 were forced to leave their traditional way of life. So, the song means much, much more that a chorus to sing to when dancing or having a couple of beers. It conveys a message related human rights which have been easily ignored throughout times and have been put forward here through the voice of Peter Robert Garrett who not only is a musician, but also an environmentalist, activist and politician.
You may want to see some comments left about this song on the following link.
http://songmeanings.com/songs/view/16526/
