How high can a dead cat bounce?

Here's one for you advanced-level business students: Today's "Guardian" has an amusing piece about how English business newspapers and television often use animals to provide imagery when they talk about the stock market. Sometimes, it's easy to understand what they mean; sometimes, it's confusing even for English speakers.

http://tinyurl.com/277xmfp

FYI: A dead cat bounce is the idea that anything (a stock market, a dead cat) will bounce (=come back into the air) if it hits the ground hard enough, and from a high place.

It's all in your mind

Years ago (and I mean many, many years ago), I had a college classmate named Allison who was, shall we say, a little bit radical. She thought that many languages were fundamentally sexist because (she felt) that there weren't many ways for women to be present in grammar, and that that meant that if a language tended to favour masculine forms, the language caused people, in turn, to think in a sexist way.

That idea may appear to be radical, but it's not a new one. As this New York Times article shows, people have been trying to make the connection between language and thought for a very long time (http://tinyurl.com/33adeud.)

It's a good article, maybe a bit long, but works well in describing why that idea (called the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis) isn't always correct.

Enjoy!

Life (and immigration) isn't always fair

One thing that's surprised me a lot this month is that I'm getting calls from a lot of people who want to improve their English...because they want to leave Spain and go live in another country. If you're among them, be warned that Canada now has new rules about language proficiency. These rules do not necessarily help people who have already achieved a high level of English... like, you know... English literature professors from the United States!

http://tinyurl.com/2cbf45y

I have a friend who works for CIC, the Immigration authority. I'll see if I can find some more information about the exam.

What's wrong with THAT ad?

All right, I know, it's not fair to criticize the Comunidad de Madrid's advertisement without analyzing it and explaining why it sounds stupid to an English speaker. I could try...but there's an article in EL PAÍS that explains it better than I could: http://tinyurl.com/y2m66jn.

And this gives me an idea for my next entry: the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs. Yes, this IS important -- especially when you have to learn phrasal verbs.

In the meantime, if you'd like to file a complaint about the advertisement, you can contact the Media Planning Group's office in Madrid at (91) 456-9000, or send a fax to the Comunidad de Madrid's Consejeria de Educación at (91) 720-1302.

Get up! Stand up!
Stand up for your rights!!
(Bob Marley)