SABÍAS QUE ... ?

 ¿Sabes de dónde viene la palabra SANDWICH? Parece ser, que cerca de Londres, el conde de Sandwich  pasaba tanto tiempo jugando a las cartas que no tenía tiempo para comer. Un día estaba tan hambriento que se le ocurrió pedir que le trajeran jamón entre dos rebanadas de pan. De esta manera, podría saciar el hambre y no mancharse los dedos para poder seguir jugando. Es curioso como esta pequeña anécdota hizo de la palabra sandwich una de las más conocidas y simbólicas del inglés y la cultura inglesa. 

Do you know where the word SANDWICH comes from? It seems that near London, the Earl of Sandwich was too busy playing cards to stop for a meal although he was very hungry. One day, he ordered someone to bring  ham between two slices of bread so he could continue playing without getting dirty. It is interesting to see how with this simple anecdote, the word sandwich became one of the most popular and symbolic words of the English language and its culture. 

Pronunciation

En inglés, hay muchas palabras que se pronuncian igual , se escriben de manera distinta y tienen significado distinto (homófonas). Fijaros en esto, ¿qué palabra es la correcta? 

This book is not very good. I'm bored / board 

Jim had an accident because the brake / break failed 

My dog is very intelligent. When I say "here!"/ "hear!" he comes 

My sister ate the whole / hole cake herself 

I will meat / meet my boyfriend in Madrid next week

The wind blue / blew so hard that I was scared

The football World Cup was a fair / fare one and Spain won! 

War and Peace / Piece  

Hay muchas palabras así en inglés. Se pronuncian igual pero son diferentes. ¿Cómo sabemos cuál es cuál al hablar? Por el contexto. ¿Se te ocurren más ejemplos? ¡¡Hay muchos más!! 

English or Chinese?

Last night, I went to a pub where I usually go with my dearest friend Javi to practise English. We met a lot of people there and we talked about a lot of interesting things. We were a group of Spanish people and an Irish boy who had just come to Valencia joined us. One of the things we talked about was the importance of the English language. Someone said "I wonder if English is still more powerful than Chinese". Some people thought that Chinese is the language of the future and some other people still believed in the power of English. These ideas led to an interesting debate about the importance and power of English. English is the most international language and the lingua franca.It is true that Chinese is becoming important more and more, but will it replace the status of English?? Personally, I don't think so. English has a long tradition and a wonderful history behind. I also commented that I had read an article about this recently. It was an article of Obama's opinion about the English language. According to the American President, English is too much powerful in his country. He argued that most American people only speak English and that is a problem. It is not good to rely too much on one language. Americans are confident because they speak the international language par excellence. But, that is not good. They should learn more languages and I cannot not but strongly agree with this.