Fast Speech

Speech is broken up into units often with pauses between them. In fast speech this units may be quite long and spoken quickly. One or more word in each unit is emphasised and may be said more clearly than others.

 

Stress Shift

Most dictionaries which give the pronunciation of words also indicate which syllables have stress. For example, Macmillan  Dictionary shows that 'party' and 'remember' have stress on only one syllable and that 'controversial' and 'kindergarten' have stress on two syllables; these words show main stress and a secondary one. 

The tendency, to avoid stress on adjacent syllables by moving one stress to another syllable is called a stress shift/clash. A simple example is the phrase thirteen men which is usually pronounced ˈθɜːtiːn ˈmen rather than θɜːˈtiːn men.

Words which often have stress shift include: -teen numbers - four'teen, nine'teen; and two-part numbers -- forty-'five, seventy-‘eight; alto'gether, inde'pendent, indi'stinct, medi'ocre, satis'factory, uni'versity, week'end, worth'while; some place names which have main stress on the last syllable, such as: Ber’lin, Montre'al. 

But some other words with secondary stress rarely have stress shift. For example: a,pproxi'mation, corre'spondence, inde'cision, pro,nunci'ation. They are usually long words.

Read the following sentences:

- We used to live near the Berlin Wall. 

- She's got a job in Berlin. 

- I'm working on my pronunciation.  

- I'm doing a pronunciation course. 

- It was just a routine job. 

- The operation was quite routine.

- The film was made for propaganda purposes. 

- The book was just political propaganda.

- The region has a Mediterranean climate.

 - I love living next to the Mediterranean. 

- Next month she'll be sixteen. 

- It cost sixteen euros.

For particular emphasis or contrast, syllables other than those with main or secondary stress can be made prominent. This often happens in conversations. 

A: Does the tabletop need washing? 

B: No, the tableCLOTH.  Though in isolation, the word tablecloth has stress on the thirst syllable. 

Now read the following sentences:

A: So we have to take the old footpath? B: No, we take the old footbridge.

A: So you thought the work was precise? B: No, I said it was concise.

A: You've lost your handbook, have you? B: No, I've lost my handbag.

A: Yes, I thought the performance was lifeless, too. B: No, I said I thought it was lifelike

A: I didn't think his findings were very objective. B: No, they were very subjective.

I hoped it helped.

3 Major Differences between British English Pronunciation and Russian

 

English_4_every_1

In today’s world, English is becoming more and more important. In addition to opening up employment opportunities, this noble language helps to make a real connection with people and to know more about diverse cultures, places and lifestyles. The more proficient you are, the better you can express yourself.

Nowadays, many films, TV shows, books and music are published and produced in English. By understanding English, you won’t need to rely on translations and subtitles anymore.

Since English is spoken as a first language in 53 countries and as a second language in over 118 countries, learning the language makes it much easier to travel anywhere. Indeed, airport announcements, train timetables, emergency information and street signs are often available in English, including in countries where the native language uses a different type of alphabet.

Even more, learning a foreign language enhances your cognitive and analytical abilities. In the long term, bilingualism can keep the brain strong and healthy into old age and supports concentration and memory skills. On an individual level, it improves personality and increases sense of self-worth. In simple words, learning a foreign language makes the brain stronger and more versatile.

👬👭👪👫👯🙇👶👷💓👦🙎😰💂👮👪👫👭

Why I'm not longer going to school in Smolensk

It is a shame that the government-run public schools in Russia are left to the fraudulent bureaucratic side of things where the common bonus structures lead to corporate corruption, fraud and other forms of unethical behaviour involving headmasters and their deputy directors. At the same time school teachers live at or under the federal poverty level; as we can see, it is almost impossible to reverse the moral degradation of school staff here once it has taken hold.

Surprisingly, being within the poverty threshold, public schoolteachers in this country never resist role as 'concealed administrative resource' in Russia's national elections. Unfortunately, putinism  has transformed the teachers into slaves of a particular type — the slaves are struggling for the right to remain slaves. It looks like a kind of pareidolia in which teachers respond to a stimulus, by perceiving pattern of patriotism where none exists.

Why do school headmasters ask you to do something unethical in your job? Why do teachers publish in "sham" journals falsify data? Why do school staff members and administrators ignore pupils' misbehaviour? Why do teachers actively cheat in their school records which leads to a huge personal tragedy for the children and their parents when unscrupulous students beat out honest, hard-working applicants for university spots? Answers to these and similar questions will clearly contribute to better understanding the depth of the problem.

Similarly, the pupils are affected negatively thus their future prospects are compromised. The teens feel frustrated with the status quo, pessimistic about the possibility of change, and torn between their dreams for the future and the rigid bell-ridden schooling designed to prepare indentured servants harvesting for the party elite. That said, this goes with lowered productivity and absenteeism.

To make things worse, last month the school told that the teachers could keep their position only if they were fully vaccinated with unproven Sputnik COVID jab in two doses. But, legally, no, you can't be forced to take a vaccine; you're not going to be physically restrained and given a vaccine by any legitimate public health authority...

***

I simply could not cope up with this toxic unethical school culture and refused to work for any who did this. That's why I left school.

Truly Amazing Childhood... in Emojis ✨

Creative writing assignment (Year 6-9): write your own story with a large collection of emoji pictures. Here is mine!

I used ☠️ my younger cousin's 👶 entire year's savings 💰to purchase a turtle 🐢. This was one 1️⃣ of my first successful 👍 live projects 📌. Then proceeded ⚙️ by the snail 🐌 community 🏘️ I built 🔨.

Next I cut out ✂️ a window 🪟 and a door 🚪from a used up ♻️ mini pack 📦 to accommodate my new friends, the ants 🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜... I learnt 💡about the trail they left when one 1️⃣ of them discovers food 🥘. I found one 1️⃣ of these invisible 🕶️ scented 👃 trails and then dropped 💧a grain of sugar 🧊, which I "breadcrumbed" 🍪 to the specially designed 🏗️ ant house 🐜🛖.

Soon afterwards my mother 👱 beat 🏏 the living day light 🌘 out of me 🤕when she found out a pigeon 🕊️ which lived in my bedroom 🛌. But I  went on 🚶another interesting adventure 🤠 to a lake ☱ 4️⃣ 5️⃣ -minute walk 👣 from the house 🏡 to catch 🪝 fish 🎣.

A red 🟥 kitten🐈 was the last 🪦 animal I kept in my room (okay 👌, apart from the 3️⃣ cute featherless birdies 🐣🐣🐣 that got me in trouble 💩 by screaming too loud 🔊 when my dad 👨 walked in, having learnt 💡the sound 🛎️ of my door 🚪means food 🥘).

I know as I began to grow up, my taste for petty creatures 👾💀🗿👻🦄 began to dim 🔅. My company began to change. I was saving to buy💲a fairly used ♻️ Sega Drive 🕹️. But my parents 🙅‍♀️🙅‍♂️ refused ⛔ to buy me any gaming consoles 🎮 because they felt they'd distract 😕 my education 🏫.

Finally, at the age of 15 I gave my turtle 🐢 out as valentines 💕 gift 🎁 to a girl 👧🏼 (a sylph 🧚 really) I absolutely loved 💘 (had a gigantic crush 💜). This became a landmark📍in my life as I began to make senseless  sacrifices (🌈, 📕, 💎,🍬,🍓,🌹,🍧, 📼,🎁,🍷 - you name it!) to her later on but the turtle 🐢 came back 🪃 to me after she became... my wife 💑❗

Ella, my wife!

What is your favourite board game to play?

Homeworlds game set for two players.

A review writing assignment (Y10-11)

Those of you who have heard me speak about 'Homeworlds' board game know that it is my beloved — an epic abstract strategy game with a proper cool mechanism. Many say that it is really good in every way, if not great and one of the best strategic and aesthetically satisfying masterpieces which adds more fun to the universe. Yet, at the same time (sigh) it is of one the most often ignored games by many. As you can see in the picture above, there is no board in Homeworlds, no rolling dice, no drawing cards, instead it is an ever-changing endless field with one and only one geometrical shape played on a tabletop.

The flow of the game itself centres around the colours and sizes of the pyramids paired with four possible actions. With its minimalistic art stripped down to its most basic geometry, the dynamic map of Homeworlds really takes the system somewhat to its limit, introducing a fairly complex and layered challenge of counter-intuitive strategic and tactical depth. Because pieces are never removed from the tabletop, the game remains hectic right until the end. It is a gamer’s game that really does rival all-time classics like Chess restricted to a limited area of 64-square grid. Whereas Chess was a game played by renaissance kings, Homeworlds is a game for starship captains, or for galactic overlords if you like, or even for... the Martian Princess. Furthermore, I have come to discover that the pyramids used in the game are akin to a computer running multiple applications at once through multi-tasking, but not to Chess pieces... Winning the game is quite similar in many ways to writing software, and in particular, the task of optimising a sub-routine with dizzying number of options has a lot in common with simplifying a set of early and mid (end)-game goals. By the way, the game of Homeworlds has a Kolmogorov complexity of 3.83! only (i.e. the ratio between the size in bytes of the shortest possible game which just fills the board and the full game). Loosely speaking, it means that just placing pyramids on the board is not as easy as it might seem.

The rules of Homeworlds are elegant and sophisticated, and somewhat Gemütlich. But even after you’ve learned them, it can take a long time to really and truly understand dynamic interactions between various game elements leading to a dramatic conclusion for one player and a clear victory for the other. The goal is to eliminate all of the ships defending your enemy's homeworld. You will have to focus on resource limits, explosions of gas giant stars, building and trading, passive aggression and outright aggression, offence and defence, overpopulation and catastrophes, gambits and sacrifice, hyperspace bypass and being frozen out, cunning moves, connections, colours, star-towing, wormholes and of course — diplomacy and bluffing skill in the games of more than two players when they might want to team up. Also, I am enjoying the extra fun you get in naming the star systems. Whenever you discover a new system, you give it a name. Sometimes people use real star names, other times they just use names they find amusing. I, for one, use Elvish names thus adding a fun little dimension to things! Clicking on this download link will open a file with 600 incredibly beautiful Elvish names which I collected many moons ago...

The theme rocks — the game box contains four weirdly beautiful trio pyramid sets in three sizes in a plethora of colours (spoiler: if you good enough to go into maths, it equals to a set of 36!). The ability to stack loony semi-transparent tangible objects mimicking binary stars is unbeatable cool to the degree that it looks like nonsense or Harry Potter's "Quidditch" to the uninitiated. Deprived of any skeuomorphic design, the brightly coloured, square-bases plastic pieces can be the essential playing tokens for literally dozens of other games. Just create combos of 2 colours for opposing sides on the board. I recommend the following mnemonics: shell (red, yellow) & ocean (blue, green), stoplight (red, green) & traffic signs (yellow, blue), chevron (blue, red) & BP (yellow, green).  Don't get me wrong, it seems somewhat sacrilegious to use pieces for The GlorIous Homeworlds for anything else, or alternatively improvise Homeworlds equipment on the cheap replacing it with cards or dice, but sometimes alternatives for the Non-Converted might have a place. That is why there are 525 known games sorted by their publication or release year! These games have appeared as professional game products of some kind. Many of these games have become classics.

https://homeworlds-live2.glitch.me/ is the link to play with me. My username is OlegAney and I lose sometimes. There is also an active fanbase for players providing access to the rules for the game, tutorials, forums and archive, sandbox for beginners (don't be embarrassed about playing with yourself at your own pace; train yourself to play a game first as one player, then as the other). Try out numerous different permutations, dig in and experiment. I for one, used to start with a Large Green ship and a Blue/Red star system but now I prefer Yellow/Blue. But there is more than learning the rules and trying to win. There is the mystique: the way to play, the set of attitudes and ideas involved.

Okay, this is where I need to stop! I've obviously been spending way too much time on this, but I'm having a great time with it and if you're into Homeworlds,  click here at https://www.dropbox to see the game rules.

And what is your favourite board game of all time? Please post your answer in comments below and big thumb up too!

My boardgamegeek review...

P.S. See also 'A translation assignment' for Y10 and Y11...