Nightingale

Last night I was crossing a park on my way home when I heard a bird singing so loudly that I could hear it through the music going on in my mp3 player. It was a kind of staccato birdsong with lots of high-pitched trills and it was simply mesmerizing. Besides the beautiful and clear melody it was the element of surprise that made me stop: you just wouldn't expect a bird to sing like that at 1:30 am. I listened to it for a while and when I left there the bird was still performing and the sounds of the song were reverberating from the nearby houses.
This afternoon, I have had some time to do a bit of research on the net and the mysterious night singer seems to have been a nightingale. It is a migratory species breeding in forest and scrub in Europe and south-west Asia. Nightingales are named so because they frequently sing at night as well as during the day. The song is impressive with a lot of whistles and trills and it is even louder near urban areas because the bird wants to overcome the background noises. (from wikipedia)
Nightingales are not very rare and they mainly sing in spring, so if you happen to walk in forests or parks these days at the nighttime, you are likely to hear them. It is a memorable experience.
This bird is the focus of many works of art: songs, poems, myths and short stories. Listen to this soulful jazzy tune by Norah Jones, titled "Nightingale":






Read the lyrics of the song.

Do some vocabulary exercises about the language content of this post.

Earth Day

The picture above is titled the 'Pale Blue Dot'. It was taken by the Voyager 1 space probe in 1990 from a distance of over 4 billion miles. The space craft was at the edge of the Solar System when Ground Control commanded it to turn back and take pictures of the planets it had visited. Captured in the light ray that cuts through the right side of the picture you will notice a tiny dot: Earth. (Provided you keep your computer screen nice and tidy:-) Both the idea for taking the distant photo and the title came from scientist and astronomer Carl Sagan. You can read his thoughts about the photo here and you can also see the version of the picture with Earth marked on it with arrows.

Why am I writing about all this now? Because this Wednesday is Earth Day. This is observed each year on April 22 and it is primarily designed to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth's environment. So, let's celebrate this special day with a quiz.(Not entirely on environmental facts, but about or planet, nevertheless.)

1. Which is true about our planet's distance from the Sun?

a, It's the second from the Sun.
b, It's the third from the Sun.
c, It's the fourth from the Sun.


2. How old is our Earth?

a, 5 million years old.
b, 12 million years old.
c, 4.5 billion years old.

3. Which is the largest ocean?

a, Pacific Ocean.
b, Atlantic Ocean.
c, Indian Ocean.

4. Which is the largest island?

a, Madagascar.
b, New Guinea.
c, Greenland.

5. Which extinct bird lived on Mauritius?

a, The Phoenix.
b, The Emu.
c, The Dodo.

6. How old are the oldest trees?

a, 3000 years old.
b, 6000 years old.
c, 9000 years old.

7. Which is the fastest land animal?

a, Ostrich.
b, Giraffe.
c, Cheetah.

8. What is the percentage of oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere?

a, 18.
b, 23.
c, 33.

9. What percentage of the Earth's surface is covered in water?

a, 50.
b, 60.
c, 70.

10. Which is the longest mountain range on our planet?

a, The Himalayas.
b, The Rockies.
c, The Andes.

11. Which is the highest waterfall in the world?

a, Niagara.
b, Angel.
c, Iguazú.

12. Who was the first explorer to reach the South Pole?

a, Roald Amundsen.
b, Ernest Shackleton.
c, Robert Falcon Scott.


You can find the key here.


















Earthrise

Dictionaries

If you don't know the meaning of an English word there are three things you can do:
1, you can simply ignore it
2, try to guess its meaning from the context
3, look it up in a dictionary.
I think the best way to learn a word is to guess its meaning from the context. If you make some mental effort to find out the meaning the chances of remembering it the next time you encounter the word are higher than if you look it up immediately. However, sometimes it is inevitable to use a dictionary. When I write dictionary, I mean a monolingual one, where the definition is given in English. Bilingual dictionaries are handy for translations but for learning a language monolingual dictionaries are far better. Nowadays, with the help of online dictionaries the search is easier than it used to be. One of the best sites I have found in this field is TheFreeDictionary. Besides being a fast, comprehensible and reliable dictionary, the site also provides word games(on the front page), medical, legal and financial dictionaries as well as several other features. For language teachers and others working with the language itself the idioms section can be very useful, for example when making exercises for students:_) From the online games of the site, I only liked the hangman; the spelling bee has a rather poor sound quality and the matching exercise is way too difficult if you are not a native speaker. But the hangman is just fine and you might as well have a go at it now.

Hangman

Hangman
provided by The Free Dictionary

Another very good site for looking up new words is Dictionary.com. It has a polished design and the features are similar to TheFreeDictionary. Its theasurus is excellent. I use this service mainly for looking up synonyms for adjectives. Besides giving a definition and some synonyms it also provides antonyms (opposites) of the adjective as well. This is what you get if you enter the word 'moody' into the search box of the thesaurus:

Main Entry: moody

Part of Speech: adjective

Definition: crabby, temperamental

Synonyms:angry, cantankerous, capricious, changeable, crabbed, crestfallen, cross, dismal, doleful, dour, down in the dumps, down in the mouth*, downcast, erratic, fickle, fitful, flighty, frowning, gloomy, glum, huffy, ill-humored, ill-tempered, impulsive, in a huff, in the doldrums, introspective, irascible, irritable, lugubrious, melancholy, mercurial, miserable, moping, morose, offended, out of sorts*, pensive, petulant, piqued, sad, saturnine, short-tempered, splenetic, sulky, sullen, testy, touchy

Antonyms:balanced, cheerful, happy, overjoyed

The biggest problem for advanced learners of a foreign language (and sometimes for native speakers as well!) is understanding slang words and expressions. Finding the slang meaning of certain words (lame, awesome, cool, wicked...) isn't such a big problem because most dictionaries include slang meanings of a word. The real problem arises with idioms or expressions made up of several words. Some expressions such as 'rub it in, bee's knees...' may take much longer to find in a general dictionary than in a dictionary which is specialized in slang. The Urban Dictionary is a good tool for finding and understanding slang words and expressions. After entering a word in the search box all you have to do is to select the relevant meaning. The little thumbs next to the definitions can help. The more 'up' thumbs there are (and the fewer 'downs'), the more trustworthy the definition is. Try to find the meanings of the orange words in the following sentences in different online dictionaries.

The detective meticulously examined the whole place in hope of finding a clue.

Dude, what trendy specs! You're the cat's pajamas, man!

No wonder, Greg agreed with the boss, he is the main echo chamber in the office.

Tom, is a noob now but give him a few months and he's gonna be the top player!