A garden of delights for the word obsessed: a funny, amazing, and even profound world tour of the best of all those strange words that don't have a precise English equivalent, the ones that tell us so much about other cultures' priorities and preoccupations and expand our minds.
Did you know that people in Bolivia have a word that means "I was rather too drunk last night and it's all their fault"? That there's no Italian equivalent for the word "blue"? That the Dutch word for skimming stones is "plimpplamppletteren"? This delightful book, which draws on the collective wisdom of more than 254 languages, includes not only those words for which there is no direct counterpart in English ("pana po'o" in Hawaiian means to scratch your head in order to remember something important), but also a frank discussion of exactly how many Eskimo words there are for snow and the longest known palindrome in any language ("saippuakivikauppias"--Finland).
And all right, what in fact is "tingo"? In the Pascuense language of Easter Island, it's to take all the objects one desires from the house of a friend, one at a time, by asking to borrow them. Well, of course it is. Enhanced by its ingenious and irresistible little Schott's Miscellany/Eats Shoots and Leaves package and piquant black-and-white illustrations throughout, The Meaning of Tingo is a heady feast for word lovers of all persuasions. Viva Tingo!
The BBC NEW ENGLISH COURSE includes 24 CD ROM and is the world’s most successful language learning course.
INTERMEDIATE (Disc 13-16)
Improving listening and speaking skills: The content is more colloquial and is very enjoyable. You can learn words of congratulations, slang and numerous words in everyday use. There are also introductions to format and informal letters, as well as stories, plays and poems.
By providing spelling exercises, skills practice, reviews, and quizzes, these Spelling Power Workbooks give students the practice they need to improve their spelling and writing ability and to expand their vocabulary. The spelling words, patterns, and concepts taught throughout Spelling Power have been carefully selected on the basis of current research in word study. Sources such as The Reading Teacher’s Book of Lists, authored by readability experts Edward Bernard Fry, Jacqueline E. Kress, and Dona Lee Fountoukidis, and The Living Word, a national vocabulary inventory by Dale Edgar and Joseph O’Rourke, identify words students typically misspell at each grade level, so the words selected for study in these workbooks are developmentally appropriate. They also reflect the varied interests and vocabulary of today’s students.
The Teacher Annotated Editions include the answer keys.
Thomas is a young wizard who lives with his uncle Artem in his magical pet shop. One day Thomas gets an F in 'Magical Spell Words' so he is ordered to study. But while carrying the book down the stairs, he accidentally falls and hits his uncle and makes a mess of things. His uncle gets angry and casts a spell on Thomas. He then finds himself inside the book on the subject that he failed! Now Thomas must find his way out of the book, but will he be able to do it? It's up to you to help him.
There are books on antonyms, synonyms, and rhyming words, but this is the first paperback work on metaphors, the idiomatic words and phrases used to create images for the purposes of comparison, clarification, or whimsy. Contains three separate, self-contained listings: a dictionary, a thematic section, and a thesaurus. Includes suggestions for ad copy, public addresses, games, and crossword puzzles.
