The phonemes are the smallest parts of spoken language that combine to make up words. They are the speech sounds, not the actual letters, in a word. For example, the word look has four letters but only three phonemes (l, oo and k).
The English alphabet has 26 letters but around 43 phonemes (it's hard to specify the exact number as there are variations due to accent and dialect).
viernes 27 de noviembre de 2009
Barack Obama ‘surprised’ and ‘humbled’ by Nobel Peace Prize
Chris McGreal in Washington and Gwladys Fouché in Oslo
9 October, 2009
Barack Obama was as surprised as most of America, and much of the world, when he heard he had won the Nobel Peace Prize. He has been president for just nine months and he is still deciding whether to escalate the war in Afghanistan. The Nobel Committee said it chose Obama “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” and for creating “a new international climate”.
“It is very rare for someone to capture the world’s attention and give its people hope for a better future like Obama has,” the Committee said in a statement. “His diplomacy is based on the idea that people who lead the world must lead it on the basis of values and attitudes that the majority of the world’s population
also share.”
Obama recognized that many people were sceptical about giving the Prize to a president who had been in office less than two weeks when the deadline for nominations passed. Critics said that Obama has not yet achieved any significant breakthroughs in his attempts to promote Middle East peace or stop Iran’s nuclear plans and he is still running a major war in Afghanistan. “I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many important figures that have won this Prize in the past,”
the president said.
But Obama said he would accept the Prize as a recognition of the struggles of others for peace, and said it must be “shared by everyone who works for justice and dignity”.“I will accept this award as a call to action, a call to all nations, to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century,” he said. He will give to charity the $1.4m (£880,000) cash award that comes with
the Prize.
In the middle of the official congratulations from the rest of the world, the Prize led to an angry debate in the US where Republicans said he had not done anything to deserve the award and called it a political statement. Some conservative talk show hosts described the award as an insult to the former president, George Bush, rather than for any particular achievements by Obama. “This is crazy,” said radio host, Mike Gallagher, on Fox News. “It’s all about President Bush. That’s the reason for the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s because Obama doesn’t act like a cowboy.”
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said that it was not too early to award Obama the Prize. They highlighted his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo and his attempts to start the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, his emphasis on dialogue over confrontation in international diplomacy and his commitment to nuclear disarmament. “We want to emphasize that he has already made significant changes,” said the Committee secretary, Geir Lundestad. “All these things have already taken place and this has already had a very significant impact on international relations.”
The former UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, described the award as an “unexpected but inspired choice”. A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, thought differently. “He has not taken a single step for peace in Afghanistan or to make this country stable ... We think this year’s Peace Prize is unfair,” he said. The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said he was “not upset” by the award.
It is not certain whether the award of the Prize will strengthen Obama’s position or weaken it in the United States, where many people are critical of weakness in international affairs. Many conservatives expect the US president to confront unfriendly foreigners who cannot be trusted. Obama has received the award at a time when he is under pressure from US military leaders to send tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan and when his national security advisers are telling him he should hunt al-Qaida in Pakistan.
The chairman of the Prize Committee said the war in Afghanistan does not affect the award.
Answer
1-How long has Barack Obama been US president?
2-How much money comes with the Nobel Peace Prize?
3-In which country is the Nobel Peace Prize Committee based?
4-Where did Barack Obama make his speech to the Muslim world?
5-Who is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?
6-When did Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson win the Nobel Peace Prize
KEY
1-nine months
2-$1.4m (£880,000)
3-Norway
4-Cairo
5-the president of Iran
6-1906 and 1919
Chris McGreal in Washington and Gwladys Fouché in Oslo
9 October, 2009
Barack Obama was as surprised as most of America, and much of the world, when he heard he had won the Nobel Peace Prize. He has been president for just nine months and he is still deciding whether to escalate the war in Afghanistan. The Nobel Committee said it chose Obama “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” and for creating “a new international climate”.
“It is very rare for someone to capture the world’s attention and give its people hope for a better future like Obama has,” the Committee said in a statement. “His diplomacy is based on the idea that people who lead the world must lead it on the basis of values and attitudes that the majority of the world’s population
also share.”
Obama recognized that many people were sceptical about giving the Prize to a president who had been in office less than two weeks when the deadline for nominations passed. Critics said that Obama has not yet achieved any significant breakthroughs in his attempts to promote Middle East peace or stop Iran’s nuclear plans and he is still running a major war in Afghanistan. “I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many important figures that have won this Prize in the past,”
the president said.
But Obama said he would accept the Prize as a recognition of the struggles of others for peace, and said it must be “shared by everyone who works for justice and dignity”.“I will accept this award as a call to action, a call to all nations, to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century,” he said. He will give to charity the $1.4m (£880,000) cash award that comes with
the Prize.
In the middle of the official congratulations from the rest of the world, the Prize led to an angry debate in the US where Republicans said he had not done anything to deserve the award and called it a political statement. Some conservative talk show hosts described the award as an insult to the former president, George Bush, rather than for any particular achievements by Obama. “This is crazy,” said radio host, Mike Gallagher, on Fox News. “It’s all about President Bush. That’s the reason for the Nobel Peace Prize. It’s because Obama doesn’t act like a cowboy.”
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said that it was not too early to award Obama the Prize. They highlighted his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo and his attempts to start the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, his emphasis on dialogue over confrontation in international diplomacy and his commitment to nuclear disarmament. “We want to emphasize that he has already made significant changes,” said the Committee secretary, Geir Lundestad. “All these things have already taken place and this has already had a very significant impact on international relations.”
The former UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, described the award as an “unexpected but inspired choice”. A Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, thought differently. “He has not taken a single step for peace in Afghanistan or to make this country stable ... We think this year’s Peace Prize is unfair,” he said. The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said he was “not upset” by the award.
It is not certain whether the award of the Prize will strengthen Obama’s position or weaken it in the United States, where many people are critical of weakness in international affairs. Many conservatives expect the US president to confront unfriendly foreigners who cannot be trusted. Obama has received the award at a time when he is under pressure from US military leaders to send tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan and when his national security advisers are telling him he should hunt al-Qaida in Pakistan.
The chairman of the Prize Committee said the war in Afghanistan does not affect the award.
Answer
1-How long has Barack Obama been US president?
2-How much money comes with the Nobel Peace Prize?
3-In which country is the Nobel Peace Prize Committee based?
4-Where did Barack Obama make his speech to the Muslim world?
5-Who is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?
6-When did Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson win the Nobel Peace Prize
KEY
1-nine months
2-$1.4m (£880,000)
3-Norway
4-Cairo
5-the president of Iran
6-1906 and 1919
Babies 'cry in mother's tongue'
German researchers say babies begin to pick up the nuances of their parents' accents while still in the womb.
The researchers studied the cries of 60 healthy babies born to families speaking French and German.
The French newborns cried with a rising "accent" while the German babies' cries had a falling inflection.
Writing in the journal Current Biology, they say the babies are probably trying to form a bond with their mothers by imitating them.
Cry melodies
It was already known that foetuses could memorise sounds from the outside world in the last three months of pregnancy and were particularly sensitive to the contour of the melody in both music and human voices.
Earlier studies had shown that infants could match vowel sounds presented to them by adult speakers, but only from 12 weeks of age.
Kathleen Wermke from the University of Wurzburg, who led the research, said: "The dramatic finding of this study is that not only are human neonates capable of producing different cry melodies, but they prefer to produce those melody patterns that are typical for the ambient language they have heard during their foetal life.
"Contrary to orthodox interpretations, these data support the importance of human infants' crying for seeding language development."
Dr Wermke's team recorded and analysed the cries of 60 healthy newborns when they were three to five days old.
Their analysis revealed clear differences in the shape of the infants' cry melodies that corresponded to their mother tongue.
They say the babies need only well-co-ordinated respiratory-laryngeal systems to imitate melody contours and not the vocal control that develops later.
Dr Wermke said: "Newborns are highly motivated to imitate their mother's behaviour in order to attract her and hence to foster bonding.
"Because melody contour may be the only aspect of their mother's speech that newborns are able to imitate, this might explain why we found melody contour imitation at that early age."
Debbie Mills, a reader in developmental cognitive neuroscience at Bangor University, said: "This is really interesting because it suggests that they are producing sounds they have heard in the womb and that means learning and that it is not an innate behaviour.
"Many of the early infant behaviours are almost like reflexes that go away after the first month and then come back later in a different form.
"It would be interesting to look at these babies after a month and see if their ability to follow the melodic contours of their language is still there."
domingo 25 de octubre de 2009
Merriam-Wester's on line
An English LanguageLearner’s Word of the Day
Eg:
rock bottom
Function: noun [noncount]
Meaning:: the lowest possible level or point
Examples:
podcast.
Learning a language can be really interesting if you also learn contents from other fields.
Scientific American is an important magazine which offers a wonderful Podcast
Click here and enjoy learning English as well as Science.
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lunes 12 de octubre de 2009
jueves 23 de julio de 2009
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