'As happy as a clam' - the meaning and origin of this phrase What's the meaning of the phrase 'As happy as a clam'? Very happy and content. What's the origin of the phrase 'As happy as a clam'? Why would clams be happy? "It never occurred to him to be discontented... The first definitive record that I can find of the 'high water' version is from the US newspaper The Bangor Daily Whig And Courier, December 1841: "Your correspondent has given an interesting, and, undoubtedly correct explanation of the expression: 'As happy as a clam at high water.'" However, several biographies of General Robert E. The expression was well-enough known in the USA by the late 1840s for it to have been included in John Russell Bartlett's Dictionary Of Americanisms - A Glossary of Words And Phrases Usually Regarded As Peculiar To The United States, 1848: "As happy as a clam at high water," is a very common expression in those parts of the coast of New England where clams are found. See other 'as x as y similes'. See other phrases that were coined in the USA.
Written Chinese Fascinating Chart Details The History of the Alphabet Most of us use the letters of the alphabet everyday, but did you ever stop to wonder how their shapes came to be? The history of the alphabet is fascinating, and each of the 26 letters has its own unique story. Matt Baker (of UsefulCharts) has designed a handy poster that documents the evolution of our familiar alphabet from its ancient Egyptian Proto-Sinaitic roots (c. 1750 BCE) up to present day Latin script. The limited edition Evolution of the Alphabet chart shows how early shapes and symbols eventually morphed to become the ABCs we know today. The letter “C” was originally shaped like a boomerang or hunter’s stick. You can buy the Evolution of the Alphabet chart and check out more of Baker’s poster designs on the UsefulCharts website. Matt Baker (of UsefulCharts) has designed a handy poster that documents the fascinating history of the alphabet. Matt Baker / UsefulCharts: Website | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube h/t: [Reddit] All images via Matt Baker / UsefulCharts. Related Articles:
Grace Pei's Grades 9-10 Novice-High to Intermediate-Low Chinese Class — 'Asking for and giving directions' TEQ Instructional Videos for Chinese Language Teachers Chinese language teacher Grace Pei, who teaches at St. Andrew's Episcopal School in Mississippi, demonstrates how to teach a common skill such as asking for directions by guiding students step by step to learn and practice new language skills in context. The functional objective for this lesson is for students to be able to ask for, and give, local directions, including by using Google Earth. For guidance on how to use these materials, please see How to Use the TEQ Series: Instructional Videos for Chinese Language Teachers. Watch Chinese language teacher Grace Pei help her students practice asking for and giving directions. Your comments and feedback are always highly appreciated.
Confusables: Assure, Ensure, and Insure - Copyediting.com Spellcheck probably won’t help you choose correctly among assure, ensure, and insure. In fact, because of some overlap in definitions, you might have some problems yourself deciding which word is the right one, especially if you’re working with historical texts. According to Etymonline, ensure and insure both probably extend from the same Anglo-French root, which in turn may have been influenced by or been an alteration of an earlier word that developed into assure. So the meanings of these three words have long overlapped — and likely given pause to writers and editors for several centuries. Ensure vs. The differentiation of ensure and insure is widely — though not universally — recognized among writers and editors: Insure applies to a financial contexts. Their differentiation occurred slowly and extended well into the twentieth century. We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, … Assure
Language Materials Project: Language Profile Mandarin Citations Mandarin Links Select a New Language Number of Speakers: 885 million Key Dialects: Northern, Northwestern, Southwestern, Eastern or Lower Yangtze River Geographical Center: China GENERAL INTRODUCTIONMandarin is the most widely spoken of all Chinese languages/dialects and is used by upwards of 720 million people in China, or 70 percent of the population of China (Grimes 1992). Substantial numbers of speakers are in Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Russia, the USA, Mongolia, Vietnam, Brunei, South Africa, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Hong Kong. LINGUISTIC AFFILIATIONMandarin, belongs to an independent branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The major linguistic distinctions within Chinese are Mandarin, Wu, Min, Yue (commonly known as Cantonese), and Hakka (Kejia). LANGUAGE VARIATIONSeveral subgroups of dialects have been distinguished, including: Northern, Northwestern, Southwestern, and lower Yangtze River dialects. There is some morphological complexity.
Teachers' Strategies for Pronouncing and Remembering Students' Names Correctly The names of white and nonwhite children alike are mispronounced, Kohli and Solórzano write, but the experience is much more damaging for a child who “goes to school and reads textbooks that do not reference her culture, sees no teachers or administrators that look like her, and perhaps does not hear her home language,” since these cues (plus advertisements, movies and other indicators of societal values at large) already communicate “that who they are and where they come from is not important.” For one Latina study participant, having her name mispronounced made her wish her parents were more Americanized; a Sri Lankan American reported feeling that his name was “an imposition on others.” They’re not imagining things. The latter also “happens a lot with white teachers responding to names that are seen as typically black,” Campbell-Kibler says. How then can educators overcome the hurdles to doing so? “How would you like me to say your child’s name?” Then try the name.
Why Speak Chinese #WhySpeakChinese Why West Africa's pidgins deserve full recognition as official languages The BBC World Service’s radio service of English-based Pidgin for West and Central Africa, BBC News Pidgin, is now a year old. And it’s thriving. According to the broadcaster it News Pidgin reaches a weekly audience of 7.5 million people in Nigeria and around the world on radio, online, Facebook and Instagram. Even though Pidgin hasn’t got the official status of a recognised language anywhere, it’s widely spoken across West Africa. Between three and five million Nigerians use it as their first language, while a further 75 million have it as their second language. Today, variations of pidgins are used in all spheres of life ranging from political campaigns, television and radio broadcast. Pidgin refers to what’s known as a trade language that emerged as a mixture of languages to help people who don’t have a common one to communicate with one another. Pidgin is used differently in different settings. The BBC’s decision to launch a service in Pidgin should be applauded. The history
How Long to Learn That Language? Here’s a Map for That For English-speakers, Romanian is easier to learn than German. And you’ll be speaking Russian sooner than Hungarian. How is that? Because the Foreign Service Institute says so. Located in Arlington, Virginia, the FSI is the U.S. government’s main provider of foreign affairs training, including language courses. As the chief learning organisation for the State Department, the FSI is where diplomats go to study the languages they will need on foreign postings. This map shows how the FSI judges the difficulty of European languages. You won’t find any courses in Basque (the area straddling the Franco-Spanish border), Breton (in the ‘nose’ of France), Welsh (in, ehm, Wales) or Scots or Irish Gaelic in Arlington. English, by the way, is a ‘Category 0’ language (pink on the map), meaning that Americans are expected to be proficient in it. These languages include both Germanic ones (Dutch, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish) and Romance ones (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Romanian). and:
List of English terms of venery, by animal This is a list of English-language terms of venery (venery being an archaic word for hunting), comprising terms from a tradition that arose in the Late Middle Ages, at least partly from the Book of Saint Albans of 1486, a historic list of "company terms". The present list also includes more common collective terms (such as "herd" and "flock") for some animals. Standard terms for particular groups are listed first in each group and shown in bold. See also[edit] References[edit] Further reading[edit] Hodgkin, John (1909).
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