'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 How to use a semicolon 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.
Greylock Partners launches new $160 million tech fund for Europe and Israel Well known US VC house Greylock Partners is launching a brand new $160 million fund aimed at internet technology companies, with the fund being deployed between Europe and Israel. Greylock is best known for its stakes in Facebook, Groupon and LinkedIn and European investments including Wonga. Greylock’s move will be a shot in the arm for European tech companies looking for more options when raising financing. We’ve confirmed that the fund will be represented in London by Laurel Bowden, a Partner, and will cover investments from early stage and beyond. [Correction: The fund was raised by Greylock Partners' affiliate fund, Greylock Israel Partners. The fund is managed by five Greylock general partners, Moshe Mor, Erez Ofer, Yoram Snir, Laurel Bowden and Arnon Dinur. In the US Greylock invests in seed stage companies through its Greylock Discovery Fund, early stage companies through Greylock XIII and late stage companies through Greylock Growth.
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.
6 ways journalists can use Quora as tool to report, share ideas Quora, the fast-growing question and answer site, has become increasingly popular among journalists. In a phone interview, Quora co-founder Adam D’Angelo attributed the site’s recent growth to an increase in media coverage and traffic from Twitter, among other factors. Because the site auto-follows users’ Facebook and Twitter accounts, it makes sense that its user-base would spread quickly once a few influencers begin using it. “Originally when we built the site, we didn’t have new users automatically follow all their Twitter contacts,” said D’Angelo, former CTO of Facebook. Quora has some work to do as it looks for ways to maintain high quality questions and answers. Below, I’ve addressed how Quora is different from some other sites and list six ways that journalists can use it. Earlier this week, TBD experimented with Quora as part of a community blog feature on local pizza joints. I like the idea of news orgs asking readers to alert them to interesting questions on Quora.
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 I Adopted a Scorched Earth Policy, Closed 2 Blogs & Jumped to Tumblr In military circles, a ‘scorched earth policy’ – according to Wikipedia – is “A strategy which involves destroying anything that might be useful to the enemy while advancing through, or withdrawing from, a given theater of operations.” Perhaps it’s symbolic, but that’s exactly the approach I took to my digital presence this past Memorial Day weekend. I started a fresh new site on the future of media over on Tumblr. Then I promptly turned around and slashed both my TypePad-powered blog, which I ran from 2004 to 2009, and my Posterous blog, which I started with some fanfare back in 2009. With just two clicks of a mouse I rid the web of literally thousands of blog posts, some of which I am proud of – others less so – and redirected the URLs to the new site. Now before you write off this decision off as simply a mid-life crisis, let me explain why I did so. I fundamentally believe that we are entering the next great era of the web – The Validation Era. These four media spheres include: