Newsletter: The Green Shoots

English as a Second Language What do you want to talk about?
41

Hi Alan,
Your article is really interesting as usual.All your articles are very useful not only for learning english,but also they do give ideas about culture. weather and writer.
Thanks very much from bottom of my heart for taking such effort for helping us in improving our English.

Take care.
bye

42

Dear Alan Sir,

Thank you for your Essay Green Shoots, It was so nice and I learnt new
idioms from this Essay. I think your mind is also like Green Shoots that is why
you are writing different, different idioms which we never used before.
Egg, Good Egg,Bad Egg, nest Egg, you have given explanations for all that.
I want to ask you what type of Egg you are Sir?

I want to keep myself as Good Egg (By helping others in way of not only money but also otherthings).

Everyone wants to be Nest Egg nowadays, so that they can save their money in
different modes 0f deposit in Banks and other savings so that they can good yield from that and make use of it for future.

Egg on: you egg on with every learner to learn new idiom as early as possible.

What do you mean that “Gold Daffodils”? When I refered my Dictionary it meant
Yellow Flower. Is it correct or not Sir?

Thank you

S.Shanthi

43

This is great

44

Dear Alan as always I´m really thankful with you for all that information and learning about English idioms and sayings, and talking about “good egg or bad egg” here in Colombia what we use is " good potato or bad potato" “Buena papa” or “mala papa” (In Spanish). in the case of “teach your mother to suck eggs” we say “are you going to teach your father to make children?” "Le vas a enseñar a tu Papá a hacer hijos? (in Spanish) Thanks a lot once again
Best regards
Jose S.

45

thank you so much Mr Alan for all your help. i know my English is for beginner and also i’m not talented of writing but iwant to say many thanks to you .and your articles are always usefuls . i was wondring if you do not mind to give us love 's idioms .God bless you .i wish all the best

46

Please listen to my recording and respond with a voice message too. Many thanks.

47

Hello Alexandara,

I listened your voice, it was so nice, if it had been typed as text message,
we would have understood very well I feel. When you recording voice message
please try to type the message always, it will be easily understood by all.

Thank you

S.Shanthi

48

Hello All

I want to post the blog but don’t know how it will be possible. Where I need to register myself, please suggest

49

Dear Alan,

You has written a very beautiful tale for us from the factual reality. As you used present tenses , everything became real as if we have been sitting in a cinema and we watched a film.

It was a very interesting period in English history. We can learn lot of new and we can brush up what we learned in the grammar school. “Live and learn”-than the proverb says.

When Geoffry Chaucer /interesting his name is of French growth (Fr:chausser= shod)/ decided to wrtie the Canterburry Tales in English, his contemporaries thought him a crazy . Why didn’t you write in Latin or French? - they asked him.
A famous Hungarian poem said whose genuin translation isn’t ont he Google so I tried to translate:
„ Only where great matters had been born where they were brave who dared.”

Chaucer (1343 -1400) was brave so he could become ’the father of English poetry. In the literature, his name the English Bocaccio,(1313-1375) because his Decameron was written also in Italian and not in Latin and their theme is very similar. I have to mention also Dante who wrote his Divine Comedy in the Italian language.

I never thought that this problem used to exist in England. Incredible in nowadays when in every country of the world can speak English.

In this time our Hungarian poets wrote in Latin or in German. Our first poet -who dared to write in Hungarian – lived int he beginning of XVI century. His poems were about the Hungarian history, very objectively and not about referring to sex in humorous way or his private sentiment. He left only one short poem which is very personel and shows his talent. It is very sad. And characteristic of our history.

About French. I don’t look on its bright side. I have to reveal that for a Hungarian to learn the same word with two kinds of pronunciation,- is a hard nut to crack.At any rate I had to sacrifice my French speaking (not reading) for English speakind and reading. What to do if my daughter chose an American and not a French man. But today I prefer English to French. My distress that I began to learn sooner French than English. If I have begun my learning with English today I could speak fluently.

Late regret is in vain. -Hungarian proverb.
(Meaning: There are things ( words said, events happened etc) one cannot undo/change/make it better,one just has to live with the consequences and move on.)

You asked about my method of learning. I read more and more. Everyday I listen voice records. I never resigned myself to not to decipher anything. This is sometimes takes long time. If I look up an English word in the Hungarian-English dictionary after I control in the Oxford Dictionary, where I can see in which context I find the good word. Conversely it is easier as I know rather well my mother tongue.

Best regards:
Kati Svaby

50

Hi Kati,

I noticed that you very often write ‘than’ where as would actually be the right word to use. You might want to review
these two words’ meanings and usages.

I hope you don’t mind my telling you this. :slight_smile:

51

Dear Christina,

First, many thanks.

Secondly, I never mind if somebody corrects me. Many,many thanks for it. You can do it any time.

Thirdly, I was pleased with your letter. You told me in your last letter not to say Good-bye because we would meet soon.

Take care:
Kati

52

Dear Alan

It isn’t a piece of cake to answer this newsletter. We would like to write about the spring and Easter, about The Resurrection, a new beginning, the romanticism and William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and at last about the eggs idioms.

You egged us on to ask questions about these eggs idioms and even tell us to write similar ones, we may have in our language.
To cut a long story short I try to translate some Hungarian sayings:

HUNGARIAN SAYINGS IN ENGLISH

He/she always hatches his/her eggs. = She/He is always at home.
It carries eggs. = we say about a cart which goes very slowly.
He handles/ treats her as he would handle an Ester Egg = he treats her with kid gloves.
An egg can break only once. = One discredit himself/herself only once.
They are like two eggs. = they are like two peas in a pod.
Even the smith could solder a broken egg together. = A deadly ill persone couldn’t be restored.
From the cooked egg a chicken couldn’t hatch. = What broked down for good and all it can be restored again…

Here is a video about the English egg idioms. It’s very good !

youtube.com/watch?v=ZW0aNuzrLQ0

Here is William Wordsworth (1770-1850) poem about the daffodils.
 -it 's beautiful.

youtube.com/watch?v=EK9UWpYu … re=related

Best regards:
Kati Svaby

53

Hello Alan,

Thank you for yet another essay which not only I enjoyed reading but also made it easier for me to remember quite a few English idioms.

Some of our idioms are the same with the English ones (word by word) and also have the same meaning – for example:

  • You cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs. – In order to get something good or useful, you must give up something else.
  • It’s not a good idea ‘to put all your eggs in one basket’ – You have to consider different possibilities in life and not just put all your energy (hard work) in one area only.
    (Romanians might also use this idiom to tell a friend who is dating someone they really don’t think much of that they should keep their options open, for example. I am not sure if it is used that way in English as well or not.)

For others there is an equivalent idiom in my language – for example:

  • There’s a saying that advises you to put some money to one side for a rainy day. This money is what we call a ‘nest egg’. The Romanian equivalent would be ‘‘White money for black/dark/cloudy days.’’
  • ‘Teach your grandmother to suck eggs’ – This is something you shouldn’t do because it means you are trying to tell someone how to do something that they know much better than you do.
    The Romanian equivalent would sound something like this: ‘‘Look at the egg teaching the hen.’’
54

Dear Cristina,

It would be interesting to know which proverbs are similar or same in Romanian and Hungarian language.
In #37 I wrote to Alan this: ( because I received accidentally twice this newsletter.)
teach your grandmother to suck eggs= in Hungarian we say: The egg want to teach the hen.

But there is two other variations of this proverb what you wrote:
1.’'Look at the egg teaching the hen."
2.- ‘Teach your grandmother to suck eggs’ = The egg wants to be cleverer than the hen.

  • It’s not a good idea ‘to put all your eggs in one basket’ = we say word by word:
    It isn’t a good idea to put everything onto one single card.

I think as we live in neighbour country it could be some similarities in our proverbs, don’ you think?

Regards:
Kati

55

Hello Kati,

Both these versions – ''Look at the egg teaching the hen." and ‘‘The egg wants to teach the hen.’’ – are used in Romanian.

That is another idiom we also have. (Said of people who are not very willing to get out of the house and don’t socialize a lot.)

Thanks for the video on egg idioms – a picture speaks a thousand words!

56

Why the net is always crticizing about Indian’s Women.(Indian Women’s Dates)
why don’t you give other countries like this? Indian women will not question you
whatever you do whereas other countries will fire you left and right if you do like
this. Since I am Indian women/like so many people in the net, I counldn’t digust
your advertisement. That is why I don’t like thiss net.

S.Shanthi

57

Hello Cristina,

He/she always hatches his/her eggs. = She/He is always at home.

Yes, you are right because we also think about the person who isn’t very willing to get out of the house and don’t socialize a lot -that’s why he/she wants to be always at home. My sister used to be this type

Bye:
Kati

58

Robert Browning (1812 - 1889)

HOME-THOUGHTS, FROM ABROAD

Oh to be in England
Now that April’s there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England - now!

And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark! where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops - at the bent spray’s edge -
That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children’s dower

  • Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower

59

youtube.com/watch?v=FKseVYnnJ6Q
sheaf

elm-tree

chaffinch

orchard

whitethroat

swallow

hedge

clover

blossom

dewdrop

thrush

buttercup

melon-flower

the little children’s dower

60

I have enjoyed this lesson. Likeable! I did well understand all over the idioms related to word ‘egg’.
My one doubt is about the idiom ‘start off’, used in begining of the text. Why do not use only ‘start’? After it was used only start in the phrase “Robert Browning (1812-1889) starts his poem on a patriotic (proud of his country) note”. Would it be right to use as well “starts off his poem”?
In Brazil there’s at least an idiom with this word that we can translate as “rely on the egg in the chicken cloaca”. It means that someone counts something right, although it did not have yet happened.