Poeh! Probeer de Engelse dan eens.

(Ed Rondthaler over Engelse spelling van Bob Smartner op Vimeo.)

The Wonderful Word "Up" (thanks to Paul Oliver)

There is a two-letter word in English that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that is "UP."

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list,
but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP?
At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP and why are the
officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?
We call UP our friends. And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver,
we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and
some guys fix UP the old car.
At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stir UP trouble,
line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.
To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special.

And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.
We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.

We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!
To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary.
In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about
thirty definitions. If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways
UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP
with a hundred or more.
When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP!
When the sun comes out we say it is clearingUP
When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.
When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP.

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now my time is UP...

Those who jump off a bridge in Paris are in Seine.

A backward poet writes inverse.

A man's home is his castle, in a manor of speaking.

Dijon vu - the same mustard as before.

Practice safe eating - always use condiments.

Shotgun wedding: A case of wife or death.

A man needs a mistress just to break the monogamy.

A hangover is the wrath of grapes.

Dancing cheek-to-cheek is really a form of floor play.

Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?

Condoms should be used on every conceivable occasion.

Reading while sunbathing makes you well red.

When two egotists meet, it's an I for an I.

A bicycle can't stand on its own because it is two tired.

What's the definition of a will? (It's a dead giveaway.)

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

In democracy your vote counts. In feudalism your count votes.

She was engaged to a boyfriend with a wooden leg but broke it off.

A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.

If you don't pay your exorcist, you get repossessed.

With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress.

When a clock is hungry, it goes back four seconds.

The man who fell into an upholstery machine is fully recovered.

You feel stuck with your debt if you can't budge it.

Local Area Network in Australia: the LAN down under.

He often broke into song because he couldn't find the key.

Every calendar's days are numbered.

A lot of money is tainted - It taint yours and it taint mine.

A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.

He had a photographic memory which was never developed.

A plateau is a high form of flattery.

A midget fortune-teller who escapes from prison is a small medium at large.

Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.

Once you've seen one shopping center, you've seen a mall.

Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead-to-know basis.

Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses.

Acupuncture is a jab well done.

Een Engelse toerist in Frankrijk... 

An anagram is a word or phrase made by transposing or rearranging the letters of another word or phrase.Enjoy the following examples.

Amazing sentences:

To be or not to be: that is the question, whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune."

The anagram:

In one of the Bard's best-thought-of tragedies, our insistent hero, Hamlet, queries on two fronts about how life turns rotten.

That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind - Neil Armstrong

The anagram:

A thin man ran, making a large stride, left planet, pins flag on moon. On to Mars!

The Translator tells the remarkable story of a man who came face-to-face with genocide– time and again risking his own life to fight injustice and save his people. 

“I am the translator who has taken journalists into dangerous Darfur. It is my intention now to take you there in this book, if you have the courage to come with me.” Daoud Hari, a Zaghawa tribesmen from Darfur, had recently returned to his village after living abroad when his village was attacked by the Janjaweed. He lost his beloved brother, Ahmed, in the attack, but helped his family and many of his relatives and fellow villager cross the desert to reach the relative safety of a border refugee camp.

Daoud Hari is not a person to stand around and do nothing. Despite the danger, he felt compelled to put his English skills to use as a translator for genocide investigators and reporters, in an attempt to get the word out about the genocide, to bring the ethnic cleansing of his people into your living room, so their voices could be heard. His memoir largely follows his work from 2003 until 2006, when he received protection as a refugee in the United States. It is a remarkable story of one man's determination to help his people, risking his life over and over again to fight the injustice that he has witnessed.

"In his moving memoir, The Translator, Daoud Hari illuminates the complexities of the conflict [in Darfur]..., but his book's modest scope is perhaps its greatest strength. In its intimacy, quiet humor and compassion, The Translator is more like a conversation with a friend than a call to action. The plight of someone close to you can pierce you, and Hari keeps his readers close.” Los Angeles Times

“The Translator, by Daoud Hari, a native Darfurian, may be the biggest small book of this year, or any year. In roughly 200 pages of simple, lucid prose, it lays open the Darfur genocide more intimately and powerfully than do a dozen books by journalists or academic experts. Hari and his co-writers achieve this in a voice that is restrained, generous, gentle and—astonishingly—humorous.” Washington Post Book World

The publicity campaign for the online operator Mobile Vikings uses the word
for Flemish people, ‘les Flamands’ alongside adjectives such as ‘cretin’, ‘pig’
and ‘bimbo’ and ‘moron’.

The jury for ethical advertising has called for the company to withdraw its
ten advertisements.

On Mobile Vikings posters and beer mats, slogans such as “Free, its for the
morons” or “Free, its for the Flemish” can be found. In the north of the country,
the word ‘Flamands’ is replaced by ‘Hollandais’.

“The advert is controversial, but Mobile Vikings is unlike other mobile operators”,
explained Koen Delvaux, head of the company. “Our image is a little bit more
daring and our adverts reflect this.”

The company have since agreed to remove the more offensive slogans.
“We respect the decision of the jury, but it is a shame that a single complaint
has the power to block a whole advertising campaign such as ours. We have
only received one complaint from a person in the Wallon region who felt
discriminated against”, Delvaux added.

Le Soir/Expatica

Where can a man buy a cap for his knee,
Or the key to a lock of his hair?
Can his eyes be called an academy
Because there are pupils there?

Is the crown of your head where jewels are found?
Who travels the bridge of your nose?
If you wanted to shingle the roof of your mouth,
Would you use the nails on your toes?

Can you sit in the shade of the palm of your hand,
Or beat on the drum of your ear?
Can the calf in your leg eat the corn off your toe?
Then why not grow corn on the ear?

Can the crook in your elbow be sent to jail?
If so, just what did he do?
How can you sharpen your shoulder blades?
I'll be darned if I know - do you?

Avoid alliteration. Always.
Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
Avoid clichés like the plague. (They're old hat.)
Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
Be more or less specific.
One should never generalize.
Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
Contractions aren't necessary.
Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
Employ the vernacular.
Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
One-word sentences? Eliminate.
Understatement is always best.
Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
The passive voice is to be avoided.
Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
Who needs rhetorical questions?

In promulgating your esoteric cogitations, or articulating your superficial
sentimentalities and amicable, philosophical or psychological observations,
beware of platitudinous ponderosity. Let your conversational communications
possess a clarified conciseness, a compacted comprehensibleness, coalescent
consistency, and a concatenated cogency. Eschew all conglomerations of flatulent
garrulity, jejune babblement, and asinine affectations.

Let your extemporaneous descantings and unpremeditated expatiations have
intelligibility and veracious vivacity, without rodomontade or thrasonical bombast.
Sedulously avoid all polysyllabic profundity, pompous prolixity, psittaceous vacuity
ventriloquial verbosity, and vaniloquent vapidity. Shun double-entendres, prurient
jocosity, and pestiferous profanity, obscurant or apparent!!
And, don't teach with big words!