Shoptalk

Our Defence Minister marries an Iranian

Here's a report from our national newspaper, The Globe and Mail: Peter MacKay weds rights activist, former beauty queen. His new wife was Miss World Canada and she is a human-rights activist. I don't like Mr. MacKay, or his Conservative government, but he has good taste in women! An excerpt from the story:

Defence Minister Peter MacKay and his activist girlfriend have tied the knot. [That means they got married.]

Friends told The Globe and Mail on Wednesday that Mr. MacKay, known for a series of highly publicized romances, and Nazanin Afshin-Jam, were married in Mexico. 

On his website, Mr. MacKay said he was overjoyed to announce he and Ms. Afshin-Jam had married at a private ceremony surrounded by family and loved ones. 

“Since coming into my life many of you have met Nazanin on her many visits to Nova Scotia. She is the most important person in my life and over the coming months, Nazanin and I look forward to spending more time at home in Central Nova and sharing our happiness with all of you,” the minister wrote. “Nazanin and I would like to wish everyone a very Happy New Year and all the best for 2012.” 

Yalda Night

Samira sent me a little note about Yalda Night, and gave me permission to post it here:

Tonight Iranians celebrate Yalda night which is the longest night. From this night forward nights get shorter and shorter.

As an old tradition people gather together and stay up at night chatting and laughing. Kids are allowed to spend the night with adults and not to go bed early. It's a lot of fun, really. Oh, and there is a lot of eating and drinking. One of the things we usually eat is watermelon. It's cold but we don't want to limit our food even when it's cold. So we eat fruits and nuts and sweets to start the winter with good health and happiness. Yeah, Winter is at the door and we want to give him a warm welcome.

Yalda means birth of sun or birth of light since from this night on, days get longer.

Very interesting, Samira! In North America we certainly talk about the winter solstice, but it's not very important.  All the attention is on Christmas, three or four days later.

Convocation at Capilano University

Last Monday I went to Convocation at my old school. "Convocation" comes from Latin words meaning "call together," and we often use it when the school comes together as students graduate from their programs.

I was invited to attend because one of my old friends and colleagues, Azza Sedky, had nominated me to be a "professor emeritus." It's an honour for retired faculty. So I went to the campus, put on an academic gown, and sat on the stage of our university theatre while students received their diplomas and degrees.

It was more fun than I expected it to me, and I enjoyed seeing students from so many different backgrounds: Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, Indians, and lots of Iranians!

I also liked seeing my former colleagues. Before the ceremony, one colleague took a photo of me and Azza. Here it is:

 

Voiced g or unvoiced g?

Lola just sent me an interesting question:

When you say words like ringer, singer, do you pronounce the g sound slightly? I think I hear that from native speakers, but the dictionaries do not list it at all. What do you think?

These are examples of "unvoiced" consonants. When we voice a consonant, we make our vocal chords vibrate as we pronounce it. Compare "singer" and "angle." 

Many people who live near New York City have a distinctive "Noo Yawk" accent. In this accent, the unvoiced g is often voiced. Most Americans say "Long Island" (unvoiced g); New Yorkers, many of whom live on Long Island, pronounce it "Lawn Guyland." 

Does anyone have more pronunciation questions?

My very wet community

It rained very, very hard this morning. Even the dogs didn't want to go out. Then the rain ended about noon and the sun came out; it was a very lovely afternoon.

CBC Television News ran a story about how wet it is here in Deep Cove, at the eastern end of North Vancouver. I hope the link works for you, so you can see the neighbourhood I live in. It's changed a lot since we first arrived in 1967. Let me know if you have trouble understanding the people speaking in the news story.

Travels in Canada

Here are some photo albums that I've made from the trips my wife and I have made around British Columbia and the rest of Canada. I think I've posted some of them before, but I hope you'll enjoy them. Please let me know if you have questions or comments.

Chilcotin 2004: We took these photos on a trip to the central interior of British Columbia and then down the coast to Vancouver Island.

Sointula 2006: This little town on Malcolm Island is one of our favourite places.

Sointula 2008: This includes some trips to northern Vancouver Island. We still go back to Sointula every June. It's usually grey and rainy, but we still love it!

Haida Gwaii: In September 2008 we flew to these amazing islands off the northern coast. 

Yukon 2009: This was an exciting trip into northern Canada, and we loved it.

Newfoundland 2010: This huge island in the North Atlantic did not feel like Canada...but we enjoyed it very much.

In September 2011 we flew to Nova Scotia, also on the Atlantic, and spent ten days there. I still haven't created a photo album from our trip there, but I'll try to do so sometime soon.

Rachel's English

Lola, a friend in Brazil, has just told me about a great website: Rachel's English | Free online American English pronunciation videos. I hope you can link to it. She speaks very clearly, and you can read the text she is speaking. Let me know what you think about the site.

My textbook

Thanks for your comment, Fatemeh! You asked for my textbook, so I'm uploading a copy here as a PDF so anyone else can download it too. It's almost 300 pages long.

The book is for Canadian students, and the focus is mostly on business writing. But it also has a lot of material on English basics, with some exercises. The answers to the exercises are in the back of the book. Please feel free to pass the book along to anyone else who might find it useful.

Download WorkplaceWriting2007

Election day

Today was municipal election day in British Columbia. All the cities and towns are holding elections for local officers: mayors, councillors, and school boards. Some cities also elect park boards. The mayor is the senior administrator of the town, and is the chairperson of the council. The school board officers are called trustees; they look after policy and spending for the local schools. (I was a school trustee for two years, in 1981-82.)

Not many people vote in these elections; everyone complains about low voter turnout, with maybe only 35 percent of voters casting a ballot. But when I went to vote late this morning, the room was crowded with people waiting to vote. Then I came home and posted a little article on The Tyee's political blog, The Hook, with links to people and organizations using Twitter to encourage people to vote.

Voting will end at 8:00 pm, three hours from now (about 7:30 Sunday morning in Iran). Then we will start getting the election results on radio, TV, and the web.

Did you understand all the terms I used in this post, like "casting a ballot" and "voter turnout"? If not, just ask me to explain them. 

More on winter

The mountains north of Vancouver were covered with snow this morning--very beautiful! This afternoon I drove across the city to the University of British Columbia to pick up some things from their library. UBC is on the western tip of the city, and it received much more snow than we did here in North Vancouver.

But the day was not very cold. The sky was partly cloudy, and as I drove back home I could see sunlight falling on the snow-covered mountains. On the radio, people talked about the early start of the ski season--three of our mountains are "ski hills," where people can go skiing and snowboarding both day and night. (At night you can see the lights on the mountains.)

We have several winter sports: downhill skiing is the most popular. Cross-country skiing is very different: You move across the snow without going up or down very much. Snowboarding is popular too. Some people like to use snowshoes. I've only used them once. It was fun, but a lot of work! 

I mentioned toboggans yesterday. Some people also like to slide downhill while sitting in big inner tubes from truck tires. This is called "tubing."

Here is a link to Mount Seymour. It's not open yet, but it will be soon. You can read about snowshoeing, tubing, and other sports. My daughter used to work up there. She was the chief radio operator, talking with the ski patrol who made sure everyone was safe. And she also led snowshoe hikes for visitors. My wife used to take her ESL students snowshoeing with our daughter.