chill english

what do we think, chat? at this price we’ll handle SAD ourselves or comes November and we’ll be desperate enough to cough up 35k? 🤔

Why do Americans say car while many Brits say "cah"?

According to Why We Talk Funny, a book by Valerie Fridland, Londoners started dropping R after vowels as early as the 1500s. We can actually see traces of it in old spellings: first occasionally appeared as fust, parcel as passel.

At first, IRONICALLY ENOUGH, R-dropping was considered low-class. Educated upper-class speakers were actually taught to pronounce their Rs more strongly 🔪🔪🔪

However, as industrialization blurred class boundaries, more R-dropping speakers moved up the social ladder. Soo... eventually the pronunciation went from "vulgar" to prestigious 💀

Meanwhile, English colonists had sailed to America in the 1600s, when the R was still pronounced, so most Americans ✨simply kept their Rs✨

Why We Talk Funny is the book about accents we're discussing this week at Chill Hour!

#chilletymology

Overwhelmed? Overworked? Over it?

There’re more specific ways to express the feeling!

🤎up to my ears (in work)
= have an enormous amount of work to do

Wow, you just don’t imagine being THIS up to your ears in work until you’re there

🤎be snowed under (with studies/work)
= be so overloaded with work that it’s difficult to cope

Girl, I’d love to see you this week, but I’m completely snowed under with assignments 😣

🤎be stretched thin
= have so many demands on your time and energy that you can’t give enough attention to everything

Let’s take a look at my schedule, hmm 🤔 So first I work, after that — aha — work, and then I work some more. No wonder I’m feeling stretched thin…

🤎keep my head above water
= manage to cope with a difficult situation, but only just

This September is not about thriving, it’s about keeping my head above water — and I’m ok with it

🤎hit the ground running
= start something and immediately work with lots of energy and intensity

Sometimes you have like twelve seconds to adjust before you hit the ground running 😘

🤎rise to the challenge
= respond successfully to a difficult situation and prove capable of handling it

The workload might look scary now but give me another week and I’ll rise to the challenge out of pure spite 😈

What stage of grief September are you at?

#chillvocab

You know I’ve crossed over to the dark side and now use an e-reader… But look at THIS.

I’ve been hunting for this edition for two falls now, I am so happy to finally hold it in my hands!!!

I have other things to read atm, but in a week or two I’M IN.

What are you up to, reading-wise?

#chillread

I’ve finally cracked the mystery of lb/lbs (abbreviation for pound) 🤨

Surprisingly enough, it comes from the Latin LIBRA (a balance / a pair of scales), as in constellation ♎️ (cause it resembles scales ⚖️)

In Ancient Rome there was a unit of measurement called the “libra pondo”, roughly a pound of weight. And while the English word “pound” came from “pondo”, the abbreviation came from libra!!

£ — I mean, look at this, an L with a line through it! LIBRA.

What’s more, this is why Italian currency used to be called the lira!
And if you are thinking about Turkish lira now… Yes 😈

#chilletymology

sorry for this posting drought guys, I am surprised by how overwhelmed I am by the start of classes…. guess I’m not getting younger 💀

I do have lots of cool things to share, I’ll come back to regular posting tomorrow 🫡

personally, I clocked it when Gracie Abrams released “Men Like You”:
GIRL I know men like you

#chilltok

It's always satisfying when something you know intuitively is backed up by research... 💅

In "How work makes families more equal" The Economist takes a look into how much bargaining power women with and without jobs wield in their marriage/family.

What makes the article especially interesting is that much of the evidence comes from societies with varying degrees of conservatism!

Hope you enjoy it — and I'd love to hear your thoughts!

#chillread #chillielts

It’s a good day to love knitting AND folklore! 🧶🔮

The word clue was originally a variant spelling of clew, meaning “a ball of thread or yarn.”

Our modern meaning of clue, something that helps you solve a mystery, comes from a very familiar mythological motif: 🌟 the ball of thread that helps you find your way out of a maze 🌟
Like Ariadne giving Theseus a thread so he could find his way back out of the Labyrinth after killing the Minotaur!

So a clue went from being the actual thread that leads you out of a maze to anything that helps lead you towards an answer.

And here's my fall knitting project, now that I have an excuse to share 🥰

#chilletymology

this is so real and yet I keep forgetting about it 🫠

even sentences are out to confuse us 🪑
constant vigilance!

#chilltok

I agree with every word of his!
Very few of us can reliably feel motivated before we start doing something.

Ofc there’re times when getting started feels a little easier, like New Year’s, the beginning of a new academic year, a Monday full of promise…

But most of us mere mortals often get motivated only after we’ve taken action.

So start today, start this academic year, start on Monday — but START. Do something! Get yourself a chance!
Motivation will catch up with you later.

Little phrases that do a lot of heavy lifting in conversational English, part 2!

Steal away 🐱

💡 I’ve got just the thing! = I have exactly what you need / I know something that would be perfect for this.
- I need something to stop me checking my ex’s Instagram.
- I’ve got just the thing: SELF-RESPECT.

🤩 Hold that thought = don’t forget what you were about to say, I need to interrupt you for a second, but we’ll come back to it.
- And then he told me he’d been—
- Hold that thought. The cat is suspiciously quiet...

🐱 You don’t have to ask me twice! = I’m VERY willing to do that / yes, absolutely.
- Do you want to cancel our plans and stay at home?
- You don’t have to ask me twice!

👻 Search me! = I have absolutely no idea / don’t ask me.
- Why do people who claim to hate Taylor Swift bring her up under every unrelated post?
- Search me.

🐱 Here goes nothing! = said just before you try something when you’re not very confident it’ll work.
I’ve never cut my own bangs before, but here goes nothing (famous last words 😔).

Part 3 soon??

#chillvocab

Be honest, I won’t judge. Do you dog-ear your books?

You know, when you fold down the corner of a page because there’s no actual bookmark at hand?

Well, fun fact: the etymology of the expression is as straightforward as one could hope: the folded corner resembles a dog’s floppy ear!

But the cool thing is that the expression is hella OLD. The term was already being used for folded book pages in the early 17th century. In a 1627 play, one character is even sentenced to spend a year smoothing out the “dogs eares” in his classmates’ books 💀

So historically speaking, if you dog-ear pages, you are part of a centuries-old tradition 😏

🐶 a dog-ear — a folded-down corner of a page
📖 to dog-ear a page — to fold its corner over
📚 a dog-eared book — a well-used book with bent or worn page corners

#chilletymology

what did I just read

This academic year I'm taking my reading very seriously — but not just what I’m gonna read, but how I’m gonna read it 😏

So let me present you with two cool books I'm currently reading which will help you take your reading up a notch:

🍂 Thomas C. Foster, How to Read Literature Like a Professor
🍎 Terry Eagleton, How to Read Literature

Both are very accessible and aim to deepen and enrich your reading experience, teaching you what to pay attention to and how to get more our of a book than "well, I liked it"!

#chillread