EnglishisEasy/Elinglésesfácil

One of the most traditional Ecuadorian dishes, perhaps the most traditional, does not have a translation in English. Commemorating the events of Good Friday with a special dish is a tradition here but not in most Anglo Saxon countries.  Fanesca is a very thick soup only served during lunch in Holy Week, the week before Easter, more specifically on Good Friday and its preparation and ingredients are full of symbolisms. It was created out of the religious prohibition of consuming red meat during Holy Week, a tradition that began in the times before the Republic. The main ingredient then is a type of fish: Salt Cod (Bacalao) plus exactly twelve different grains (apparently each grain represents one of the twelve apostles). There is also zapallo which is in aspect and taste similar to pumpkin though not exactly the same. All of that has to be cooked in milk and after a long preparation it can be served, also garnished with hard boiled eggs, or plantain, or even  empanadas....

I'm not a fan of Jack Black´s movies. There are better things to do in life than sitting down and watch one of his movies, but a couple of them are not so bad.  In 2001 there was this movie called Shallow Hal about an extremealy superficial person, Hal (Jack Black) and his friend Mauricio (Jason Alexander)  who spend their free time hitting on only pretty girls. One day Hal is hypnotized so he can see people's inner beauty (or ugliness). It is under this spell that he meets a very large girl called Rosemary (Gwyneth Paltrow). Hal sees her as a slim sexy girl because Rosemary is kind and generous by nature. They fall in love with each other but their romance will face serious jeopardy when Mauricio finds a way to undo Hal's spell and brings him back to his senses.  It is a comedy and it doesn't really go beyond that though it is true that it makes you laugh and that it delivers a timeless message: there is an inner beauty in each person and that is what counts. T...

This is a nice family movie. It's not great but for those who want to see a film with no violence or sex, well... this is it. It is a 2012 Walt Disney production starred by Jennifer Garner (Cindy Green) and Joel Edgerton (Jim Green). In the movie they are a couple who has tried everything to have a child of their own and every attempt has been fruitless. who live in Stanleyville where they lead petty routinary lives. They do so much want to have a child that they write everything they wish for a  child in some papers and put them inside a box which in turn they bury in their front yard. Some time later their wish is magically (no explanation given) granted and a boy (Cameron Adams), a pre-teen, appears inside their house covered by mud. As they wash him they discover the boy is not entirely normal for he has a few leaves growing from his legs which cannot be cut off. The boy says his name is Timothy and calls Cindy his Mom, and Jim, his Dad. The boy is a unique and wonderful ...

Teacher Talking Time, or TTT, is considered a valuable tool in a Language class if used correctly, and in this case correctly means moderately.  It is of course necessary that a teacher talks to his or her students in order to elicit interest for what is to be taught, to explain, to clarify when students are in doubt, to keep the interest high, but if TTT is abused then our students' interest fades easily and quickly, and I know because it has happened to me more often than not. I have no problem in confessing that I am more the "lecturer" type of teacher, but I also have no problem in recognizing that new times require different approaches. It is a must to have our students practice as much as they can, only that practice should not be executed blindly. The teacher must always play a key role in identifying what best suits the interests and goals of his or her class. What can a teacher do? The answer should be obvious, but here it is again: let's have the stu...

Whoever said  musicals are boring has not seen Les Misérables yet. This is a film that intended to be many things: a musical like no other, a metaphor about the human condition, a portrayal of the French society of that time, and also another translation of a literary masterpiece into a motion picture.  Was it successful? I would say yes, it definitely was. To see Hugh Jackman in a "serious" role is nothing new but to see him and listening to him singing is another thing entirely. Jackman plays the role of some Jean Valjean, a man who was convicted for stealing a piece of bread because he wanted to feed his nephew. After years in prison he is released but finds it is extremely hard to readjust to the ways of the world until the day he steals from a generous priest who previously agreed to shelter him. When the Police comes with Valjean, a prisoner again, the priest denies any accusation and demands Valjean to be set free. From that moment on Valjean decides to change...

"When in Ecuador, I use Mjolnir to crush and then eat mighty crabs!" Why is Thor important to the English language? He is really important because it is with his name that they made up one of the days of the week and that is none other than Thursday which literally means Thor's Day (el Día de Thor). Thor is not an invention of Marvel, the company that publishes Spiderman and also The X-Men. What they did is to take a figure of Norse mythology and made it more accessible to the minds of the audiences of the present time.  In Norse mythology, Thor is indeed a god, the God of Thunder, a deity that the Vikings held in great esteem. When the Vikings invaded the North of Europe they also spread their culture and their beliefs and a reflection of that event is the names of some days in English. Thursday is Jueves in Spanish and thus here is another difference between English and Spanish since Jueves literally means the Day of  Jove (one of the many names the Greek god ...

Charlton Heston (1923-2008) was one of those legendary actors that will never be forgotten not only for the extensive and remarkable list of films he starred in his time but also for some of those movies are timeless classics. To be more specific two of those classics would be enough to assure him forever a place in the history of world filmography, and they are   The Ten Commandments (1956) and Ben - Hur (1959). And what is what makes them "timeless classics"? Perhaps it is the fact that both are centered in the Jewish-Christian tradition with the Ten Commandments being a Hollywood interpretation of the events told in the Exodus book while in  Ben Hur,  that is based on a novel of the same title, even Jesus Christ is included in the story . It is this connection that keeps these two films fresh in the viewers´minds since those are part of the selected films that TV networks air when it is  Holy Week (at least in Ecuador they do so). Both films have re...

This is perhaps the only celebration that both Jews and Christians share, to a certain extent, meaning that both religious groups hold this day as a holiday but for different reasons. In the Jewish tradition, Passover is an extensive commemoration (it lasts seven or eight days) of the liberation of the Children of Israel from the Egyptian tyranny. This liberation is credited to the divine intervention: God sent ten plagues to the Egyptians to make them see it was His will that the Jews could become a free nation. The whole story is told in the Exodus book which reveals how a young Moses becomes the leader of Israel and acts as the Messenger of God calling upon Egypt each of the plagues with the Tenth plague being the most lethal: the Angel of Death is sent to Egypt to kill the firstborn of every family, save for those who mark their houses with the blood of a lamb.  The Angel pass ed  over (hence the name) and did as he had been ordered; and thus, the Pharaoh was force...

Believe it or not it is AT as in the preposition at .  It is difficult for Spanish speakers to understand why this symbol was chosen for such an important role is electronic messaging since for us @ is only ARROBA. An ARROBA in Spanish is how we call a measure of weight of around 11.5 kilograms which, at least in Ecuador, is not commonly used. Can you imagine how awkward is to say this in Spanish: lbermudez@copol.edu.ec, that is elebermudez arroba puntoedupuntoec? It makes sense when you learn that the @ symbol means  at and that at means EN. So if I say lbermudes@hotmail.com what I´m actually saying is lbermudes en hotmail.com. It does make sense. Now, I wonder if there is a way to say ARROBA (the measure of weight) in English. 

ROCK, as we know it, is primarily a music style that was born in the mid-twenty century. Its impact has derived in the creation of other types of rock such as heavy metal, punk, pop rock and several others. It is popular everywhere so it has become part of the identity of cultures other than the Anglo-Saxon and thus we have Rock in Spanish, in Portuguese, in German and practically in every major language in the world. But that is ROCK as a noun. The same word also exists as a verb and it has an entirely different meaning. Here is an example: In order to make her baby sleep, Jill sings a lullaby and rocks the cradle with her hands. ROCK, a regular verb, is put into Spanish as MECER as long as it is a verb. It is also an adjective if added the –ing form, e.g. a rocking chair (una silla mecedora).  Of course, there is another meaning for the word Rock as a verb: To Rock also means To be The Best. Curiously with meaning ROCK is rarely used in any other tense but the simple...

The problem here is that LAWNMOWER MAN is what we know in Spanish as JARDINERO, and the word GARDENER is also JARDINERO. What’s the difference? When we mean the person who only mows the lawn (that is to prevent the grass from growing too high) and of course uses the machine commonly known as Lawnmower we are talking about a LAWNMOWER MAN. If that person is in charge of embellishing a yard or any other open place by positioning plants and flowers in a way it looks beautiful we call that person a GARDENER. Lawnmowers usually work in large areas that are required for specific events such as sports tournaments as in a soccer field or a tennis court, so all they do is cut grass and eliminate dry leaves from plants and trees. Gardeners have to show a special talent, what we call “good taste”, in order to fulfill their contracts. Though it looks like an easy job it requires patience, dedication and talent so as to arrange flowers and plants in a way it looks aesthetically attractive...

This one has some considerations to be made. Really the word ÑAÑO is not widely used in Latin America, only in the Andean countries since it is not even a Spanish word but from the Quechua language (with the exception of Colombia and Venezuela) and it does not have necessarily the same meaning from country to country.  In Ecuador it is used to refer to any of our siblings. Also it is used to indicate a young child to be careful with one who is younger than him or her. In the Ecuadorian coast in particular, it used to be used to address a good friend, but that usage has slowly been set aside in the last twenty years to be replaced by other terms. Ñaño would be BROTHER but it does not have the same significance. BROTHER is HERMANO but not really ÑAÑO, so perhaps the term BRO would be more appropriate. The two men in the picture are well known by the Ecuadorians. The one in the right is the president of Ecuador and the one in the left his older brother. They are supposed no...

Saint Patrick's Day is one of the very few Catholic-oriented celebrations included in the calendar of the American Union. Being based on a figure that represents the faith of a minority is popular in most of the States but not in all including those where other religious denominations have a much stronger prensence. In other words, if you want to experience what happens on this day and how it is celebrated  it is better to go to places where the population is mostly Irish descendants since the Irish immigrnats were the ones who brought that tradition to the American soil. One of those places is the cosmopolitan New York City. Saint Patrick is the patron saint of a country strongly identified with Catholicism, such as Ireland. He is believed to be the one who introduced Catholicism to a then pagan Ireland back in 432 A.D. It is to commerorate his death on a March 17 the reason why Saint Patrick´s Day is obseved on this date. Among the curious traditions practiced on Saint patr...

It's an Euphemism and nothing but (an Euphemism is a word used to substitute another word that could be offensive or plain silly, e.g. Slow instead of Stupid). An Action Figure is really a toy, but since toys are for kids it was decided to come with a term that could not be easily associated with kids and thus the term Action Figure was coined.  Still it is true there are certain differences between a standard toy and what is considered an action figure. First of all an Action Figure is usually a superhero, a comic character, a wrestler or someone popular at the moment.  It is usually made of solid materials (not rubber or stuff) but hardened plastic and even light metals such as tin.  An Action Figure has to look cool but not "nice".  Let's not forget they are purchased by young adults who are fans of some character and also by adults nostalgic of past times. Action Figures are not made to be played with. They are so well made that their owners usual...

This one is a bit complicate because the word is and is not Rain. The problem with the term Rain is that in English it is mostly used as an Uncountable noun though it is also countable. In Spanish this noun is both countable and uncountable, e.g. if we say "La Lluvia cae implacablemente..." that would be: "Rain falls relentlessly..." In this case the term is used as an uncountable noun. If we say "Habrá lluvias en el Este" an English speaker would say: "There will be rain in the East" but not "There will be rains" or maybe "There will be showers in the East."  The word Shower is perhaps closer in meaning to what we understand as Rain when used as an isolated event, that is una LLUVIA. A Downpour is usually more abundant and easily translates into AGUACERO.

The word is CARDS, more specifically PLAYING CARDS. The term CARD is used in many different contexts so we have Debit Cards, Credit Cards, Business Cards, Library Cards and so on. In Spanish a CARD is in all those cases una TARJETA. Apparently, the first playing cards appeared as early as in the ninth century in China. They were, of course, quite different from the designs we see today, which are by the way not universal. Through the centuries different versions of these cards have appeared and not always their purpose has been to entertain; in fact, Tarot cards are famous because they are used by fortune tellers to find the keys of a person's future, or fortune, by interpreting the "messages" contained in the endless number of combinations that can be made when a number of those cards are set on a table. For purposes of this article  I will refer to the playing cards more commonly used which is the French Deck of Cards (there is a German deck and also a Swiss dec...

It looks like Mission: Impossible though it is not. Tom Cruise cannot stop being the same cool guy he is as Ethan Hunt, and of course here he is acting all alone. Think of this movie as a hybrid which takes elements of Mission: Impossible, Sherlock Holmes and Rambo... quite loosely. It all begins with a sniper shooting five people from a building across a river in plain daylight. The Police arrives and due to the clues they find they figure opur the killer is some guy named Barr who is a sniper but not the sniper who shot those people (so the audience gets to know they have the wrong guy). In order to help, Barr demands Jack Reacher to be found. Jack Reacher is a character who cannot be found unless he wants to and that´s what he does. Befriended and helped by Helen Rodin (the very sexy Rosamund Pike), who just like Reacher suspects Barr is innocent, Jack will dig deeper and deeper just to be found that there is a lot more to the deaths of those five people than it meets the eye....

First, let's remember that there are two skills in the Writing section: the Integrated task which includes Listening, Reading and Writing components, and the Independent task in which you write only. The latter is the one we care about at the moment for it is also the only one who allows you to give your opinion. At the begining, you are given a topic and a series of instructions that can all be reduced to onen single question: "What is your opinion about the topic?" So, no matter what they say in the instruction, no matter what they say or how they say it, everything comes down to the question written above. You just have to answer they best way you can and that should be enough. Still, do not come to this exam unprepared. The best way to get ready is envisioning the whole process as going on a trip. Always before traveling you must make provisions: make your luggage, make reservations in a hotel, decide what places to visit in your destination. Same for this se...

An Antihero is a character that has all the potential to be a Hero but has so many flaws it does not really meet all the "requirements" to be considered a hero. Take Constantine (Keanu Reeves) for example who has knowledge of the Dark Arts which he uses to exorcise demons and other such beings, from this plane of reality. He actually helps innocent people but really he does not give a damn. He mostly cares about himself  though relatively because he smokes all the time to the point that his health is seriously threatened by this habit of his. To make matters worse he has no friends on Earth,  or Heaven and the Devil himself hates him so much he is waiting Constantine's death to retrieve his soul personally. When the movie begins Constantine is already an expert in what he does (one of the flaws of this film since we do not get much info about his origins) and we see him performing an exorcism of sorts. Later on he is contacted by detective Angela Dodson who is inv...

Does a Mockingbird really mock? Not really, but the way it sings is quite beautiful. Anyway the purpose of this article is not to talk about mockingbirds but how the names of certain birds are formed using precisely the term BIRD.  Here are some of them: Spanish-English Azulejo-Bluebird Boyero-Cowbird Bucos-Puffbirds Campanero-Bellbird Mirlo-Blackbird Hormiguero-Antbird Maullador-Catbird Oropendola-Figbird Suimanga-Sunbird Tirano-Kingbird Colibrí-Hummingbird Sinsonte-Mockingbird (though in the novel with that title "To Kill a Mockingbird" the translation is "Matar a un Ruiseñor" probably it has "a better sound") Really, Ruiseñor is Nightingale. There are others, but some of them do not even have an equivalent in Spanish.

The King of Pop was perhaps a victim of Manslaughter which is the legal term for murder that happened unintentionally.  Let´s analyze the following example: as you do every day you drive your car to work, you stop at a red light and then all of a sudden another driver loses control of his car and collides against yours pushing it to the sidewalk where there is an innocent bystander who gets killed instantly when your car presses his body violently against a tree. Are you guilty of that death? Well, not really though still it receives punishment, and  the penalty varies according to the degree of responsibility. It is considered a crime different from murder due to the absence of malice.  It is likely that Michael Jackson´s doctor had a great degree of responsibility in Jackson´s death but still it cannot be considered murder. Still his doctor was very extremely negligent and deserves to be punished but under the legal figure of MANSLAUGHTER which is how we say...

Perhaps one of those underrated movies of 2012, Hitchcock is interesting from the beginning to the end without resorting to any of those overdone Hollywood gimmimcks that become redundant in the long run. This is not really a movie about Hitchcock, it is a movie about one specific period in Hitchcock's life when against all odds, Hitchcock (played by Anthony Hopkins) shot that classic that set the standards for all the other suspense  movies that would be made from then on. It is an interesting and ambititous film since it attempts, most of the time successfully, to offer a picture of who Hitchcock was in his personal life and at work: a genius mostly misunderstood, excentric, obssessed, a compulsive eater, in sum a being full of little flaws but also with a great talent and vision. There is also his, at times, strained relation with Alma, his wife (played by Helen Mirren) who    was at the time feeling abandoned by her husband. We can also witness the selection p...

This is a movie for late teens really since itthe classic love story with supernatural elements that has become so popular these days. True, there are no vampires here but there are witches and wizards though in this story the term Casters is used. Ethan Wate (Alden Ehrenreich) lives in Gatlin, a small town full of superstitious, narrow-minded people where nothing interesting ever happens until the day Lena Duchannes (Alice Englert) arrives and the entire school and town show rejection toward Lena just because she is the only known relative of the old and reclusive Macon Ravenwood (Jeremy Irons), but Ethan is different from the other villagers and falls in love with Lena who corresponds him. What Ethan does not know is that Lena is indeed a witch and that hse has returned to Gatlin for a reason: she has the power to lead all Casters to the conquest of all Earth. That and many other secrets are intertwined with Ethan and Lena's newfound love including Lena´s mother´s secret id...

If you have not seen this movie yet then once you finish reading this article or right now, if you please, you should go and see it. Called "An unofficial prequel to the 1939 film (The Wizard of Oz)", it really looks more like an origin story since we learn about the origin of Oz himself and other characters.  Oscar Diggs (James Franco) is a hard-luck illusionist with so many flaws in his personality that he could easily have been an antihero and not a hero. Chased by one of his enemies, oscar gets on a balloon  and getsaccidentally trapped inside a tornado that magically transports him to the Kingdom of Oz. There he is received by one witch named Theodora (Mila Kunis)  who tells him that there is a prophecy that announces the coming of a powerful wizard that will freed the Emerald City from the evil clutches of Evanora (Rachel Weisz) who is the Wicked Witch of the East. Theodora though has a secret and is that she is Evanora's sister though they are different but...

Well, it is useful if you are to invite other people to a special occasion (with emphasis in special). R.S.V.P. is an acronym (also called Initialism) and as such it represents a group of words, but curiously none of them is English. In fact, all of them are taken from the French language and they are:  Répondez s'il vous plaît They mean: "Please, respond", to the invitation of course, meaning that confirmation of your presence in the event is expected. The reason why French words are used come from long ago, from a time when French and not yet English, was the language that most educated people wanted to learn.  As we can see, times and preferences, change easily, but still some of that reaches us after so long.

If someone asks a native English speaker "What's your name?"  he or she may answer using his or her first name only or using his or her first name in combination with his or her last name, e.g. "Helen" or "Helen Watson".  If a Latin American is asked the same question: "¿Cuál es su nombre?" He or she will answer only with his or her first name  and only one out of ten times using both names. "Elena" will be her answer (if it's a woman of course) Why is this so? The answer is in the terms we use to refer to the words we call names. It is just not the same thing as it can be seen below: Spanish - English Nombre - First Name (also called Given Name) Segundo Nombre - Middle Name Apellido - Last Name (also called Family Name) In other words, if you want a Latin American to tell you both his or her first and last names you will have to ask something like this: "¿Me puede decir su nombre y apellido, por fav...

An embedded question is one that is asked indirectly or said indirectly.  An embedded question is usually within another question or a statement. If it is within a question the objective is usually to be polite, e.g. Can you tell me what time it is? The "original" question is of course: What time is it? An embedded question sounds definitely more corteous. Also condider that the order of the "original" question when it is part of an embedded question. Do you know where the City Hall is ?     (Correct) Do you know where is the City Hall ?     (Incorrect) These are questions within questions, but there also questions within statements: I need to know where I can find a good hotel. The "original" questions is: Where can I find a good hotel? There is no real purpose in using a question within a statement other than perhaps reinforce the meaning of the question.

Jennifer lawrence, who was already famous for being the star of The Hunger Games, shows in this movie how wonderful an actress she can be if given the chance. No wonder she was awarded the Oscar for best leading actress because she does a pretty good job and the film improves alot when her character appeard Now there is also Bradley Cooper who should have been awarded with something but was not. When you the movie you will find his performance is outstanding , only not as good as that of Lawrence's. Or perhaps the Academy members are in love with this young actress and arer ready to forget everything, even her natural clumsiness. Pat (Bradley Cooper) is amn with abipolar disorder which constantly gets him into trouble. He was sent into psychiatric hospital after beating up man in his house who was having sex with his wife. After being released he is sent to his parents´house with restraining orders that forbid him to get close to a certain number of people from his last job...

An independent movie is quite often an invitation to see a new view of the world or an aspect of the world. Let's take for example The inhabitants of The Bathtub, a community somehow separated from the rest of the Union and that most probably would be located somewhere in Louisiana. This forgotten place is inundated by poverty and its dwellers do not have a future, they just live life one day at a time. Hushpuppy is a five-year-old girl who lives in a place not too far from her father's. Her father is the most faithful representative of The Bathtub: unemployed, and a hot-tempered drunk man called Wink whose wife, Hushpuppy's mother, left long ago.  It is Hush Puppy's voice who leads the viewer through the movie, who describes the mythical Aurochs that her teacher told existed in the Artic frozen but who are coming back because of Global Warming and who witnesses how a storm comes and ends up the ideal life of the community. The survivors try to return things to what...

A Driveway as you can see in the picture that accompanies this post is that short path meant to serve as a connection between the adjacent street and the garage where a person keeps his or her car.  What is the purpose of bringing this up? Well, the idea is to prove that, as stated before in previous pages of this blog there are words in English that do not exist in Spanish. We would say: "El espacio entre la calle y la entrada al garage" just because we do not have that term. Since a driveway is in a manner of speaking an entrance  we could also say that is La Entrada para el Carro. Not quite the same. We need one word, not two or three, but there isn´t any really. Are there words in Spanish that English does not have? Certainly, there are, but that will be published in another post.

An Acronym is not a word and is not even a made up word. It is not abbreviation either as for example Mr. (Mister) or Am. (American) but we could say it is a form of abbreviation. In order to form an acronym you first need a phrase that needs to be reduced to make things easier in the context where all these things are happening. Let's say you just don't want to write something like as soon as possible because you find the expression a little bit too long for your tastes so you decide to make an acronym out of it (it´s been done already). For that you must take the initial letter of every word in that phrase and thus you have your acronym: ASAP ( A s S oon A s P ossible).  Here are some other acronyms: AIDS (Acquired Immune Defficiency Ssyndrome) BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) BTW (By The Way) CEO (Chief Executive Officer) CPU (Central Processing Unit) FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) LOL (Laughing Out Loud) PIN (Pers...

Are you? If you feel you are not then pay attention to yourself because most likely you are not. And with that said let us respond to the title of this entry: the most important skill in the TOEFL ibt is hands down, Reading. Why is that? Well, because it is the only one that you will use in each section of the exam. Besides the Reading section itself, which is by the way the first, there is Reading in the Listening section in the form of multiple questions which appear in the screen  right the listening is up.  There are passages included in the Speaking section, questions three and four, and last bit not least the Writing has two sections and the first is a Integrate. xkill.                                                                                      ...