This looks very familiar to me - has it been posted before?

Whether it has or not, it was an interesting read.

catalyst2 | March 13, 19:31 CET

Aww, that's cool. I love the vocab list at the end... "to be hokey", hehe.

fortunateizzi | March 13, 20:18 CET

'That' was an 'interesting' "article," giving a greater 'insight' into the "minds" of "newscasters" ie. 'journalists'. I 'feel' compelled to "put" 'air quotes' around "everything" from 'now' on.

DejaThoris | March 13, 20:25 CET

Our plans for Whedonish domination of the world continue apace. Muhahaha !

Next up, 'Peter and Jane and The Operative'

'Look Peter there is Pat the dog'
'Silly Jane, that is not Pat since Pat does not have a sword sticking out of his side. That is some other dog'
'Come here children. See how Pat helped to make a better world ? Would you like to make a better world too ?'

Key Words and Phrases: totalitarianism, honour, sword, means-ends justification


I now have visions of thousands of non-English speaking people expecting 'blockbuster' to equal 'very good'. Cue lots of very disappointed foreigners and dark times ahead for Hollywood.

Also, though I can see the point of using interviews in this way and think it's a great idea, Joss and his works are usually pretty keen on the subversion of English language norms (part of what makes them both such great fun) so i'm not sure they're ideal learning materials.

Saje | March 13, 20:26 CET

The title "Learn to Speak English" isn't some joke here. It's literally something designed to help people learn english. It's not a news piece. All the quoted words (this is a transcript of an audio show anyway) were emphasized as vocabulary for this lesson.

KernelM | March 14, 01:01 CET

Also, though I can see the point of using interviews in this way and think it's a great idea, Joss and his works are usually pretty keen on the subversion of English language norms (part of what makes them both such great fun) so i'm not sure they're ideal learning materials.

Good point, and (changing the topic) it makes me wonder how well the foreign-language subtitles on the Jossverse DVDs manage to cope with the language and humour.

Unfortunately, I don't speak any foreign langauge well enough to fully appreciate humour in it. My least bad foreign language is Russian, and I recently found a web site (http://sub-ba.narod.ru/) with Russian subtitles for Buffy and Angel. I don't think the DVDs were ever released with Russian subtitles, but fans have created their own subtitle files, and (if I understood correctly) they use a special viewer program which overlays these on the picture. Anyway, just for fun I read one of these files (the one for "Doppelgangland") alongside an English transcript, and as far as I could tell it seemed to be very well done, though I feel sure some of the humour has been lost. Also, reading the transcript made me realise how much of the humour is in the way the lines are spoken--intonation etc--and a lot of this is probably lost if you're concentrating on the subtitles. I feel blessed that Buffy was made in my native language (...well, in so far as US and British English are the same language).

tichtich | March 14, 14:35 CET

Next time on BBC Learning English, we'll hear Joss Whedon say things like, "cringeworthy," "shiny," "I think I'm a little gay," and "albatross." Until next time!

ZachsMind | March 15, 00:33 CET