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It’s raining cats and dogs

We got a question about the idiom It’s raining cats and dogs (‘to rain very heavily’). This and other obscure idioms often attract obscure attempts at explanation. One suggestion that has been proposed involves the idea that heavy rainfall in Early Modern Britain washed cats and dogs off the roofs (where they presumably had been residing). Another suggestion is that major floods would carry away dead cats and dogs into rivers (and speakers concluded that the poor animals had fallen from the sky).

Cats and dogs by Petteri Sulonen

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These suggestions are speculative at best, however, and instead we will have to conclude that the origin is unclear. In order to find out the etymologies of words and phrases we have to look at the first attestations, and the first attestation of a form of this idiom in the Oxford English Dictionary in fact contains dogs and polecats:

(1) It shall raine Dogs and Polecats. (OED; 1653)

It therefore seems unlikely that the origin is connected with either of the suggested etymologies.

The next attestation in the OED uses the order dogs and cats, which shows that there has been a shift in preference in the word order:

(2) Here we have Houses over our heads, so that if it should rain Dogs and Cats we could have no harm. (OED; 1661)

Finally, it should be noted that this idiom is, like most of the really fun and imaginative ones, quite rare. In the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) we find roughly one instance per ten million words. The most recent example from COHA contains the now usual form of the idiom:

(3) It’s raining cats and dogs. (COHA; 2004)

در باره مطالب این وبلاگ

بسیاری از دوستان از برخی مطالب ، ترجمه ها و دیدگاههای ارائه شده در این  وبلاگ به علت نادرستی و یا ناپختگی  گله مند و ناخرسند شده اند . 

  لازم به یادآوری است که مطالب این وبلاگ صرفا بیانگر نظرات نویسنده نیست .

هدف معرفی دیدگاههای مختلف (درست و غلط )  و نقد وبررسی توسط خوانندگان محترم و کارشناسان عزیز زبان انگلیسی است . 

از آن دست عزیزان همیشه گله مند نیز تقاضای یاری و همفکری دارم نه تخریب و ...........

What is Google Translate در باره مترجم گوگل و امکانات آن

Google Translate is a free translation service that provides instant translations between 64 different languages. It can translate words, sentences and web pages between any combination of our supported languages. With Google Translate, we hope to make information universally accessible and useful, regardless of the language in which it’s written.

How does it work

When Google Translate generates a translation, it looks for patterns in hundreds of millions of documents to help decide on the best translation for you. By detecting patterns in documents that have already been translated by human translators, Google Translate can make intelligent guesses as to what an appropriate translation should be. This process of seeking patterns in large amounts of text is called "statistical machine translation". Since the translations are generated by machines, not all translation will be perfect. The more human-translated documents that Google Translate can analyse in a specific language, the better the translation quality will be. This is why translation accuracy will sometimes vary across languages.

What languages does Google Translate support

Google Translate currently supports 64 languages:

• Afrikaans
• Albanian
• Arabic
• Belarusian
• Bulgarian
• Catalan
• Chinese (simplified)
• Chinese (traditional)
• Croatian
• Czech
• Danish
• Dutch
• English
• Estonian
• Esperanto
• Filipino
• Finnish
• French
• Galician
• German
• Greek
• Hebrew
• Hindi
• Hungarian
• Icelandic
• Indonesian
• Irish
• Italian
• Japanese
• Korean
• Latvian
• Lithuanian
• Macedonian
• Malay
• Maltese
• Norwegian
• Persian
• Polish
• Portuguese
• Romanian
• Russian
• Serbian
• Slovak
• Slovenian
• Spanish
• Swahili
• Swedish
• Thai
• Turkish
• Ukrainian
• Vietnamese
• Welsh
• Yiddish

Current alpha languages are:

• Armenian
• Azerbaijani
• Basque
• Georgian
• Gujarati
• Haitian Creole
• Kannada
• Latin
• Tamil
• Telugu
• Urdu

Google Translate tests other languages, called "alpha languages", that may have less-reliable translation quality than our supported languages. We are always working to support other languages and will introduce them as soon as the translation quality meets our standards.

What can I do to improve Translation quality

If you encounter a translation that doesn't seem right, quite often Google Translate will have alternative results available. To view these, simply click the phrase in question. When you click a better alternative translation, Google Translate will learn from your feedback and continue to improve over time.

You can also help improve translation quality by using Translator Toolkit for translating or by uploading your translation memories into Translator Toolkit.

Want to learn more

If you still have questions about Google Translate or would like to provide feedback, please take a look at theGoogle Translate discussion group.

You can read more about our most recent updates on the Google Translate Blog and about Google’s other research projects at the Google Research website.

To learn more about the science of machine translation, take a look at these resources:

• Machine Translation Archive
• Statistical Machine Translation

با ربات MIKE انگلیسی صحبت کنید

 

 

کلیک کنید

انگلیسی کاملا مقدماتی برای زبان آموزان ایرانی

برای مشاهده کلیک کنید :

Tips For Learning a Language

Learning any new language takes a lot of dedication, practice and time. But all of that pays off when you are able to express yourself in an exciting new way. Learning English has limitless advantages. Job markets increase, grades go up and new friends are made. You will benefit greatly from learning English simply because so many people speak the English language. New horizons and opportunities will expand before your eyes. Use the following tips to help you in your language learning process.

ادامه نوشته

مقاله ارائه شده در کنفرانس بین المللی مشهد

The Role of Edublogs in Next Generation Classes

[ Masoud Hashemi ] - Islamic Azad University , Toyserkan Branch , IRAN 

خلاصه مقاله:

The advent of the Internet and the wide spread of technology in our life create new opportunities for language learning and teaching. The teachers of English gain access to the and enjoy enormous variety of authentic materials relating to all spheres of life at almost no cost. In non-English speaking countries, such as Iran, where it is not always easy to obtain realia, the Web is the invaluable source of information, both for teachers to create motivating classroom materials and for their classes to explore the whole world just by clicking the mouse. Research in the area of computer-mediated communication (CMC) has shown that using technology can provide students with a sense of empowerment and development of communicative abilities..During the last few years ,the number of teachers using Computer-assisted Language Learning (CALL) has increased markedly and numerous articles have been written about the role of technology in education in the 21st century. Modern teachers can use blogs(weblogs) as an educational tool to archive class handouts, posting assignments, facilitating discussions, and organizing their course content. This is due to the nature and importance of blogs as an effective tool for conversation amongst students and teachers. Blogs are tools that allow conversations, course delivery and student assessment. The use of tools such as blogs for the delivery of the course materials and the course information by the teacher as a supplementary material along with active student participation for communication and the online assessments helps the educators in achieving the desired learning goals. So , blogs are considered very effective and attractive tools in the process of teaching and learning. This article tries to highlight the capabilities of edublogs, types of blogs, features of blog and benefits of edit blogs.

كلمات كليدي:

blogs, edublogs , modern educational systems

[ لينک اصلی به اين مقاله: http://www.civilica.com/Paper-SASTECH05-SASTECH05_161.html ]

زبان آموزی با وربلینگ Verbling

بهترین روش برای یادگیری یک زبان استفاده از آن زبان است. اما یکی از مهمترین موانع برای یادگیرندگان جدید نبود کسی است که با آن تمرین کنند. وربلینگ این مشکل را با ایجاد ارتباط تصویری با دیگر زبان آموزان حل کرده است.

Learn a language

Instantly connect with native speakers around the world

این سرویس به سادگی قابل استفاده است تنها شما باید زبان خود را انتخاب کرده، میکروفون را وصل کنید و به برنامه وب اجازه دسترسی به وب‌کم بدهید. در حال حاضر زبان آموزان اسپانیایی و انگلیسی می توانند ویدیو چت کنند اما فرانسه، عربی، چینی و آلمانی در میان زبان‌ها برای توسعه لیست شده اند.

فلش کارت‌ها و موضوعات گفتگو ( مثلا:زندگی شبانه در کشور شما چگونه است؟) زیر صفحه گفتگو برای کمک به شما در گفتگو آورده شده‌اند.  هر نشست ۵ دقیقه طول می کشد.

کیفیت ویدیو می تواند متفاوت باشد که به کاربر وابسته باشد. همچنین ممکن است مشکلاتی در فهم افراد از همدیگر یا طول مدت یادگیری آن زبان و شخصیت افراد و چیزهایی از این دست وجود داشته باشد. اما هنوز یک راه شسته و رفته برای برقراری ارتباط سریع با یک بیگانه در سرتاسر جهان برای تقویت توان زبان هم دیگر است

برای کار با این نرم افزار و توضیحات بیشتر به لینک زیر مراجعه نمایید :

http://www.verbling.com/

نظریه های گوناگون فراگیری زبان

زبان فرآیند پیچیده ای است که امکان ارتباط انسان با دیگر همنوعان او را فراهم می کند . اما این که انسان چگونه آن را فرا می گیرد به گونه های متفاوتی تبیین می شود که ما در این مقاله مهمترین نظریه هایی که زبان آموزی را تبیین می کنند توضیح خواهیم داد . این نظریه ها عبارتند از : نظریه های رفتاری ، نظریه های فطری نگر یا نهاد گرایی ، نظریه های شناختی و نظریه های اجتماعی . در ضمن به معنای تلویحی هر کدام از این نظریه ها در تعلیم و تربیت اشاره شده است.

ادامه نوشته