#32 Tongue twister: Ough My Goughd!

❗️Challenge yourself with this tongue twister:

▶️ English can be understood through tough thorough thought, though.

Translation:
Ingliz tilini qattiq, batafsil o’ylash orqali tushinish mumkin lekin.

❗️ Insanely, the letter combination “ough” has as many as 9 different pronunciations. Practice the most common ones by looking at the words as a whole.

👉@afandi_english👈 #tongue_twisters

#114 Our favourite mistakes: Pronunciation

▶️ Try pronouncing the following words:
• bull
• bullet
• bully
• bush
• butcher
• cushion
• pudding

❓What do these words have in common?

❗️ The ‘u’ in these words is pronounced [ʊ], as in “book”, not [ʌ] as in “bus”. For clarity in Cyrillic (not Russian pronunciation):
• bull – ❌ балл, ✅ булл
• bullet – ❌ баллет, ✅ буллит
• bully – ❌ балли, ✅ булли
• bush – ❌ баш, ✅ буш
• butcher – ❌ бачер, ✅ бучер
• cushion – ❌ кашин, ✅ кушин
• pudding – ❌ паддинг, ✅ пуддинг

👉@afandi_english👈 #mistakes #pronunciation

#4 Future: Human microchipping in Sweden

▶️ 🇸🇪Sweden is a technophile (=liking technology) society. The country has become almost cashless and quite a few (=many) people now have microchips under their skin. Check out how that works and why people are doing it.

👉@afandi_english👈 #future

#39 YouTube Channel Recommendation: Key & Peele

📊 English Level: Various

🔤 Subtitles: Available

💬 Topics: Comedy

💡 Content: Though not active anymore, this channel has lots of funny sketches that have subtitles, too. Key and Peele are both mixed-race Americans who manage to pull jokes (=make jokes) that would seem inappropriate (=unacceptable) for others.

⛓ Link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdN4aXTrHAtfgbVG9HjBmxQ

👉@afandi_english👈 #youtube

#91 Spot Afandi and his donkey: Afandi in Frankfurt Old Town

❓ Can you spot Afandi in this picture?

❗️ You might be the lucky winner of 5,000 Paynet-soums!

❓ How? Spot Afandi, mark him in the picture and send it to @jochenho. The time limit is 30 minutes. Not sure what Afandi looks like? Check the pinned message above!

👉@afandi_english👈 #spot_afandi

🎉 Special Day: Navruz in Afghanistan

🆕 Special days help us pay more attention to the things and people that matter. Celebrate with Afandi English!

▶️ Get to know your least known neighbour – Afghanistan. Navruz is even more important there than in ex-Soviet Central Asia. Check it out!

👉@afandi_english👈 #special_day

Bravo!

👍 🇮🇹Italy was the correct answer. Earthquakes occur in all of these countries and the classical architecture is a little more typical for Italy and Greece but not entirely foreign to Turkey and Argentina. Most revealing (=showing sth secret or hidden) was the language – Turkey and Argentina would have different words for “university” and Greece would have a different alphabet.

#22 Self-study: Tourism? No thank you.

▶️ Today’s video and handout are about Providencia, a little island in the Caribbean (=the sea between North and South America). The island could easily attract more tourists but locals are against it. Find out why!

❗️If you think this is good material for your self-study, please follow the instructions in #1 👆 and the instructions on the handout below 👇.

👉@afandi_english👈 #self_study

#115 Our favourite mistakes: Vocabulary

▶️ Please translate the following sentence:
O’qituvchi, bugungi mavzu nima?

❌ Perhaps you think it is:
Teacher, what is today’s theme?

✅ Well, it should be:
Sir/Madam, what is today’s topic?

❓Why?

❗️ Teacher is not a form of address in English. Students call their teacher either by Sir or Madam/Ma’am or Mr/Mrs/Miss plus family name. This varies between different cultures, however.

❗️ Theme is a mistranslation from Russian тема. The word theme exists in English but means something different: a) the main subject or idea in a piece of writing, speech or film, b) a music tune that keeps coming up, or c) a particular style. This is different from a topic which can be discussed in class.

👉@afandi_english👈 #mistakes #vocabulary

#7 Afandi Karaoke: Supermarket Flowers (by Ed Sheeran)

▶️ Here’s a beautifully sad song by Ed Sheeran that he wrote after his grandmother died.

👉@afandi_english👈 #karaoke

#31 Movie Time: Who Am I (2014)

▶️ Today’s movie is a 🇩🇪German thriller (=exciting crime story) about a group of hackers that find ways to hack even the German secret service and Europol (=central police of the EU). Take a spine-chilling (=very frightening) glimpse (=quick look) into the world of hacking and cybercrime!

👉@afandi_english👈 #movie #european_films #drama #future