Your vote probably says more about you than about the hotels.

🇨🇳🇷🇺🇺🇿🇹🇷🇰🇷
You voted for Bog’ishamol? You have identified Uzbekistan’s key partners in economic development and geopolitics. You are perfectly aware that Uzbekistan’s future is in Asia.

🇺🇿🇷🇺🇰🇷🇬🇧🇺🇸
You voted for Vella Elegant? Prestige is more important to you than economic reality. You see the world from an English learner’s perspective.

🇺🇿🇺🇿🇨🇳🇷🇺🇹🇷
You voted for Plaza 2? You truly love your country and for you there can never be enough Uzbekistan flags. But you also seem to like authoritarian countries.

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You voted for Orom? You just love different looking flags and random collections of them. Or maybe you hate all this political stuff and dream of No Man’s Land?

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You voted for Hilton? Tashkent is obviously superior in your mind and an international hotel like the Hilton must know best. At the same time you look one way, and that is West.

Keep voting, guys! 🤓

Afandi time is apporoaching! Get ready to spot him at 9pm sharp!

#26 Spot Afandi and his donkey: Afandi immersed in rust and dust on Jahon Bozor

❓ Can you spot Afandi and his donkey in this picture?

❗️If you can, follow the instructions in #1 (see pinned message) and win 5,000 Paynet-soums!

👉@afandi_english👈 #spot_afandi

#13 It’s a strange world: Enclaves & Exclaves

❓Have you ever wondered about these strange pieces of land that belong to one country but are surrounded by another country?

❗️There are actually two words: “Enclave” and “exclave”. An enclave is a territory enclosed by another country; an exclave is a territory separated from the main part of the country. One territory can actually be both, depending from where you stand. Sokh, for example, is an exclave of Uzbekistan enclaved by Kyrgyzstan. But it gets even more, fascinatingly complicated than that! Check it out!

⛓https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclave_and_exclave

▶️ Here’s a YouTube video about a town in Holland and Belgium that’s full of enclaves and exclaves:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP4OL2i6t-Q

👉@afandi_english👈 #strange_world #geography

#10 Afandi Quiz: What’s the word?

Today’s quiz is about a tough old Indonesian lady.

▶️Has she just killed someone? Is she defending her home? Is she about to escape on her motorbike? Is she guarding a crime scene? Or is she just posing for a photo? Well we will never know but we can still describe her.

👉@afandi_english👈 #word_quiz

Pretty good but not impressive!

👍 The old lady is indeed heavily armed. Arms (always plural) are not only body parts but also weapons, and the adjective is armed.

👎 She is two-legged like most people. No other meaning.

👎 Handed isn’t too far off but as there is a word heavy-handed but it means something else. Politicians or bosses that are heavy-handed have a very harsh way of taking actions and don’t care about people’s feelings.

👎 Footed is an adjective just like legged but doesn’t mean anything else than the actual body part.

👎 Headed could be a past participle of the verb to head, meaning to lead, but there's no combination with heavy.

👎 Shouldered is a past participle. You can shoulder responsibility but not guns.

#1 IELTS DOs & DON’Ts: Exam culture

🆕 Afandi English will no longer stand by and watch you struggle. Here are DOs and DON’Ts for you to keep in mind for “the exam”!

▶️ Exams are education, education is culture. IELTS tests your ability to use English internationally but inside of it is a lot of Western culture – critical thinking, original ideas, self-expression, scientific reasoning, etc.

✅ DOs
➕ Be communicative. Don’t just answer questions and then wait for the next.
➕ Have opinions and see both good and bad in everything. Find reasons and arguments.
➕ Follow the news and watch documentaries to be up-to-date with big issues. Don’t rely on IELTS books or classes only.

❌ DON’Ts
➖ Don’t memorize. It shows that you have no brain at all. Prepare notes (see post of 29/6) instead.
➖ Don’t try to show off but be true to your level. You need both fluency and accuracy (see post of 8/9).
➖ Don’t look for tricks. Knowledge and skills make all the difference.

👉@afandi_english👈 #ielts

#46 Our favourite mistakes: Pronunciation

▶️ Try pronouncing the following words:
• about
• abroad
• account
• across
• advice
• again
• ago
• agree
• alone
• America
• away

❓What sound do these words have in common?

❗️They all start with an unstressed ’a’ which is pronounced as [ə], not [a], not [æ] and not [e]! Unfortunately the [ə] sound doesn’t have a letter, neither in English nor in Uzbek, and Russian doesn’t have this sound at all. In Uzbek you can find the [ə] sound written as “и” in “борми”.

❗️Linguists call it “the schwa sound”. Read this Wikipedia article to find out more: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwa

👉@afandi_english👈 #mistakes #pronunciation

#16 World Englishes: New York English

❗️ Known as Big Apple and The City That Never Sleeps, New York with its over 8 million inhabitants has it’s own dialect. It is in fact one of the more recognisable dialects in North America. Inside New York City there exist sociolects (rich and educated vs poor and uneducated) as well as ethnolects (Italian, Jewish, Hispanic, Black, etc). Unfortunately, the dialect is slowly dying out as the population is more mixed now.

🔘 Pronunciation: Unlike General American, New Yorkers sound almost British when they drop the [r] before vowels and pronounce the name of their city as “Noo Yawk”; they also have a special way of pronouncing the [ɔ] vowel, as in “talk” and “coffee”, making them sound like “twalk” and “kwoffee”. Watch the video below for a clever analysis of a politician from NY.

🔘 Vocabulary: There are lots of slang words that only New Yorkers understand. Some of them became wider American slang; for a list check out the link below.

👉@afandi_english👈 #world_englishes