Month: February 2016

February 29 2016, 20:15

“– The sovereign has left us, we are perishing,” the people cried out, “who will save us now from the invasion of enemies? We will remain, like sheep, without a shepherd!

Clerics, boyars, official people – all began to beg, to implore the metropolitan to mollify, to plead with the sovereign not to abandon the kingdom.

– Let the sovereign not forsake the state, let him punish his evildoers. In life and death, God and the sovereign will decide! – was heard from all sides.

– We all, with our own heads, – the boyars and serving people added, – follow you, holy one, to bow down before the sovereign and lament.

– Let the tsar only point out his evildoers and traitors, we ourselves will exterminate them! – the merchants and people shouted.

The metropolitan immediately wanted to go to Ivan the Terrible, but at the general council, they decided that he should stay to guard the capital: disorders were already beginning due to lack of leadership. The clergy and boyars went to Alexandrovskaya sloboda to bow down to the tsar, to implore him on behalf of all of Moscow to return to the throne. Ivan the Terrible received the envoys and listened to them. Praising him in every possible way, they begged for the sake of holy icons and the Christian faith, which could be desecrated by the heretic enemies, to take power into his hands again.

– And if, sovereign, you are disturbed by treason and vice in our land, – they added, – then let it be your will – to punish and pardon the guilty and to rectify everything with your wise laws!”

Who remembers how it all ended when Ivan agreed not to abandon the royal post? 😐

https://meduza.io/news/2016/02/29/chechenskiy-ombudsmen-priravnyal-otstavku-kadyrova-k-massovomu-narusheniyu-prav-grazhdan?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=share_fb&utm_campaign=share

February 28 2016, 19:13

In Washington, near the Reagan airport, there is a recreational area where planes dump leftover fuel… Oops, I’m saying something wrong – it’s a place where locals relax – playing badminton, walking their children, and so forth. And above them, literally over their heads, a plane flies by every minute.

After a plane flies over, for several more seconds a distinct sound emanates from nowhere above their heads, generated by the air vortex lifted by the aircraft. It’s quite unusual when the sound comes from a place where there is nothing. Sometimes the vortex is visible, then it resembles a small tornado, but this requires dusty weather.

http://beinginamerica.com/2016/02/29/gravelly-point-park/

February 25 2016, 16:02

About vocabulary in the English language and learning the language. Yesterday, for educational purposes, I watched the 2000 film “The Miracle Worker” about the childhood of Helen Keller. The English there is quite simple and understandable, with an interesting biographical plot.

Today, I decided to answer the question of how rich the vocabulary in the film is. How many words do you need to know to at least understand the subtitles?

Using simple tools (Wget, Perl, Bash), I did the following:

* Downloaded the subtitle file,

* Extracted only the dialogues. There were 1409 dialogues,

* Split them into words. Removed special characters, punctuation marks. Removed repeated words (left with unique ones). This resulted in 1095 words,

* Tried to remove word forms as much as possible (plural forms, past tense, adverbs, ing-forms). Ended up with 982 words,

* Fed them to the Lingvo translator. It recognized and translated 898 words,

* If you remove single-letter words, which I missed early on, it comes out to about 875-880 words.

The file with the complete list of words and translations, as well as a link to the film online, is on my blog http://beinginamerica.com/2016/02/26/how-many-words-you-need-to-know/.

So, to understand absolutely everything in the film 100%, you need a vocabulary of only 880 words, right?

http://beinginamerica.com/2016/02/26/how-many-words-you-need-to-know/