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Jeremiah Bourque

@jbtutor

Mar 20

OK. Let me break this down. A headline reads:

"Emmanuel Macron's government may be teetering"

Teetering is often swapped for the idioms "on the edge/ on the brink", and associated with wavering, rocking back and forth, moving or balancing in an unsteady way. 1/2

The actual content is the govt survived a no-confidence vote... but narrowly.
"The second vote is expected to draw less support, so a bullet has been dodged. And yet the President of France currently appears to be stuck between a rock and a hard place."

So more idioms. 2/

Dodging a bullet means having narrowly escaped a perilous situation. But "between a rock and a hard place"... a rock is also a hard place of sorts so it's a false comparison. It means being stuck between difficult options, a lack of wiggle room. 3/

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Jeremiah Bourque

@jbtutor

Feb 14

#English #英語学習「ストレス」が悪いことね。しかし、英吾の言葉"stress"は複数のバージョンがある。一つはストレスの状態、日本語と同じ意味で。もう一つはemphasisと同様、意味は：強調。この場合、”to stress"の動詞です。例："Let me stress this point:" 1/

英吾にとって強調は重要な事。この言葉が無ければ、発音の話は厳しい。例："Ahead". "HEAD" のシラブルが強調するべき。"AH-head"じゃない、"a-HEAD"です。これがシラブルの"stressing" -> "stressing a syllable". これは発音の基本。2/

しかし、テンションは近いケースです。感情的に、テンションが上がるが解りやすいでしょう？物理的の場合は違う。"Wire tension"はワイヤの張力。ある意味で、これは"physical stress"けど精神の緊張には関係ありません。金属疲労の場合、一定以上の物理の”stress"は危険です。3/

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Jeremiah Bourque

@jbtutor

Jan 18

So here's something I want to say without naming... shows, because normally I would never even remark on this, it's not something "this year" or even "the past few years", and I don't feel like it was someone's individual call.

I saw an anime's final episode this morning. I liked the anime, won't name the show. I heard 愛 (ai, love) spoken. I saw "respect" written as the subtitle. It's a Japanese show, a Japan setting (of sorts)... to me there's no way you accidentally swap those two things.

It's the sort of change I hate to see simply because it just wasn't enough years ago such a change would feel necessary. Purely out of respect for the work I shake my head at it. If it "had to happen", that's unfortunate, and hence why I don't blame individuals at all.

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Jeremiah Bourque

@jbtutor

Dec 18, 2022

#English #英語フレーズ "A little bird told me." 内部から秘密を明かした。A cute phrase for having some kind of "secret informant" tell you something. The modern journalism equivalent is "an anonymous source", but the expression can be used for gossip, not just pro news.

Of course sometimes the person using this phrase *is* the secret informant, but chooses to imply someone *else* divulged the secret... that can happen too.

From Shakespeare.
Henry IV, Part 2:

As far as France: I heard a bird so sing,
Whose musick, to my thinking, pleas’d the king.

This is believed to be a passing reference to "a little bird told me", but it's interesting to me regardless.

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Jeremiah Bourque

@jbtutor

Dec 10, 2022

#英語 In the context of "tacit endorsement of Ukraine drone strikes in Russia," a blogger asked "What in the heck is “tacit endorsement"?" <- This is where more knowledge of ＃日本語 (Japanese) would have helped. 黙認 <- If I may, literally "silent consent/ assent"? 1/

So other cultures have an easy time understanding. The Pentagon didn't say out loud "We endorse this," but they declined to say "We DON'T endorse this". That is tacit endorsement. #English idiom: What you don't say speaks volumes. 2/

In the first place, Ukraine doesn't need anyone's permission to hit back against Russia with home-grown drones. The weapons weren't provided by the Pentagon, so the Pentagon doesn't get to say no. It's just better for everyone involved to come to a... mutual understanding. 3/

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Jeremiah Bourque

@jbtutor

Dec 5, 2022

#English #英語 Of relevance today: the two versions of "conventional". A convention is actually a reference to something like the Geneva Conventions i.e. our current version of "the laws of war". A missile that "can" carry a nuclear warhead, or some other form of WMD... 1/

...but which has been modified to carry high explosives (a high amount of them because nuclear warheads weigh a lot by nature), we will call this "a conventional missile" in that state. It's the same rocket, it's usually the same guidance system, but = "non-nuclear" *here*. 2/

"Conventional" has been stretched to mean "ordinary", to the point that "unconventional warfare" is considered "warfare of an unusual nature". The element of surprise, ambush, and using maneuverability against a larger, slower force, doesn't make it illegal. 3/

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