These Questions Could Be Yours!

Raise and Rise

The verb raise means to lift something to a higher position. You use raise when you are or someone is lifting something so, for example, I can say: I can raise my coffee cup, means I lift it up into the air in a higher position. In a meeting I would say: Would all those in favor please raise their hands?

I also could give a piece of advice: You should never raise a hand to a child or a woman.
We also use that verb raise when we are talking about what parents do to help their children when they are growing up. Parents raise children means they take care of children as they grow older.

We can also use raise with the following ideas:

The government plan to raise taxes.
I had to raise my voice to make myself heard over the noise.
The discussion has raised many important issues.
I want to raise two questions with you.
I need to raise some cash.
I will ask my boss a raise.

The verb to rise means that you get up; you are getting up, getting higher so I say: I rise at 7 am every morning, meaning that I get up; I leave my bed at 7 am.
We can also say that the sun rises in the morning and it sets at night. The balloon rose gently into the air.

We can also use the verb rise for the water: In a river during the spring the river rises and it means that there are more water so it goes up, it rises too much and floods the land around. In Egypt the Nile floods the land around and that’s because it rises at a certain time of the year.

We can also use rise with the following ideas:

We had a sudden temperature rise.
We had a 5% rise in inflation last year.


What is the difference between "must", "have to" and "got to"?

Well, actually all of this means the same thing. If I say: I must go, it means that is necessary that I go; I have an obligation to go. If I say: I have to go I’m saying the same thing; it’s necessary, there’s an obligation.

The expression "I got to go" is informal. You can also say: "I have got to go" and here there’s a small difference because using these informal expressions we might be expressing certain urgency or much necessity.

So you can say: "I have to leave now", "I must leave now" or in informal way: "I got to leave now" meaning the same thing.

I just would say that "must" is a little bit more formal; someone who wants to sound a little more educated might use "must" instead of "have to" or "got to", but they are both perfectly acceptable.

LET'S TALK ABOUT ...

Let’s talk about … Groundhog Day!

Groundhog Day is not an official holiday, but if you buy a calendar in the United States and you look at February 2 you will probably see the word Groundhog Day. It’s an annual holiday celebrated in the US and Canada.

Groundhog Day is an old tradition about in predicting the weather. According to folklore, if a groundhog comes out from its hole on this day fails to see its shadow that means that winter will end soon. If on the other hand, the groundhog sees its shadow, the groundhog will retreat into its hole, and the winter will continue for six more weeks.

There is actually a movie, a kind of comedy, that’s called "Groundhog Day". It’s a very funny movie about a weatherman who wakes up and everyday is February 2, that’s he finds himself repeating the same day over and over again, he goes to the day, he falls asleep and when he wakes up, again is the same day. It’s a very good movie.

The largest Groundhog Day celebration is held in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.

Let’s talk about … Baby boomers!

Baby Boomer, Generation Ex, Generation Why…

What generation do you belong to?
In the United States the term baby boomer refers to those who were born after World War II, between 1946 and 1964 that would include people like me.

After World War II there was a large increase in the number of children born, there was a baby boom. This generation, this group of people born in the same time is now in their forties, fifties, and more and more becoming in their sixties.

The baby boomer generation is getting older in the United States. I’m getting older. The generation born after 1946 is getting older.

There are other names that are given to different generations depending on when they were born. My generation born after the middle 60’s is called the baby boomer. People born after 1964, between 1965 and 1979 are called generation ex. They are the post baby boomers, and after generation ex, people born in the eighties and nineties are called generation why.

I guess the next generation will be called generation z, I don’t know … but and you? What generation do you belong to? Would you like to belong to another generation? Would you like to be a baby boomer like me?



Let’s talk about … Movies!

I love to watch movies. One of my favorite movies is King Kong. King Kong is what we call a blockbuster. Blockbuster is a movie that sells a lot of tickets and is very, very popular.

It’s a long movie, a little more than three hours long. The movie is about the legendary creature called King Kong. The word Kong doesn’t mean anything in English, of course there is the city Hong Kong, but the movie actually takes place in New York City.



Let’s talk about … New Year’s resolutions!

It’s very popular during the time around the first of January to talk about New Year’s resolutions. A resolution is a promise that you make to change something about the way you are living your life and I came across a list of the top ten most popular New Year’s resolutions in the United States and I thought I would read some of those to you.

The first one is “to spend more time with friends and family”. A recent poll found that more than 50% of Americans vow to appreciate their loved ones.

Number two resolution was “to be fit”. To be fit or in fitness, means that you are healthy, that you exercise, that you do things good for your body. You may say you are in good shape.

Number three is to lose weight. There was a survey that found that 55% of adults in the States weights too much, are overweight. Being fit, being healthy is very important.

Well, so these are the top three resolutions and you can compare these ones with yours. If you want to know about the others resolutions you can access the web site http://www.about.com/ and check them.



Let’s talk about … Ear buds!

I have a little technology news I want to tell you about. It’s about the ear buds that we use in iPods, MP3 players and other devices.

According to the doctors many people are having problems with their hearing and the reason is because of the iPods and MP3 players. A popular way of listening music by the ear buds, the little things you put into your ears.

Before we always used to have a headphone that covered our entire ears but the earphone that we use nowadays just go inside our ears and the result is that we are listening to music more loudly and so that can damage our hearing.
So that’s something you want to be careful about your ear buds.



Let’s talk about … Smoking ban!

In many cities in the United States, in many states, there are entire smoking laws. In California, for example, it’s illegal to smoke inside a restaurant. In fact it’s illegal to smoke even inside a bar. So you can’t go to a bar and have a drink and smoke. The idea is that when someone else is smoking and if you are standing next them you could inhale, that is, to breathe in that smoke that is called second-hand smoke.

Second-hand smoke means you get from someone else; you are not the person smoking but you are standing next to the smoker.

Well there are a lot of controversial, of course, because people who smoke don’t like the new law very much and in many different states and cities are passing new laws about smoking, so if you come to the States you maybe will be surprised to find out that there’s no smoking in many restaurants and even bars in some states. In airplanes, of course, there are no smoking areas so if you fly from Los Angeles to Chicago you can’t smoke or anywhere else. If you smoke in these places you can get a ticket, that’s you will have to pay money if you are smoking in a restaurant or in a bar.

Let’s talk about … Teenagers drivers!

In the United States, in many states you can start driving when you are 16 years old but in almost states, the legal age is eighteen.

In California a new law took effect on the first of the year . On the first of January teenagers between 16 and 18 years old now is allowed to drive under certain conditions, for example, you cannot drive after 11 pm. at night till 5 am in the morning. So you would be given a ticket or perhaps even arrested if you were a teenager and you were driving during those hours.

So that’s a new law taking place in Los Angeles, California and the idea is to try to prevent cars accidents with young drivers that according to the statistics have more car accidents .

Let’s talk about … brunch!

People in the States like to go to brunch on the weekends. Brunch is a combination of two words: breakfast and lunch so brunch comes somewhere late in the morning or early in the afternoon.

Brunch is a very popular thing on the weekends, especially on Sundays. Many restaurants have a special menu for brunch and you can sometimes eat all you can eat, meaning you pay one price and you eat all the food that you want. It’s very popular the idea of having brunch on Sundays late in the morning or early in the afternoon.

Let’s talk about … Medical systems in the US!

Every country has a different medical system and many countries like Brazil has a system that’s called Socialized Medicine where most of all medical care, like hospitals, doctors, medicines is paid for by the government.

In the US they don’t have a system like that. They have a mostly private system, which means that they have to pay for their help insurance.

Sometimes the company you work for will pay for your help insurance but if you work for yourself you have to pay for your own help insurance and it’s a bit expensive, for example, in California it costs about $400 a month and, of course, some people can’t afford it.

There are some government medical care programs. The most popular is called Medicare and it’s mostly for people who are over the age of 65, that we call the elderly.

Another big program they have is called Medicaid and it’s for low income people. This Medicaid program is just for anyone who is poor; it’s particularly for children under the age of 18 as well as for women who are pregnant.



Let’s talk about … Television channels in the US!

There are lots of television stations, television channels in the United States.
First of all I should tell you that there’s a difference between a channel and a station. A station is located in each city and there are individual companies that own stations. For example, in Los Angeles there are probably fifteen or twenty television stations. They are sometimes called broadcast stations and anyone with an antenna on the top of their roof can listen to these televisions stations and there are thousands of television stations in the US.

A television channel is usually a network where many stations get together from different cities and start a channel which is a big national company that makes television programs. For example, the ABC, the American Broadcast Company, is one of the major television channels or television network in the USA.

There are five all private major large networks in the US and we know them usually by their letters: ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX and WB. The FOX and WB are a little smaller than the other three channels.

There are, of course, other ways to get television including cable television and you can also get television from satellite and there are two large satellite television companies. One of them is called Dish TV and the other is Direct TV.

Let’s talk about … Spelling bees!

Spelling bee is a spelling contest and spelling contests are very popular in American schools.
The spelling bee is a contest where the students are asked to spell a word in English and then they have to stand in front of a microphone and spell the words. So, for example, they may say the word “priorities”, and the student has to stand in front of a microphone and spell the word. If they get it wrong then they are out of the game, out of the contest.

These contests are very popular in almost every school usually in junior high and high school students are part of the spelling bees. There are even national competitions for spelling.

Of course English spelling can be very difficult because unlike some languages where the sound of the word is how you spell the word, in English that isn’t always true, in fact, many times this is not true.

Spelling, the ability to spell, is mostly related to how much you read; people who read more spell better so it’s really a kind of reading test.

Let’s talk about … The reality program called "The Apprentice"!

The Apprentice is a very popular television program in US. It’s a reality program, where people are real people, not actors.

Well, if we are talking about The Apprentice you are talking about Donald Trump who is a very famous and important person in the US. He’s a real estate magnate and besides he owns lots of properties, including the Trump Towers in New York City, and of course, he has the television program called The Apprentice. In this reality program people are competing like in a game and the goal is to win a one year job with Donald Trump and to become his apprentice.

In Brazil there is a similar reality program with a relative success called "O Aprendiz".

Let’s talk about … The School System in the US!

Most American children go to public schools in the US and schools are usually divided into three parts: the first six grades and sometimes seven grades beginning with the kindergarten, that is mainly the first year of school, for children aged 5. That first six years is called elementary school or sometimes is called grade school.

After those six years in many schools you go to a different school, a different building called middle school that’s usually grades as seven and eight or six, seven and eight and nine, it depends on the school, but usually a middle school is a six, seven and eight.

Sometimes in different places they call middle school a junior high. So every school, every city is different in the United States, but most of them have this middle school or junior high school for six, seven, eight grades.

Then after you finish middle school or junior high you go to high school also called sometimes senior high and it’s a nine, ten, eleven, twelve grades.

Let’s talk about … Religion in the US!

Most Americans if you ask them in a survey if they are religious they will say that they believe in some sort of god in terms of religion. A very high percentage of Americans identify themselves as religious.

About 75% of those who are religious call themselves Christians and about 13% have no religion at all and the rest of the percentage is a very small different religions.

The 75% of those who are religious, about 25% percent are called Catholics. These are Christians who believe in Roman Catholic Church with the Pope in Vatican, in Italy. That’s the single largest Christian church in the US.

The other 50% of the population that is Christian are that we call Protestants. These are churches that began with Martin Luther in Germany in the sixteenth century; these are churches that began in protest to problems in the Catholic Church at that time. There are many, maybe hundreds churches in these category. In the US the largest is the Baptist Church which is particularly popular in the southern part of the US in States like Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, etc.

So in overall Americans consider themselves very religious but, of course, just because you say you are religious that doesn’t mean you necessarily are doing the right thing; that’s another issue.

Let’s talk about … Spam!

Spam is actually the name of a type of food that is very popular in some places but it’s also however considered by many people as being a not very good food. It’s a type of meat sold in metal containers, made mostly from pork.

Nowadays we also use the word spam to call an unwanted email, usually advertisements. So people who don’t like spam and there are many, for some reason, started to use the word spam on the internet to describe an email that you don’t want and that you didn’t ask for.

A spam is usually sent for someone who is selling something or it’s a part of a scheme that is trying to get money from you, to cheat you in order to steal your money. It’s a very common kind of email nowadays so if you get a message from someone asking you money to help people of Nigeria, for example, you should know that it is not a real email; it’s a fraud, it’s a spam and the better thing to do is to delete it.

Let’s talk about … Valentine’s Day!

In the US Valentine’s Day is on the 14 February and it’s the day you give a Valentine card to someone you have a romantic relationship with or would like to have a romantic relationship with. This is the day in US and in many other countries that we celebrate giving to our boyfriend, girlfriend, wife or husband traditional gifts like cards, red roses or some other kind of flowers, ties, shirts, chocolate, stuffed animals like a bear but the most popular gift would be a jewelry, things like a ring or earrings or maybe something you wear around your neck like a pendant.