Academy Awards

Something I consider very interesting and relevant in the United States is the Academy Awards.

In this post, I’ll explain a little its history, and taking into consideration that this blog is dedicated to the language of The United States, I’ll talk about some memorable Acceptance speeches that actors, actresses, directors… have made along the history.

The first Academy Awards ceremony took place out of the public eye during an Academy banquet at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. Two hundred seventy people attended the May 16, 1929 dinner in the hotel's Blossom Room; guest tickets cost $5.

The Academy used a system which consisted of keeping the results in secret but giving a list in advance to newspapers for publication at 11 p.m. on the night of the Awards. This policy continued until 1940 when the Los Angeles Times published the names of the winners in its evening edition. This prompted the Academy in 1941 to adopt the sealed-envelope system still in use today.

The event moved from banquet room to a theater venue in 1942, held at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. Today, the Oscar Ceremony is held at the Hollywood and Highland Center®.

In 1953, the first televised Oscar ceremony occurred. Broadcasting in color began in 1966, affording home viewers a chance to fully experience the dazzling allure of the event. Since 1969, the Oscar show has been broadcast internationally, now reaching movie fans in over 200 countries.

And now, I’ll show you the memorable Acceptance speeches mentioned above.

One of the speeches which draws my attention is the Gwyneth Paltrow’s speech, for winning the best actress statuette for Shakespeare in love. What is remembered is her simpering acceptance speech, a performance so self-indulgently lachrymose that the phrase ‘to do a Gwyneth’ has entered the language as a generic description for anyone who loses of sense of emotional proportion the moment the step up to accept an award.

Here it's the video:

Another memorable Acceptance Speech is the Marlon Brando’s speech. At the 45th annual Academy Awards show he boycotted the ceremony and sent American Indian Rights activist, Sacheen Littlefeather, in his stead. When Brando’s name was called as winner of the coveted Best Actor award, Littlefeather took to the stage dressed in traditional Apache clothing, refused the proffered Oscar trophy with a polite wave of her hand, and read a brief statement explaining that Brando would not accept the award in order to protest the manner in which Native Americans were portrayed in the entertainment industry.

Here’s the video: 

Another curious Acceptance speech was the Adrien Brody’s speech. Accepting the award at age 29, his acceptance speech was filled with youthful exuberance. As Brody bounded onto the podium he took presenter Halle Berry in his arms, tilted her back and planted a passionate Hollywood kiss on her lips. 

And finally, the acceptance speech made by James Cameron, in which he says ‘’I’m the king of the world’’, imitating Leonardo Di Caprio in the movie ‘Titanic’.

Source:

 http://oscar.go.com/about-the-show

Sports in culture

   Despite of the short American history as a nation, sports in the United States are a great source of pride and stories of superation. Sports as a part of culture have so much influence in people; in sportpeople as well as in the public.


   The four major team sports in the United States are American footbal (whose major league is the NFL), basketball (with its league NBA), baseball (in the MLB) and ice hockey (NHL league). They are considered as the greatest exponent of the respective sport over the world what makes them even more important. Sports are particularly associated with education in the United States, with most high schools and universities having organized sports. College sports competitions play an important role in the American sporting culture. In many cases college athletics are more popular than professional sports, with the major sanctioning body being the NCAA.


  However, these are not the unique sport tendencies since the individual sports such as swimming, athletics or motorsport have great importance in The United States, especially in the Olympic Games where they were the major winners of medals with 104 metals.


   As we have already seen, The United States is a world power when referring to sports. However, the most widespread sport in the world is not the same in this country: football or how is known in USA, soccer. Soccer is not a leading professional sport, but it is played widely at the youth and amateur levels. A recent addition as an American pastime, it gained popularity in the later half of the 20th century. The creation of professional leagues such as MLS, and the success of US national teams has fueled its growth to sport, that is now widely played throughout all age groups, even though it is not very famous around the world. On the other hand, basketball matches of the NBA are retransmitted over the world for their quality and brilliant way of playing and they are followed by million of people every day.


Here, the official websites of the four major national leagues where you can enjoy of the videos, news, scores and so on:
    www.nfl.com

    www.nba.com

    www.mlb.com

    www.nhl.com

Sources: www.wikipedia.com

By: Estefanía Benítez Sánchez

American English in print media

Newspaper and also magazines play an important role in society. They keep people informed about the news and not only the news in their countries but what is going on in the whole world. 

Print media is, at least in the USA , the term that people use to refer to all this specific reading material that contains information about the recent events.

In newspapers, there are some articles. When there are several articles all under the same point of information, they are called sections. These sections are:

 - The front page,  where the summaries of the most important news are written. This section is full of headers of the mains news. The header is the “title” that tells us the subject of the news.

- There can also be a page devoted to important subjects such as economy and happenings.           This section is known as “local news” .

- The sports section, where the news related to sports are printed.

- Then, the forecast section is where the things related to the weather are (and also news about natural disasters but that can be in the front page as well) . 

- Finally, there is the section of ads. In this section, one can find from things to rent to people to meet and chat with.

- There also are newspapers that include sections like health and technology but not all of them do so it really depends on the printing house.

The use of language, in headers, has to be very brief so that people can understand what the news is about in a flash. Then, the news is described in depth and full of details.

A little piece of the history of newspapers:

The very first newspaper published in America, was printed by Richard Pierce and edited by Benjamin Harris in Boston on September 25 in the year of 1690.

During years, technology developed and so did newspapers. Their format, presentation and design was altered a lot of times but it was in the 20^th century when the first internet on-line appeared. 

Here is a link where you can share one of the most famous American on-line newspapers:

http://www.nytimes.com/ 

Sources: http://www.historybuff.com/library/reffirstten.html and wikipedia.

By Francisco Manuel Alfonso Sánchez.

American Sign Language II

        
In another post we were talking about the Sing American Language and, as I said, in this post we are going to learn some useful vocabulary and phrases.



Fist of all, this is the alphabet:

These are the numbers, not very difficult at all:

      Now some colors:

  We say hello touching our head with  our  hand open, like if you were a soldier:

To say goodbye we move our finger together up and down, like that:

Thank you, put the top of your fingers above your mouth and the move your moth to your front, as you could see here:

                              

As natural if you know how to say thank you we must know how to say your welcome:

If you want to know how is someone, you must to know how to say “how are you?”. Putting the back of your hands together and then move them to the front with your palms open, and finally pointing that person. Just like that:

To be polite, if some sign speaker ask to us how are we, we must answer with fine, bad, tired…

-Fine: your thumb touches your chest and your hand open, move it to the front and to your chest.

-Tired: Moving your hands up and down with your finger together:

-Sick: Touching your head with your middle finger:

If we want to indicate possession, I mean, talking to or about somebody else, we use personal pronouns,( me, myself and I, you yourself and yours, etc), to refer to one person o more in sign American language we use our hands. It’s important to know that the hand always faces towards the person we are talking about. If we want to say “mine” we put our hand in our chest, if we want to say “your, his, her” we move our hand towards that person. 

These are some elemental knowledge about American Sign Language.

By: Elena Blanco Corbacho.

http://lifeprint.com/asl101/pages-layout