Questões de Concurso Comentadas sobre verbos | verbs em inglês

Words that went extinct

By Kimberly Joki

    Dictionaries incorporate new words every year. Some are pop culture inventions like jeggings, photobomb, and meme. Other words, like emoji and upvote, spring up from technology and social media. Dictionaries respond by creating definitions for anyone who cares to know what a twitterer is. And thank goodness they do; you can learn what an eggcorn is simply by turning a few pages in your trusty updated dictionary.

    Interestingly, not all newly added words are recent developments. The Oxford English Dictionary June 2015 new words list included autotune, birdhouse, North Korean, and shizzle! North Korea was founded in 1948. The initial release of the autotuner audio processor was in 1997. Before adding a slang term like shizzle, dictionary publishers weigh the current popularity, predicted longevity, and other factors. Just this year alone, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary welcomed about 1,700 new arrivals.

    With more and more words coined every year, dictionaries couldn’t possibly add them all to their existing word banks. Can you imagine a dictionary containing all the words ever used in English? It would be impossible to lift! With each yearly edit, dictionary editors must discard some words to make room for new ones.

    (…)

    The Sami languages, spoken in Finland, Norway, and Sweden, reportedly include more than 150 words related to snow and ice. In the 1590s, the English language had a word for recently melted snow—snowbroth. Now, English speakers simply call it water or melted snow. In fact, words that are markedly specific seem more vulnerable to extinction. A 19th-century dictionary included Englishable, a term to describe how appropriate a word is for the English language. However, English is a dynamic language, always accepting and abandoning words. Apparently, Englishable itself isn’t Englishable; it’s now obsolete.

    Do you favor any infrequently used words? If so, use them now and often. . . A word’s best defense against extinction is regular use.

(Source: http://www.grammarly.com/blog/2015/words-that-went-extinct/)

Based on TEXT 2, a fictional blog, answer question

TEXT 2

I do realize that in the world of technology there are early and late adopters. I’m not the earliest of cutting-edge early TESL adopters, but I do like to try out new technology and incorporate it into my teaching. This list is a handful of technologies that are established enough not to be too problematic, user-friendly enough that just about anyone can start using them quickly, and useful enough that you’ll soon wonder how you got along without them. In short, this is a list of tech that just about everyone can (and maybe even should) be using in 2010.

1. Wikipedia – It has become popular to question its accuracy. Wikipedia has become a real knowledge bank on the internet. Once we figure out what it is (a compilation of all referenced knowledge) many of these criticisms fall down. Access to all this information means a reorganization of learning.

2. Google – No, I don’t just mean search, but all the other stuff: maps, docs, calendar, etc. It’s never been so easy to collaborate with other people.

3. Twitter – A year ago, I taught a course through Twitter with mixed results. This microblog is almost exclusively interactive, but my ESL students found it tough to collaborate within Twitter because of its constraints on length. The email by contrast, is very simple – it is equally interactive but it is constraint free. So, you should use it and you should see interesting results !

Can you learn the language by using the above alone? Of course not! But they are a good springboard and I hope they lead you to discover all other media available out there (ebooks, blogs, YouTube videos, music, movies, etc.).

More web in the pipeline. Please post a comment.

Answer question according to TEXT 1 below, adapted from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8606466.stm (accessed on April 7th, 2010) .

TEXT 1

At least 200 people have died in the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro after another storm. This is arguably the worst torrential rain for decades, causing flooding and landslides. Our website readers in Rio de Janeiro have been sharing their experiences.

Comment 1 - I’ve never seen such chaos. We weren’t prepared for this, even though we were warned that a big storm was about to come. Newspapers are saying that the reason for the catastrophe is the garbage. Well it may have been. We need to teach recycling at schools and community groups, otherwise we will have more disasters like this. (Lia, Niterói)

Comment 2 - Today I witnessed Rio de Janeiro on the brink of collapse. I ventured out around midday, just as the electric power blacked out in my neighbourhood. Three hours later, looking out of my office window, the city still reminded me of a war zone. “What´ve we done to deserve this?”, I thought. It’s night time now and I haven’t been able to return home. I might do so tomorrow. (José, Rio)

Comment 3 - Worldwide, we are seeing more and more climate instability. The deserts of central Asia are growing, while areas of the US (and now Rio) are drenched. The lakes in Minnesota have never thawed this early, at any time in the recorded record. The icecaps will be history, and islands around the world are disappearing under the surf. The oceans are warming, the coral reefs are dying. How much more evidence do we need of global warming? (João, Brasília)

Atenção: Para responder à questão, considere o texto abaixo.

    Goods in transit refers to merchandise and other inventory items that have been shipped by the seller, but have been received by the purchaser. To illustrate goods in transit, let's use the following example. Company J ships a truckload of merchandise on December 30 to Customer K, which is located 2,000 miles away. The truckload of merchandise arrives at Customer K on January 2. Between December 30 and January 2, the truckload of merchandise is goods in transit. The goods in transit requires special attention if the companies issue financial statements as of December 31. The reason is that the merchandise is the inventory of one of the two companies. However, the merchandise is not physically present at either company. One of the two companies must add the cost of the goods in transit to the cost of the inventory that it has in its possession.

    The terms of the sale will indicate which company should report the goods in transit as its inventory as of December 31. If the terms are FOB shipping point, the seller (Company J) will record a December sale and receivable, and include the goods in transit as its inventory. On December 31, Customer K is the owner of the goods in transit and will need to report a purchase, a payable, and must add the cost of the goods in transit to the cost of the inventory which is in its possession
    If the terms of the sale are FOB destination, Company J will not have a sale and receivable until January 2. This means Company J must report the cost of the goods in transit in its inventory on December 31. (Customer K will not have a purchase, payable, or inventory of these goods until January 2.)

(Adapted from http://www.accountingcoach.com/blog/what-are-goods-in-transit)