He is D. Hannan, Euro MP (MEP), at an international meeting.
This is C2 skill! You are aiming at B2!
But this is an excellent example of spoken polemics in an international register:
very clearly spoken, and the language, though reasonably sophisticated, very much the same international English you are learning.
Mr Hannan deliberately avoids the topical, local references, the "injokes", puns, double meanings, slogans and populist tricks etc that make speeches, especially political speeches, in any particular nation unintelligible....
even for other English speakers from other countries!.
And just think : this is ten-minutes...
Our Exams only ask you for three or so!
Notice how this presentation is structured.
Hannan on EU centralization vs.competitiveness
Possible vocabulary/pronunciation points
- (+or- a) Free market ->Free marketeers
- to be struck by, (as in a striking example),= impressed
- the standing apparat : standing here= permanent, existing, present, as in the expression "a standing army" apparat "is the(Stalinist) Russian for the establishment in a one-party state, including the bureacracy, the party, quangos etc- it is much less common than the word for an individual member of such, an "apparatchik"
- to make + a case/an argument +for/against
- Consensus
- to write off, here = dismiss, regard as now negligible. It comes from insurance: a car that is unrepairable after an accident is "written off" the insurance company's books.( Nb In insurance Americans say to total", from to make/consider something a "total loss".)
- From first principles
- G.D.P. = Gross Domestic Product. A term from economics. =PIB in Spanish. cf G.N.P.
- Vested interests - for some reason , Spanish students find this expression difficult to remember, with the false friend :
"created".It may help to relate it to invest, investement: VESTED Interests are people and organizations etc who have invested a lot of capital, often emotional and educational capital, in a "status quo " and don't like to see that threatened. - To bridge a gap
- Fashionability - one of many words derived from "fashion". Many of you that I see are unfamilar with to be in fashion, fashionable, unfashionable, to go out of fashion, to come back into fashion, fashion-victim, a follower of fashion, oldfashioned, (cf "new-fangled"), to fashion or to refashion, ( more in the sense of to make, elaborate) etc. My favourite contains the spanish "ista" suffix : a fashionista. .
- Policy . Remember: Politicians are people in politics who usually belong to political parties, but they are not the only ones who may have a policy in a particular field. This text also contains the rather technical term for a state or a nation or group : a "polity".
- Thinktank
- Sacerdotal
- homeric
- patriarch
- to do obeisance + to s.th/s.o / +at s.wh., (especally:.../.. at the shrine/altar of..). Priesthood: means both the fact of being a priest AND, as here, the body of people who ARE priests. You cannot use childhood, adulthood, boyhead, etc in this way.
to encouarage - Thought-experiment
- I put it to you - this formula is used at trials in court
- Rather , rather than - it is natural that students are most used to rather = fairly, or I'd rather. But the conjuction rather = mas bien
- Entrepeneur, entrepeneurial, enterprise, free enterprise
- To go down/along the road of
- Peter the Great (of Russia)
- To foster- From the family prefix: foster- +father/mother/parent/brother/sister/son /child /daughter/ etc.Fostering and fosterlings have a centuries-old tradition in the Uk, but are very new in Spain. The verb has very warm connotations with the meaning of fomentar, promover.
- Ming. Ottoman..
- Note -ness in: Impressiveness, Competitiveness etc
- Wealth, wealthy, wealthiness
- Mandarin ->; The mandarinate
- To hold/elevate sth over/above sth.= to consider far more important
- Pony tail , and nailguards
- Jewelled
- A telling example . telling = very convincing, very revealing, very paradigmatic, that demonstrates or proves the case. It is often used to refer to unintended self-betrayals.(cf "se retrata"/delata")
- Most - don't forget,
themost is used to give non-comparative superlatives: " Father was most angry!" Like the Spanish "-isimo" - You can’t have it both ways = more informally": you can't have your cake and eat it" . The Spanish equivalent is nadar+guardar la ropa.
- Unmissable - to miss can= to not notice.
