Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Conversational English vs. Written English

Conversational English vs. Written English

Conversational English is usually more relaxed than written English

Conversational (~Spoken, ~relaxed English 隨和語氣) words are usually short 1- or 2-syllable words. Two word verbs (VERB English + ADV), such as "throw away" are more common in conversational English

Written English (~serious 嚴肅語氣) words are usually longer words (2-syllables or more)
Serious words often have Latin prefixes 前綴, such as RE- or DIS-

Spoken (relaxed)
Written (serious)
buy
purchase
fix
REpair
throw away
DIScard
computer "doctor"
computer technician

Subtitles = Captions

Subtitles = Captions

Captions
1. The words under a picture in a book or newspaper. Captions are explanations of the picture or comments about it.


2. Some movies have captions, too. The captions take the words in the movie and put them under the picture. This helps people who can't hear well or who don't understand the language of the movie (e.g. a Chinese movie in the US)




Subtitles
1. Longer names for books, movies, magazines, songs etc. (title = the name of a book, movie, magazine, song etc).
Remember: The SUBtitle goes UNDER the title. That's why it's called a SUBtitle.


2. subtitles = movie captions