2016-08-04 Core: 7 irony and weather in history

Greg Malivuk
[email protected]
http://www.pastebin.com/u/gmalivuk - notes from all classes
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Homework: p. 86 parts 2, 3, 4 about the reading on p. 87
part 2
1 To bring back pepper and spices from India and Africa.
2 A storm scattered the fleet.
3 The ship, which had left on a voyage to discover riches, sank near (or ran aground on) a coast full of diamonds.
irony = when the expectation or appearance is (set up to be) the opposite of reality
part 3 - which word does NOT complete each sentence
1 a
2 c
3 c
4 b
5 a
6 a
part 4
1 odyssey
2 sturdy
3 sketchy
4 inhospitable
5 inkling
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other vocabulary:
acknowledge = when you’re aware of something and admit that it’s true
(agnostic = not knowing)
clerk = someone who keeps written records of things
(cleric = someone who works in a church)
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part 5 - Which of these statements are facts, and which are merely conjecture?
1 F
2 F (it’s a fact that two of them were new)
3 F (“acknowledgement from a clerk in Lisbon that the report was received” - but we don’t know what the report said)
4 F (the acknowledgement says the ship disappeared in wild weather near the Cape of Good Hope, but it was found hundreds of miles from there)
	or maybe C, if you think there are other reasons for it to be found so far away
5 C (“It is easy to imagine what happened next” - the rest of the 4th paragraph is conjecture. We don’t even know that the ship sunk away from shore, since the coins were found in the desert)
6 C (we know they died before returning home, but we don’t know if they managed to get ashore)

How plausible are the conjectures?
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historiography = the study of the writing of history
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A man safely amputated his own leg at a construction site.
Which is more probable?
He is a construction worker. (0.11% - if there’s a 0.01% he’s a construction worker with no medical training)
He is a construction worker with medical training. (0.1%)

A man injured his leg at construction site.
Which is more probable?
He is a politician.
He is a politician whose brother runs a construction site. - This adds explanation which makes it more plausible as a story, but it’s a lot more specific, so it’s less probable.
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part 7 - What does (the verb) “bear” mean in these sentences?
a showing or “carrying”
b carrying

bear - bore - born(e)
birth = the action of bearing (a child)
burden = the thing borne (in the sense of “carried”)

Women bear children.
Children are borne by women. -> Children are born.

part 8 - With your partner, what do you think these expressions with “bear” mean?
1 The wall received the worst or main force of the storm.
2 The face on the coin doesn’t look like the king.
	“bears a close resemblance to” = looks very much like
3 He felt strong resentment against his employers.
4 testifies / shows the evidence of
5 Months of digging had a successful result. / Months of digging paid off.
	“fruit” often means “result(s)”
6 remember / keep in mind
brunt = the worst or principal impact of something (most often used with “bear” or sometimes “take”)
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BREAK
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https://books.google.com/ngrams - Search for words or phrases to see how common they are (and were) in English books
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p. 86 part 9 - In your group, decide who will be student A, B, and C.
Go to pages 154, 155, and 156 respectively.

Read the fact, and ask your partners to guess what might be ironic about the underlined phrase.
example -
Fact: The Bom Jesus sank off the coast of Africa on a voyage to find treasure.
Irony: It sank near a coast full of diamonds.

Do you know any other stories of historical irony?
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Do you know any other historical events where the weather played a crucial role?
p. 88 - Read the abstract of a history lecture.
part 2 - Answer these questions
1 The importance of weather and climate to history.
2 Whether we should pay more attention to the environment when we talk about the past.

part 3 - Listen and put the number of the questioner next to the topic they ask about
a 3 - What was the “Little Ice Age”?
b 4 - What was the connection between weather and punishment?
c 1 - What was the connection between weather and rats?
d 2 - What was the connection between weather and the fall of Rome? Are we sure?

scapegoat = someone to blame for a problem (who isn’t actually responsible, or not solely responsible)
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part 4 - Listen again and mark the phrases questioners use to preface each question.
part 5 - Complete the clarification questions in the box.
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Homework: p. 166 practice 2