Harry Potter read by Jim Dale

Dozy Damian in EH12   Wed Aug 24, 2005 8:58 pm GMT
CANDY: hi! I had a great time at Leeds so glad I went there.u been? Fantastic club scene! Not far from Manchester where u were - an hour by train through the Pennines but I never got to go there :-( Just saw the Pennines in the distance when it was clear enough. Of course 99.5% of us Scots would be nice to you.....dinnae fret about the 0.5%.....they're just mingers.

Hae a chuckle wi' these ...from the British Council website...supposed to be extracts from answers by UK students in exam papers. You may be interested in No 24, Candy. :-)

1 Ancient Egypt was inhabited by mummies and they all wrote in hydraulics. They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere.

2. The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinessis, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children, Cain, asked, "Am I my brother's son?"

3. Moses led the Hebrew slaves to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread which is bread made without any ingredients.Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. He died before he ever reached Canada.

4. Solomom had three hundred wives and seven hundred porcupines.

5. The Greeks were a highly sculptured people, and without them we wouldn't have history. The Greeks also had myths. A myth is a female moth.

6. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name.

7. Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.After his death, his career suffered a dramatic decline.

8. In the Olympic games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits, and threw the java.

9. Eventually, the Romans conquered the Greeks. History calls people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long.

10. Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March murdered him because they thought he was going to be made king. Dying, he gasped out: "Tee hee, Brutus."

11. Nero was a cruel tyranny who would torture his subjects by playing the fiddle to them.

12. Joan of Arc was burnt to a steak and was cannonized by Bernard Shaw. Finally Magna Carta provided that no man should be hanged twice for the same offence.

13. In midevil times most people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the futile ages was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verses and also wrote literature.

14. Another story was William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son's head.

15. Queen Elizabeth was the "Virgin Queen." As a queen she was a success. When she exposed herself before her troops they all shouted "hurrah."

16. It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented removable type and the Bible. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes and started smoking. And Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100 foot clipper.

17. The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespeare. He was born in the year 1564, supposedly on his birthday. He never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He wrote tragedies, comedies, and hysterectomies, all in Islamic pentameter. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couplet. Romeo's last wish was to be laid by Juliet.

18. Writing at the same time as Shakespeare was Miguel Cervantes. He wrote Donkey Hote. The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained.

19. During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe.

20. Later, the Pilgrims crossed the ocean, and this was called Pilgrim's Progress. The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this.

21. One of the causes of the Revolutionary War was the English put tacks in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their parcels through the post without stamps. Finally the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis. Delegates from the original 13 states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin discovered electricity by rubbing two cats backwards and declared, "A horse divided against itself cannot stand." Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.

22. Soon the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms.

23. Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest Precedent. His mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves by signing the Emasculation Proclamation.

24. In Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltaire invented electricity and also wrote a book called Candy.

25. Gravity was invented by Issac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the autumn when the apples are falling off the trees.

26. Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children. In between he practised on an old spinster which he kept up in his attic. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Bach was the most famous composer in the world and so was Handel. Handel was half German half Italian and half English. He was very large.

27. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.

28. The French Revolution was accomplished before it happened and catapulted into Napoleon. Napoleon wanted an heir to inherit his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn't have any children.

29. The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West.

30. Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. She was a moral woman who practised virtue. Her death was the final event which ended her reign.

31. The nineteenth century was a time of a great many thoughts and inventions. People stopped reproducing by hand and started reproducing by machine. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick raper, which did the work of a hundred men. Still reading? Have you no work to do?

32. Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the Organ of the Species. Madman Curie discovered radio. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx brothers.
Uriel   Wed Aug 24, 2005 9:09 pm GMT
Well, thank God those are from the British Council, because last time I saw those, they were ascribed to American students.

(And if Ben Franklin was in a room, there were certainly no virgins in with him. At least, not after a few minutes...)
Dozy Damian   Wed Aug 24, 2005 10:00 pm GMT
LOL URIEL....you've seen those before? I was just googling for a site about funny British place names just for the hell of it and I came across that British Council funny exam answers stuff by chance. I've seen others but not that one.

Anyway here's the site just to confirm. They may have been American students' answers or any nationality really as the British Council only deals with students from outside the UK as I discovered after I'd posted the above so they couldn't have been UK students I wouldn't have thought. I admit I don't know anything about the British Council and tonight was the first time I'd heard of it.

http://www.britishcouncil.org/learnenglish-central-stories-exams.htm

PS: are you sure it was Benjamin Franklin and not Bill Clinton?
Travis   Wed Aug 24, 2005 10:29 pm GMT
Just for the record, Candy, I'm American, and not of Scottish descent either, even though I do have my own reasons for being rather irked by *certain* sorts of English individuals (not you, but rather the kinds of people who claim that English English is somehow better than other sorts orf such and like). And yes, you are correct about the "the English king" not "the English" part, considering that we were talking about a period before the modern notion of the "nation-state" even existed, and that in the feudal context being spoken of, yes, it was specifically the English king which intervened there.
Uriel   Wed Aug 24, 2005 10:30 pm GMT
Oh, they were in the same mold, trust me!
Travis   Wed Aug 24, 2005 10:41 pm GMT
Dozy Damian, actually, the "Benjamin Franklin" part was definitely correct, as he was *quite* the womanizer, probably moreso than the previous president was/is; of course, this is something that is very often glossed over or at most briefly mentioned in passing in all our national mythology surrounding him and his like.
Uriel   Wed Aug 24, 2005 10:54 pm GMT
Actually, I think it's one of the more fun parts of our national mythology.
Candy   Thu Aug 25, 2005 9:56 am GMT
Hi Travis. Reading my post again, I realise that I majorly over-reacted, but I tend to get very tetchy, unfortunately...:( Next time I'll count to 100 (or maybe 1000) before I post...;)
I know what you mean about some English people - there's a minority who can be very superior (not only about language, about everything) who are supremely annoying and best avoided. Also, a few people get very snooty about suppsosedly 'inferior' varieties of English, as you've seen. Stupid people! Personally, I LOVE the fact that English has so many varieties, but we can all understand each other...
And thanks for correcting 'the English king' business - I tend to get irritated by phrases like 'Joan of Arc was burned alive by the English' as though the entire country were responsible!
Candy   Thu Aug 25, 2005 10:03 am GMT
Hi Damian, unfortunately I've only ever visited Leeds once, but was impressed - it was a lot better than I'd imagined! ;) Much like Manchester, really - you expect it to be a grimy Northern city, but in fact it's - well, a grimy Northern city, but with great nightlife, lots of culture, friendly people etc etc! And no Beckham any more - that's a major bonus!!
Thanks a lot for posting the exam answers!! I have a great one called something like 'actual metaphors made by GCSE students' but I don't have a scanner :( I'll have to google it maybe. I
t's full of stuff like 'he was as tall as a 6 foot 3 inch tree'; 'he was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck either, but a real duck that was actually lame'; 'the realisation that his marriage had disintegrated came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free cashpoint'.
Candy   Thu Aug 25, 2005 11:41 am GMT
Hi, found the metaphors, but stupidly posted them to the 'will English die out?' thread by mistake. Look there - they're hilarious!
Deborah   Sun Aug 28, 2005 12:58 am GMT
Candy, like Uriel, I also came across those exam answers before, ascribed to American students. And some of the metaphors you posted in another thread were also supposedly written by American kids, on a website I found. I wonder now whether someone just made them all up as a joke (a very funny one).
Uriel   Sun Aug 28, 2005 6:04 am GMT
They are pretty darn funny! I think I first saw them around 7-8 years ago. I had them printed out somewhere. I always remembered the part about the "climate of Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere." Reminds me of the joke that the state bird of New Jersey commutes.
Candy   Sun Aug 28, 2005 7:41 am GMT
Hi Deborah, Uriel. Yeah, I'd half-wondered if someone had made them up, and maybe just tweaked some of the details to make them more 'British' or 'American'. Still, really funny!
Uriel, what's the joke about the state bird of NJ?? (from a culturally ignorant British woman!) :)
My current favourite joke: A 3-legged dog walks into a saloon in the Old West, and says "I'm looking for the man who shot my paw".
Uriel   Sun Aug 28, 2005 7:54 am GMT
Hey there, Candy!

New Jersey, the "Garden State", is much maligned and gleefully abused on the East Coast (I think mostly because SOMEONE has to be the butt of all the jokes). Most people who are not actually FROM New Jersey itself only see it from the New Jersey Turnpike, a busy (and ugly) highway that is certainly anything but scenic. So there are a raft of jokes about the place, including:

The state tree is dead. (Instead of pine, or dogwood, or palo verde, etc.)

The state gem is concrete. (Not sapphire or opal!)

The state bird commutes (it doesn't even bother to live in NJ).

Oh, so you're from New Jersey? Which exit? (Instead of "Which town?")

The dog joke was funny, too -- I hadn't heard that one!
Candy   Sun Aug 28, 2005 8:33 am GMT
Oh, I see! "Garden State" a bit of a misnomer, then?? (At least for people who don't live in New Jersey)
There are some English towns which serve the same purpose, to be laughed at by everyone: Hull, usually, or Wolverhampton. (I've never been to either of them, but they have the reputation of being ugly and dull)
Uriel, Deborah: isn't it time you went to bed??!