The Mirror Effect: The Difference between a Chiasmus & an Antimetabol...

I am busy teaching English and visiting Toastmasters clubs, often in demand for explaining English. Many times my chief job seems to be teaching the basics, articles a and the, adjectives and adverbs, Americanisms and British English.

In Singapore half a dozen of us go around the clubs doing this. I and an American friend are in demand because we speak with correct intonation and accents.

Oddly enough, the others who don't speak as well, compensate by extremely detailed learning, even when they were not keen on English and academic studies as schoolchildren.

One such example is Terence, the dedicated student and teacher of English whose post I refer you to below.

The Mirror Effect: The Difference between a Chiasmus & an Antimetabol...: The following is a technical explanation, concerning rhetorical devices, on the difference between an ordinary chiasmus, and an antimetabo...

Do take a look. Even if the technical explanations pass you by, the quotations are a delight.

About the Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Explaining and Teaching English To Foreigners and Translating Americanisms

I have been Language Evaluator or grammarian, a cross between an English Language Coach and member of the dreaded Grammar Police at several Toastmasters International clubs in Singapore. I was recently challenging myself to find alternatives to phrases such as it sucks. I thought this colloquial phrase was an Americanism.










I was right.

I Sucked - Did I Really?
I went into online dictionaries looking for an explanation and was surprised by what I found. I had imagined that it was some kind of sexual reference. It turns out that the phrase 'it sucks' is to do with playing jazz on a horn. He blows is good, but he sucks means he lacks skill. It has become a common saying, a metaphor, not to be taken literally, like 'he can't tie his own shoelaces'.

So what is the British English equivalent? If the speaker says, I tried ice skating and singing and learning Mandarin but I sucked at all three, ...?  I was poor, useless, lacked skill, had no talent, was a dismal failure, had two left feet, had no green finger.

What of the phrase my life sucked? My life was miserable, unfair, a bad situation, troubled, joyless,
lousy, hopeless, going nowhere.

My Bad
What if the speaker says my bad? Definitely another Americanism. I would never say that. I am British. My bad translates into British English as my mistake or my fault.

Today's discoveries:

Wikipedia makes rhetoric very complicated. Try simple wiki.

Wiki's list of Rhetorical devices is comprehensive and alphabetical but very academic and used out of date English.  I wonder how much of it is cribbed or copied from out of date, out of copyright editions of Encyclopaedia Britannica using articles written by highbrow academics.
s
My latest discovery is a simple to understand on the web extract from a book, with modern examples, words you could actually say or read aloud.

I also liked the amusing titled: It was the best of sentences, it was the worst of sentences. By June Casagrande.

For anybody who doesn't know the original quotation, the book title is a parody of the well known opening line to Charles Dickens book A Tale of Two Cities, which starts, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. that's rather on oxymoron, a contradiction.


Useful Websites
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetoric

https://www.virtualsalt.com/rhetoric.htm#Self

https://www.virtualsalt.com/rhetoric6.htm#Alliteration

An amusing modern best seller on absurd punctuation (and spelling) with an ambiguous title:
Eats Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss
You can look inside it on Amazon.
ps://www.amazon.com/Eats-Shoots-Leaves-Tolerance-Punctuation/

 https://www.amazon.com/Was-Best-Sentences-Worst-Crafting/

You can look inside this one:
https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Eloquence-Secrets-Perfect-Phrase/

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and English speaker.