What you can learn about English from Obama and Medvedevs mistake

What you can learn about English from Obama and Medvedevs mistake Last weeks meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev accidentally provided a great example of how word choice can affect the way a sentence is understood.During a conversation about nuclear weapons in South Korea, Obama and Medvedev did not realize that a microphone was still on, and had a conversation that was meant to be private, but was broadcast over television.Starting at about 43 seconds in the video below, youll see this conversation played several times. The clip below is from a U.S. comedy show called The Daily Show that makes comedy out of daily news events.Watch the video, and then read some excerpts from it below.The Daily Show with Jon StewartMon Thurs 11p / 10cThe Borscht Whispererwww.thedailyshow.comDaily Show Full EpisodesPolitical Humor Satire BlogThe Daily Show on FacebookWhat Medvedev actually said to Obama was I transmit this information to Vladimir. First of all, he should have had the modal verb will in the sentence, as in: I will transmit this information to Vladimir.Beyond that, The Daily Shows Jon Stewart points out that Medvedevs wording makes his statement sound sinister, as if it had been said by Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers films. Or as if it should be spoken into a secret spys shoe phone, as Stewart says. The particular problem here is the word transmit.Stewart points out All hes really saying is oh, alright, Ill tell him. But the word transmit is a very technical, formal sounding word, that is typically used when we are talking about signals. Something about using this word that should only be used with radio, television, or shoe phone signals, makes the sentence sound sinister.Medvedev could have made the phrase sound less formal, and less sinister, by using a phrasal verb. For example:I will pass this information along to Vladimir. (to pass something along)I will let Vladimir know. (to let someone know)Or he could have just said: Ill tell Vladimir. I transmit this message to Vladimi r.So what can you learn from this? Well, dont get too worried. While some silly people might have actually thought that there was something evil happening, most people realize that non-native speakers of any language sometimes miss subtleties like these. Second, this is a good reason to study your phrasal verbs. In a one-on-one situation, between two equals, as in Obama and Medvedevs meeting, a phrasal verb would have created the perfect tone.Finally, in the video above, after talking about this particular sentence, Jon Stewart wonders whether all of the past problems between Russia and the U.S. could have been caused by the way Russians speak English. He then gives three example sentence pairs, with a very normal sounding sentence, and another version that has the same meaning, but sound sinister. Listen to them and see if you can understand how he changes them. Pflynn1148 In the first paragraph, you seem like an ESL student, using effect where affect is correct. LOIEnglish Thank s Pflynn1148, though I doubt that mistake makes me seem like an ESL student ??