When the English tongue we speak
Why is break not rhymed with weak?
Won’t you tell me why it’s true
We say sew, but also few?
And the maker of a verse
Cannot rhyme his horse with worse?
Beard is not the same as heard,
Cord is different from word,
Cow is cow, low is low,
Shoe is never rhymed with foe.
Think of hose and dose and lose,
And think of goose and yet of choose,
Think of comb and tomb and bomb,
Doll and roll and home and some.
And since pay is rhymed with say,
Why not paid with said, I pray?
Think of blood and food and good;
Mould is not pronounced like could.
Why is done, but gone and lone -
Is there any reason known?
To sum it up, it seems to me
That sounds and letters don’t agree.
Found here.
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Latest update: March 9, 2010.
Found a dead link (i.e. one that isn’t working anymore)? Please write me a comment below! Thanks in advance!
Latest update: December 31, 2009.
Found a dead link (i.e. one that isn’t working anymore)? Please let me know by posting a comment below! Thanks in advance!
Now that I have more free time, I’m finally back with a post in English! *hopes her English-speaking readers didn’t miss her*
I should update this site more often, because “Learning by Translating” is a site I created to share my experiences as a student translator (or Translation student, fate voi, like we say in Italian). Unfortunately, I’ve been very busy with my classes and couldn’t update more than I actually did. Classes till 7 p.m. almost every day + homework = very little time for other activities (besides writing, I’ve been neglecting another hobby of mine, scrapbooking).
As some of you may already know from reading my posts on Twitter, I switched to Mac. My MacBook Pro has a 13 inch monitor, OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) installed, a 160 GB hard disk drive, 2 GB of RAM (which are enough for running OS X, but not for using XP as a virtual machine with Parallels. I created a partition for XP using Boot Camp, and if I boot XP at startup, it works perfectly). I needed to install XP on a partition because, as you might already know, Trados doesn’t work on OS X. I’m going to learn how to use it in the second semester, so I have to install it somewhere. I use Subtitle Workshop for subtitles (I’ve been subtitling short films in French class), and there isn’t a Mac version of the software. By the way, I’m happy with my new computer! It hardly crashes, and there’s no need to format your hard drive because of viruses. I’m getting used to the different keyboard shortcuts, and to the fact that there’s no “Del” button on Mac keyboards. I didn’t need to insert a CD when I plugged my printer, OS X recognized and installed it by itself! I still have a lot to learn though. I’ve been told: “You’ll never get back to Windows after you get a Mac”. I hope so.
P.S.: You can even choose which language to use. For example, I’m using it in English. It was in Italian when I bought it, and it took me a while to realize that “Scrivania” is “Desktop” and “Archivio” is “File”. Why were they localized that way, when “File” and “Desktop” are commonly used in Italian? I don’t get it.
Latest update: December 4, 2009.
Have you found a dead link (i.e. one that isn’t working anymore)? Please let me know by posting a comment below! Thanks in advance! 
Latest update: December 4, 2009.
Have you found a dead link (i.e. one that isn’t working anymore)? Please let me know by posting a comment below! Thanks in advance! 
- Dictionnaire de l’argot et français familier (FRA)
- Dictionary.com – English dictionary, thesaurus, synonyms and antonyms. (ENG)
- Die.net -Free cross-referenced definitions, spelling correction, and word searches from WordNet, Webster’s, FOLDOC, and a variety of specialized sources. (ENG)
- Dizionario di italiano Sabatini-Coletti. Corriere della Sera (ITA)
- Enciclopedia e Vocabolario Treccani (ITA)
- Garzanti Linguistica (ITA <-> ENG/FRA) – Note: registration (free of charge) required.
- Il Sansoni Inglese (bilingual: ITA – ENG)
- LAROUSSE.fr – Encyclopedia in French and various dictionaries (French monolingual dictionary, FRA-ITA, FRA-ENG, FRA-SPA, FRA-DEU)
- Le Grand dictionnaire terminologique (bilingual: ENG - FRA)
- L’Internaute – Encyclopédie (FRA)
- Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (ENG)
- Macquarie Dictionary – Note: subscription required (Australian English)
- Merriam-Webster Online – Dictionary, thesaurus, English-Spanish dictionary and a resource for medical terms (ENG)
- Oxford Paravia – Il dizionario italiano/inglese (bilingual: ITA – ENG)
- Urban Dictionary (English slang)
- Webster’s Online Dictionary – with multilingual thesaurus translation. (ENG)
- Wiktionary (multilingual)
- Wordreference (multilingual)
Latest update: December 31, 2009.
Found a dead link (i.e. one that isn’t working anymore)? Please let me know by posting a comment below! Thanks in advance! 
http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/
Last year I made this bilingual (English and Italian) glossary for an English Interpreting exam. It contains marketing, finance, economics and business terms and expressions (one section of the glossary is dedicated to business-related idioms). You can find the references on the last page of the .pdf file I put here (you need Adobe Reader to open it).
You can download it by clicking on the link below:
English-Italian Business Glossary (.pdf, 1.6 MB)
If you speak English as a second language and would like to learn Business English, you can also download a very useful podcast: Business English Pod. There are also grammar and vocabulary videos (for example, those on Web 2.0 – part 1 and 2). Audio and video files can be downloaded for free, but there are other materials available for subscribers/premium members.
Ilaria. 23. Italian. Translator and blogger. Languages: Italian, English, French and a little bit of German.
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