50 Sophisticated Words in English – With Examples From Movies

1. Obtuse – Lacking quickness of perception or intellect.

Example: The Shawshank Redemption

Andy Dufresne: “Are you obtuse?”

2. Condescending – having or showing an attitude of patronizing superiority.

Example: The Social Network

Mark Zuckerberg: “Did I Adequately Answer Your Condescending Question?”

1. anomaly

deviation from the normal or common order or form or rule

2. antidote

a remedy that stops or controls the effects of a poison

deja vu
the experience of thinking a new situation already occurred

1. unrequited

not returned in kind

2. untenable

incapable of being defended or justified

3. vicarious

experienced at secondhand

4. vile

morally reprehensible

5. waft

a long flag; often tapering

6. white elephant

a valuable possession whose upkeep is excessively expensive

7. zealous

marked by active interest and enthusiasm

Modern Filipino = Tagalog + English

Modern Filipino is a superset language. We can also call it X-Filipino for “extended” or
“expanded” (rightly fitting a bunch of banana-eating X-men “mutants”). It is therefore
bigger than English itself because it combines two officially known languages into one.
There are two ways to mix the two:

1. Alternating between two pure sentences. Tagalog. English. Tagalog…

2. Mixing both Tagalog and English words in the same sentence.

There is no point translating nouns and technical terms into some absurdly sounding
Tagalized equivalent (stop wasting your time and effort people at Sentro ng Wikang
Filipino; put your man-hours elsewhere) – it’s just total malarkey! “Textbook”, “revolution”,
“evacuation” and “acceleration” do not have to be dumbed down into Tagalog-
sounding “teksbuk”, “rebulusyon”, “ebakyuasion”, and “akselerasyon”, respectively. (Let’s
not end up like the Japanese who have to re-spell “election” to “erection”!) Just use the
English terms as is. Adjectives like “cute”, “smart”, “convenient” and “efficient” are all
accepted as Modern Filipino words. Edi napakaconvenient diba?

So let’s just give this a try – and see if Tagalog dissolves into oblivion once combined with
a super-power language like English. Fellow contributor Add rightly summed it when he
said “the weaker language will be swallowed by the stronger.”

https://www.getrealphilippines.com/2016/04/introducing-modern-filipino-taglish-
mixed-language-befitting-mixed-race-nation/

THE RELUCTANT SEPARATION BETWEEN TAGALOG AND FILIPINOIn a country divided into
many ethnic groups depending on regions, there are about 170dialects and 8 major
languages that boast of a million or more users with Tagalog being one ofthem.
Since it’s the language spoken among natives of Central Luzon that houses the capital
city
of Manila, Tagalog is looked upon in a higher level among all languages as far as social,
historicaland political aspects are concern. Logically it has gained the edge, thus, during
the drafting of the1935 constitution under then President Manuel L. Quezon, Tagalog was
declared as the nationallanguage of the Philippines.This has lead to hurt feelings and
silent uproar among speakers of the other languages. ThePhilippine government, with its
strong adherence to democracy where sovereignty reigns in the people, has made a
move to unite everyone under one language that solidifies all Pilipinos.
They then adapted “Filipino” as the general term that would refer to the name of
thecountry’s national language. But still no one can deny that generally speaking: Filipino
is Tagalog
and Tagalog is Filipino, one just needs to understand the national issue that surrounded it.
Some language experts consider Filipino as a version of “Tagalog plus others”. This is
because Filipino has become the ever-
evolving Tagalog with the inclusion of many new andinvented
words mostly foreign in origin. When you take a stroll in downtown Manila, you’ll
commonly encounter the younger generation of Pilipinos speak Tagalog with a lot of twist
andtwang.
These are accepted, and can be called “Sophisticated Tagalog” or “Modernized
Filipino.”
HOW TAGALOG CAME INTO EXISTENCEThousands of years ago, inhabitants from the
Malayan Archipelago and later theMongoloids coming from parts of Southeast Asia had
reached the Philippines by crossing through
land bridges. Then the period from early 7000 BC untill 3000 BC saw large numbers of
peoplefrom places like the Malay Peninsula, Indonesian islands, Vietnam and China
setting foot on thehundreds of beautiful tropical islands of the country.All these immigrants
have made their own significant contributions to the birth of all thedialects spoken in
every province of the Philippines, including the soon to become popular
Tagaloglanguage.
Tagalog was derived from the words “taga
-
ilog”, which means “from the

river” or “riverdweller”, and came from Sanskrit.

There are not many documents that will confirm the earliest sources of the Tagalog
language, but there is a theory that says it’s an Austronesian language used by the
Malayo
-Polynesian race or a language developed by Sanskrit gurus who were long time settlers
of thePhilippines.
Tagalog’s initial developments have got to do with the major influences from the
Malaysand the Chinese, and later on from its major colonizers, the Spanish
and Americans. It’s kno
wn to
have its own unique writing system that originated from an ancient script called
“Pagbabaybay orBaybayin” that uses syllabication.

https://www.academia.edu/35728642/Tagalog

TOP DEFINITION

twangmusic
To make your voice go high pitched all of a sudden, for a quick moment, then go back to
regular sounding. a lot of old western music singers have this wonderful talent. also alex
burrows on the Vancouver canucks has an uncontrollable twang.

"She (twang) left me" if a western music singer used a twang.

twang
Sep 17, 2014

This is the kind of blog topic I love -- like the soup or bacon sandwich ones -- where I'm
reporting on my slowly acquired reali{s/z}ation that there are subtle UK/US differences in
meanings of certain familiar words. The meanings are so similar that they often refer to the
same things. What's different is where the cent{er/re} and periphery of the meaning are.
Because these differences are hard to tease out, we may go through conversations not
reali{s/z}ing that we're not quite communicating. Of course, it's loving these kinds of things
that got me to be a lexical semanticist in the first place.

It all started with the World in Words podcast three years ago, in which I was Patrick Cox's
guest. Here's how he titled the segment:

Patrick had asked me about how my speech is received in England (I can't remember if
this bit is actually in the podcast), and I'd remarked that it disconcerts me when it's said
that I have a twang. To me, people from Kentucky have twangs. I have an accent (of
course, we all do), but it's not anything I'd describe as twangy. My accent is (among other
things) mumbly. I don't see 'mumbly' and 'twangy' as going together.
(Regarding mumbly: I liked Ben Yagoda's post this week about new -y adjectives.) I
expect a twangy accent to sound like a country (AmE jocular) gee-tar.

Patrick went along with my puzzlement at being called 'twangy' in his blog post, but
the twangs kept coming my way, and I kept hearing twang applied to accents that I
don't consider to be 'twangy'. The final straw came (on) Thursday
when the Guardian referred to Peter Capaldi's accent as a 'Scottish twang'. I thought:
what in the world does twang mean if it applies to Peter Capaldi? (If you're reading this
aloud, note that in my accent 'Peter Capaldi' comes out as Peter Capaldi Swoooon.)

Some discussion on Twitter started to lift the scales from my eyes, and a little on-line survey
I've done has confirmed: BrE has a meaning for twang that's not found in AmE, nor in its
own dictionaries (e.g. Oxford, Collins). Have/take a look:

Both AmE and BrE have the sense 'a strongly nasal quality in a person's speech, esp in
certain dialects' (as Collins puts it). That is reflected in the light green bar in the chart. The
orange 'neither of the above' bar may be populated by people who didn't like that I
didn't say 'nasal' or something similarly specific in my definitions. The teal bar represents
'has a hint of an accent', and that is much more strongly BrE than AmE--just edging out
the (presumably) older meaning. Similar numbers of Americans (107) and British (103) are
represented in the results.

The 'hint of an accent' meaning explains the cases where people say that I or Peter
Capaldi have a twang--we're not speaking with the full force of the accents associated
with our regions. I think this use is probably found in Ireland too, or else I can't explain this
sentence about the X-Men character Magneto, as played by Sir Ian McKellen (who once
had a sip of my Coke when we were marching in the Johannesburg Pride parade; oh,
and I like to [orig. AmE] name-drop):

At least he does sound German when he speaks German, but you'd think that he might
have had a slight German twang when he was speaking English, what with him being
RAISED BY NAZIS AND ALL. (from GloBWE)

German? Twang? This does not compute, given the meaning of twang that I use,
but it works fine if what you mean by twang is not 'having a certain kind of accent'
but 'having a bit of an accent of some kind'. One of the British respondents
described it as "the hint of a weird or unusual accent that jars with the listener's
expectations".

I also asked which accents people think are twangy, but since I didn't do that with
a multiple-choice question, I can't give you a nice chart. When talking about other
countries, the British mostly said the US (especially south and midwest). Some said
Australia. When asked about twangs in their own country, the West Country was
mentioned most often.

People from the US strongly associated it with the US South (from Appalachia to
Texas) and often said they would not use the word of non-American accents.

Lots of people from both countries mentioned banjos.

I know people from other countries would like to a breakdown of results from those,
but there weren't very big numbers from any other country. Still, 11 out of 14
Canadians preferred the 'definite regional accent' meaning, as did 10 of 11
Australians. So, the 'hint of accent' looks particularly British.

And this makes a lot of sense. British people are generally highly sensitive to and
about accents. As famously written by G. B. Shaw, “It is impossible for an
 Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or
despise him”. Britain's diversity of accents in its small geographic space means that
the accents can communicate a lot about geographical, educational and social
status--reflecting and contributing to the famous British class system. Since many
British people (including one I live with) form immediate and lasting impressions of
others based on their accents, it's not surprising that they're interested in not just
"accents", but hints of accents.

I can't go without saying a little something about nasal. Nasal is a word that people
apply to all kinds of accents, even those that are anything but nasal from a
physiological perspective. Allan Metcalf has discussed this on the Lingua Franca
blog, which he closes with "And don't get me started about twang..."

Many thanks to all 252 of you who so kindly responded to the survey. I was
particularly touched that some used the comments space to write nice things
about this blog or my Twitter feed. I feel like the luckiest linguist on the internet.

Twang still means the noise that a bowstring or any similar taut string makes when plucked
-- excluding perfectly pitched musical notes but including deliberately "distorted" guitar
sounds.

Beyond that, I reckon we use the word without a very clear idea what we mean ourselves
-- still less what other speakers mean. A degree of relative clarity emerges from

1 the attitudes and prejudices we feel to the accent and/or speakers of the accent
described as having a twang

2 our response to the "sound symbolism" of the word -- what the noises make us (perhaps
unconsciously) think of. There are two sounds:

a. NG -- which often suggests nasality or resonance

b. TW -- which sometimes suggests small measure, as in twitter, tweet, twinge, twist (of
lemon)

A twang is a quality in someone's way of speaking in which sound seems to

be coming through the nose.
...the nasal twang of his voice.
...her broad Australian twang.

a strongly nasal quality in a person's speech, esp in certain dialects