Hi everybody! The weather outside is sweltering. The word
"sweltering" means "very hot and sweaty and humid". We had a fast
moving thunderstorm this afternoon that overturned some of the small
sailboats at the Belmar Marina. The kids are all right, though, thank
God.

Today I am going to talk about a point of American business culture.
In American business, particularly in the tech and the IT sector,
people often keep in touch with people they've worked with over the
years--not just bosses, but co-workers.

This is why you sometimes will get e-mail invitations to reunions for
companies that you worked for five years ago that have since been sold
or folded or absorbed. It happens for two reasons. One, in America,
getting a job has much more to do with who you know than what you
know. Two, Americans often tie their identities up with their work.
Let me give an example.

When a Hindu makes the folded hands gesture and says, "Namaste" the
literal translation of that word is, "I recognize the self in you" or
"I recognize your eternal spirit".

An American's "self" is tied up in his work, what he does for a
living. It is part of how he derives self value.

Thus we have the concept of a "work spouse" is an American idiom for
someone who fulfills pseudo-spousal duties while at work--someone of
the opposite gender who makes sure your collar is tucked in if she is
female or compliments you on how you look if he is male. We need work
spouses because in America, our work is our lives, to a large degree.

You would never have relations with your work spouse! First of all
it's usually against the law and qualifies as sexual harassment, and
second of all, it's often against corporate policies. The term "work
spouse" is gender nonspecfic and is IDIOMATIC ONLY!

Hope I kept someone out of trouble with that blog post, because
believe you me, you can get yourself in SERIOUS trouble if you
misunderstand the concept. :-)

Today's accent reduction lesson is an easy one.

For those of you who speak the languages of the Indian subcontinent, I
want to show you the difference between the /w/ unvoiced fricative and
the /v/ voiced labiodental sound and the /f/ unvoiced labiodental
sound. It's a very common mistake for all speakers of subcontinent
languages to mix these up when speaking American English. I've
included a podcast you can listen to and some written examples are
below.