20231215 VOA Learning English Broadcast

Transcript:
https://voatrascript.github.io/html/Dec%2015,%202023.html

Learning English use a limited vocabulary and are read at a slower pace than VOA’s other English broadcasts. Previously known as Special English.
Have a good day.

Welcome to Learning English, a daily 30-minute program from the Voice of America. I’m Ashley Thompson. And I’m Dan Novak. This program is designed for English learners, so we speak a little slower and we use words and phrases especially written for people learning English.

On today’s program, you will hear stories from Dan Friedel and Brian Lynn. Later, John Russell talks about the grammar of gift-giving in this week’s Everyday Grammar. John then joins me to talk more about the topic. But first, a report on America’s first public park.

Almost 400 years ago, America’s early European colonists voted to tax each household in Boston about $70 in today’s money. The money was used to buy a local farm. The plan was to use it as a common area for the public.

That is how Boston Common, in the state of Massachusetts, became America’s first public park. Liz Vizza is president of the Friends of the Public Garden, an organization that supports Boston Common. She noted that Bostonians did not have backyards, private outdoor spaces behind their homes.

Boston Common, she said, became their front yard and back yard and common ground. It was a place that everybody owned. On any given day, colonists walking through Boston Common would see soldiers setting up camp, or their neighbors taking walks. They may also have seen public punishments.

Presidents George Washington and John Adams also visited the park. Visitors would have seen cows, because everyone had the right to keep one cow per household in the area. Today visitors will find dogs instead of cows in the 20-hectare park. The cows became outlawed in 1830.

As Boston Common became more of a place for recreation. Friends of the Public Garden estimates that Boston Common sees 7 million visitors each year.

Boston Common is a central stage of civic life in Boston, and it’s been that center stage of civic life for hundreds of years, ever since it began as a park in 1634, Visa said.

America’s oldest park is a place where we come to celebrate, we come to protest, we come to find a place alone, she added. Boston Common is home to several large pieces of art. They include the Embrace, a sculpture that shows civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. holding his wife, Coretta Scott King.

The Brewer Fountain was the park’s first public piece of art. It won the top award at the 1855 World’s Fair in Paris, France. The pieces of art found on the Common may soon change to include a wider selection of subjects.

Visa said, we want people to look at it with new eyes and just have a deeper understanding and respect and awareness of the history. That history includes the native Massachusett tribe, the first people to live where the common is now. The state of Massachusetts is named after the Massachusett people.

Visa said, people have lived on this land for 12,000 years, so we do want to think about colonial America because that’s a fascinating story for us. But what’s an even more fascinating story is to peel those layers open to think about the Native Americans living here.

VISA’s team is working with tribal members to develop a piece to recognize the Massachusett tribe. They hope to have something in place by 2026, when America will celebrate its 250th birthday. Do you still leave home with money in your pocket?

Now that many stores have gone cashless and most people do not have money in their pocket, those who once depended on handouts from strangers often end the day empty-handed. Many people without homes or jobs say they are not able to get much money from strangers anymore.

John Littlejohn is 62 years old and lives in Washington, D.C. He said he has been homeless for 13 years. In recent years, he said, people would tell him they left home without any money. I would be out here for six or seven hours and wouldn’t get more than $12 to $15, he said.

People can use apps on their mobile phones to pay for most things, so they do not leave home with bills or coins. For a while, those without homes and charities that depended on spare change suffered, but they are using technology too. Little John sells copies of a newspaper called Street Sense.

It is published by a nonprofit organization that says it helps homeless people. Now people who want to buy the newspaper can use an app. The money goes directly to the seller.

Little John is able to pay for an apartment with the money he gets from selling street scents and also other jobs he does. Some people who stand outside public places, such as subway stations, and ask for money are called panhandlers. Sylvester Harris is one of them.

He talked to a reporter near a subway station close to a large sports center in Washington, D.C. He said, people often look like they want to give him money, but they do not have coins or bills. Everybody just has credit cards or their phones now, he said.

Homeless people often do not have bank accounts, credit cards, or real identification that would permit them to use a mobile phone app to get money. The cashless society also used to be a problem for a charity organization called the Salvation Army.

The group is known for sending people to stand in busy places with a big red cooking pot known as a kettle. People walk past the kettle and drop a dollar or a few coins inside. However,

As more people started using their phones and credit cards to make payments, the Salvation Army was receiving less money. Now the organization permits people to make donations by tapping their phones on the red kettle. Michelle Wolfe is with the Salvation Army in Washington.

She said, the technology is only available in a few places around the city, but it already has brought in more money. Most people give $5, and often people give $20, she said. The head of StreetSense said he started to see a problem about 10 years ago.

Those who sold his newspapers said people did not have money to buy them. We were losing sales, said Brian Canmore. Times were changing and we had to change with them. He heard that a similar newspaper in Vancouver, Canada created a payment app. Now the newspaper in Washington uses the same technology.

Thomas Ratliff also works for StreetSense. He is in charge of the 100 cellars around Washington. He said a big problem started in 2020 when many workers stayed home because of the COVID-19 pandemic. He said people who came to Washington for work were the main buyers of the newspaper.

Many of those people are still not coming into the city. Now the sellers take the subway to busier areas outside of Washington, D.C. in Maryland and Virginia to sell the papers.

Ratliff noted that some payment apps that do not require a bank account, Venmo and Cash App, still require a steady mobile phone number. but the sellers often change their number and then they have trouble getting paid. There is a way for homeless people without jobs to get money in the cashless society.

They can use the Samaritan app. It permits people to give money to someone just by scanning a special code, a QR code with their phone. People who scan the code can read a story about the person and donate money that is meant to be used for buying food or clothing.

John Kumar started the Samaritan app. Charities pay him to use his technology for their work. He said, it is hard to walk past a person when you know their story. His app, he said, personalizes the person in need.

The people who use the app to ask for money must meet with the case manager to claim their money. The manager can also help the person with services, such as directing them to counseling or drug rehabilitation. None of the apps or new technology will solve every problem for homeless people.

Many people do not have the ability to sell newspapers, for example. Others are too old to work, so they depend on asking people for money. Not everyone has a mobile phone. Kumar said, some people are not a great fit for this kind of intervention.

He said some people need more support than a phone app can offer. I’m Dan Friedel. VOA Learning English has launched a new program for children. It is called Let’s Learn English with Anna. The new course aims to teach children American English through asking and answering questions and experiencing fun situations.

For more information, visit our website, learningenglish.voanews.com. An endangered bird in Indonesia could face new threats from development linked to the country’s new capital city. The bird is the malio, a tall animal with black feathers and a pink chest. It is native to Indonesia’s Sulawesi Island and a few neighboring ones.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature, IUCN, considers the Malio to be critically endangered. The environmental group’s Red List identifies wildlife across the world currently facing threats. The IUCN estimates only 8,000 to 14,000 adult malios remain in the wild. West Sulawesi has been set up as a support area for building activities.

The Indonesian government plans to move the nation’s capital from Jakarta to a new city on Borneo Island. West Sulawesi and Borneo are separated by an ocean passageway called the Makassar Strait and are just a six-hour boat trip apart. Support work will take place in areas around West Sulawesi’s capital, Mamuju.

The development is expected to include the building of new roads and seaports to be used to transport materials to the new capital named Nusantara on Borneo. Activities include tree clearing, digging, and removing stones. The process already has changed the forest environment on West Sulawesi and is harming Maleo nesting areas near the beach.

These latest changes follow others to the bird’s general environment or habitat linked to human activities in the area. These changes have made the trip for malleos to lay their eggs increasingly more difficult, The Malio is considered critically endangered because the next step is extinction,” said biologist Marcy Summers.

She directs the Alliance for Tampotica Conservation, a nongovernmental organization working to support Malio conservation in the area. Summers noted that Malio populations had decreased by more than 80 percent since 1980. Experts do not know how many Malios still live around Mamuju or across West Sulawesi Island.

The West Sulawesi Forestry Agency was only able to record the presence of nesting grounds in twenty-three villages based on reports from locals in the area. but of those only 18 are considered active nesting areas.

As far as I know, Maleo birds are in decline,” said Andy Ako Takdir, chief of the West Sulawesi Forestry Agency. He pointed to several reasons for the decline, including destruction of beach areas and expanding human development activities.

Takdir said the government has been warning people in the area to stop establishing palm oil operations and to halt all other development around Malayo nesting grounds. Officials said the government is committed to keeping the birds, even with massive development, to support the new capital city. Another problem has been thieves, also called poachers.

The Associated Press reports that poachers steal maleo eggs from the sand where their parents have hidden them. Poachers sell the eggs for about one dollar to people as food. The eggs are a traditional gift for many people in Mamuju and other parts of Sulawesi. Mohamed Idris is a local official in West Sulawesi.

He told the AP that government officials there are prepared to take steps to protect the Maleos, even with the new capital development. Idris said, Nature conservation must be used as an achievement and projects must not be built leaving behind problems. I’m Brian Lynn.

We are entering a major gift-giving season in the United States. People purchase goods and services for their loved ones, friends, co-workers, and others. But how do we talk about giving gifts? How do we use subjects, verbs, and objects to describe gift-giving? Those questions will be the subject of today’s Everyday Grammar.

Let’s start with some important terms and ideas. In a recent Everyday Grammar lesson, we explored questions about gifts, asking what others might want in terms of a gift. In today’s lesson, we will talk about statements we might make after we purchase the gift.

Before we continue with the lesson, we need to identify the key elements of a sentence. The simplest way to divide a sentence is into two parts, the subject and the predicate. The subject is generally a noun, noun phrase, or pronoun. The predicate, on the other hand, says something about the subject.

The predicate contains a verb, objects, indirect objects, and so on. Now that we have our basic building blocks of language, we should explore how to put them together. We will start with the predicate. Why? Because the predicate is central to today’s lesson.

The language we use in the predicate to describe a gift purchase often falls into a simple pattern. A transitive verb is one that takes a direct object. A direct object is the receiver of the verb’s action.

So, in the pattern we just learned about, we can say that the transitive verb takes a noun phrase that acts like the direct object. Finally, we might have a second noun phrase that acts like the indirect object, the person who receives the direct object.

Please note that the direct object does not always appear directly next to the verb, as we will see. Some examples will clarify this explanation. When we talk about gift-giving, we often use three transitive verbs, get, buy, and give. The direct object is the gift. The indirect object is the person receiving the gift.

So, let’s imagine we have a friend named Mary. We might say the following about Mary’s gift-giving decision. In our example, the subject is Mary. The predicate is got her son a book. The direct object is a book. What did Mary get? She got a book. Who is going to receive the book?

Her son. In this case, her son is the indirect object. So, in the sentence, Mary got her son a book, we can say that the structure is subject plus transitive verb plus noun phrase 1 plus noun phrase 2. Here are two other examples. Let’s use the transitive verbs BUY and GIVE.

Jonathan bought his mother a sweater. Felicia gave her friend a painting. All of these examples are in their past forms, but we can also use these verbs in other forms as well. Let’s take some time to work with these ideas. Create a sentence using the following elements. The subject is my father.

The predicate consists of the verb get, the noun phrase a vase, and the noun phrase my mother. Pause the audio to consider your answer. Here is one possible answer. My father got my mother a vase. The order of the sentence is subject plus transitive verb plus indirect object plus direct object.

Today we explored one pattern we often use to describe gift-giving. To be clear, we use other patterns as well. One of these makes use of the prepositions to and for, but that will have to be the subject of a future lesson. I’m John Russell. You just heard this week’s Everyday Grammar lesson.

John Russell joins me now to talk a little bit more about it. Welcome, John. Hi, Ashley. Thanks for having me on the show. Your lesson explored statements about gifts. Is there something that you left out of the lesson that you would like to discuss here? Absolutely. In most lessons, I can’t include everything.

There are time limitations. One key point that I did not get a chance to explore is that in our sentence pattern, Subject plus Transitive Verb plus Noun Phrase 1 plus Noun Phrase 2, you can, in some cases, substitute a pronoun in for one of the noun phrases.

And that’s because pronouns can stand in place of nouns. Yes, absolutely. So, in the report, you heard the sentence, Mary got her son a book. We can replace the noun phrase, her son, with the pronoun him, if we know who him refers to. That’s right.

So, I might say, for example, my mother got me a laptop. In this case, I use the pronoun me as the indirect object. That’s right. The key point is that the lesson’s sentence pattern still holds. We can just substitute a pronoun in for a noun phrase in some cases.

Let’s do a couple more examples. We might say, Tom gave his wife a new bookshelf. We have the transitive verb gave, the direct object is the noun a new bookshelf, and the indirect object is his wife.

If we knew who was being discussed, we could replace the noun phrase his wife with the pronoun her. So Tom gave his wife a new bookshelf could also be Tom gave her a new bookshelf. So John, what Christmas gifts do you have for people this year? Good question, Ashley.

I bought my son a musical instrument called a ukulele. and I will give my daughter a toy bear. Wow, those are some lucky kids. Well, thanks so much for those explanations, and thank you for joining me on today’s program. Thanks for having me on the show, Ashley. See you next time.

And that’s our program for today. Join us again tomorrow to keep learning English through stories from around the world. I’m Ashley Thompson. And I’m Dan Novak.