Phrases and practice

Learn a useful phrase in context, listen to its pronunciation and practise saying it.

• A private allusion in a dedication may remain opaque to the reader without thereby becoming an empty ornament.C2 · #4351
• Saying that the book would not exist without its dedicatee expresses gratitude, but does not by itself establish the nature of their contribution.C2 · #4352
• The plural in the dedication may draw the reader into an imagined 'we', although the boundaries of that community remain unstated.C2 · #4353
• A playful dedication may reduce the distance from the author without promising that the whole book will maintain the same tone.C2 · #4354
• A dedication placed before the story guides the initial reading, whereas the same words at the end might sound like a postscript.C2 · #4355
• Refusing a question's premise is not refusing discussion; sometimes it is what makes an answer possible without endorsing someone else's claim.C2 · #4356
• I will shorten the contribution to a question while retaining its condition, because without it a request for clarification would become an accusation.C2 · #4357
• A request for a 'yes or no' answer can structure the discussion only if the question does not conceal several incompatible commitments.C2 · #4358
• A joke introducing a question may open the discussion, but after the audience laughs the speaker should still be able to challenge its assumptions.C2 · #4359
• Giving the floor to the next person does not settle the dispute, but reduces the risk that speaking time itself will stand in for the strength of an argument.C2 · #4360
• If we spell everything out in the first line, we will remove the misunderstanding that was meant to become apparent to the audience gradually.C2 · #4361
• A similarity in sound triggers the joke in the original; the translation needs to retain the mechanism of the mistake, not necessarily the same two words.C2 · #4362
• An explanation of the mistake may be semantically accurate yet destroy the moment when the viewer was meant to recognise it unaided.C2 · #4363
• When retaining an ambiguous pronoun, let us check whether the audience of the new version can access both possible referents rather than only one.C2 · #4364
• The pause before the answer is part of the joke's construction, so let us not shorten it solely to make the dialogue flow more smoothly.C2 · #4365
• A person's visibility during the presentation does not itself describe their contribution to creating the material, so the two need to be named separately.C2 · #4366
• The order of names, without explanation, may suggest a hierarchy the team did not intend to establish.C2 · #4367
• I do not want the shared byline to obscure the difference between developing the argument and helping to present it.C2 · #4368
• The contribution statement should allow joint work on one task to be identified without pretending that each person completed it entirely alone.C2 · #4369
• Thanks for comments should not imply that their author endorsed the final conclusion, especially if they did not see the last version.C2 · #4370
• Placing a location at the centre of the map may organise the representation, but does not automatically make it the centre of the community's life.C2 · #4371
• An empty area on the map may reflect the limits of its maker's knowledge rather than an absence of places important to people who live there.C2 · #4372
• A uniform line connecting distant points may hide differences in the accessibility of successive sections that are crucial to the user.C2 · #4373
• When the colour boundary on the map is sharper than the transition on the ground, it should not by itself determine where the phenomenon ends.C2 · #4374
• A shared legend may make two maps easier to compare, provided it does not mask different meanings assigned to seemingly identical categories.C2 · #4375
• An aphorism's concision makes its judgement easier to remember, but supplies no argument for accepting it as true.C2 · #4426
• The symmetrical construction of two clauses may suggest a balance of reasons, although the paired concepts need not have equal standing.C2 · #4427
• An aphorism read after an event may seem prophetic if the known outcome is what first suggests how to interpret its ambiguous words.C2 · #4428
• A maxim quoted as a comment may become a recommendation through the way it is introduced, even when its wording remains unchanged.C2 · #4429
• An aphorism's striking conclusion may silence a question rather than answer it, so it is worth checking which step in the reasoning was omitted.C2 · #4430
• A wish in a toast refers to a desired future state and is therefore not an assurance that the speaker can guarantee it.C2 · #4431
• The translation of a call to raise a toast should retain the invitation to a shared gesture without turning participation into a test of loyalty to the host.C2 · #4432
• Repeating a familiar formula may create a shared moment precisely because it adds no new information but lets everyone recognise the ritual.C2 · #4433
• A toast addressed to an absent person may symbolically widen the circle of participants, although nobody expects that person to respond at the table.C2 · #4434
• When translating the toast, let us determine whether the final phrase completes the wish or cues the listeners to respond.C2 · #4435
• The claim 'without that decision, nothing would have happened' requires considering other possible paths, not merely identifying the sequence of known events.C2 · #4436
• In a comparison involving an earlier start, we cannot silently hold all later circumstances fixed if the start itself might have changed them.C2 · #4437
• Removing an obstacle in an imagined scenario creates an opportunity to act, but does not ensure that all participants would actually have taken it.C2 · #4438
• A coherent account of one alternative shows that we can narrate it, but does not by itself establish its likelihood relative to the others.C2 · #4439
• Even if the outcome would have been impossible without a particular contribution, it does not follow that this contribution alone was sufficient to achieve it.C2 · #4440
• A meaningful name may guide the reader's interpretation of a character, but that clue should not determine the reading of every action the character takes.C2 · #4441
• A nickname used by one character expresses that character's outlook, so replacing every narrative name with it may inadvertently privilege that perspective.C2 · #4442
• If two forms of a name are meant to conceal a character's identity for a time, standardising them in translation will reveal the answer before the plot does.C2 · #4443
• A name's playful sound needs to be considered alongside the story's register, because a word amusing in itself may sound cruel in a particular scene.C2 · #4444
• A place name promising peace may create a counterpoint to the plot without yet proving that the narrator is deliberately mocking its inhabitants.C2 · #4445
• The voice invoked in an epigraph need not belong to the chapter's narrator, so one sentence agreeing with the quotation does not yet establish a shared position.C2 · #4446
• Shortening a quotation into an epigraph may remove a qualification from the original and make the statement more categorical than its source author intended.C2 · #4447
• A mismatch between the epigraph and the chapter's events may invite the quoted idea to be questioned rather than indicate a random choice of words.C2 · #4448
• Leaving an epigraph in a foreign language may mark cultural distance, so the translation decision should consider that effect as well as the accessibility of its content.C2 · #4449
• A recurring epigraph may link chapters through a shared question without imposing the same answer or a single reading on them.C2 · #4450
• A manifesto may combine a diagnosis with a call to action, but approving the diagnosis does not yet mean accepting every proposed step.C2 · #4501
• The imperative gives demands energy, but does not explain who will be able to carry them out or how responsibility will be allocated.C2 · #4502
• The slogan 'from tomorrow, everything changes' may mark a symbolic beginning without setting a real deadline for completing every change.C2 · #4503
• A manifesto's uncompromising tone may mark the limits of its values rather than provide a ready account of how to resolve every conflict between them.C2 · #4504
• A signature on a declaration should be read within the limits of its content rather than extended to every later action under the same slogan.C2 · #4505
• An added moral may narrow the reading of a fable, although the plot still provides grounds for a more troublesome interpretation.C2 · #4506
• The cunning character's victory shows the outcome of the contest, but does not by itself establish whether the story approves of the means used.C2 · #4507
• Animal characters let us discuss human relationships at a distance, but do not remove the need to establish which traits actually matter in this fable.C2 · #4508
• Two characters repeating a similar test may highlight the difference in their choices, so let us not dismiss both scenes as needless repetition.C2 · #4509
• The moral's simplicity may belong to the fable's convention, but is no reason to treat every plot detail as equally subordinate to one claim.C2 · #4510
• Self-ironically naming one's own mistake may anticipate criticism, but should not deprive the other person of the chance to identify its actual consequences.C2 · #4511
• When someone jokingly calls themselves a failure, the reply need not judge their worth; it can engage with the joke without accepting the label literally.C2 · #4512
• Laughter after a self-ironic remark does not itself establish whether the listeners are laughing at the person, the situation or the apt wording.C2 · #4513
• A term a speaker applies to themselves does not thereby become a neutral nickname for others to use freely.C2 · #4514
• In translating self-irony, let us preserve the joke's target, because shifting it from the speaker to the listener turns a friendly disclosure of weakness into a jibe.C2 · #4515
• The phrase 'the city remembers' focuses attention on collective memory, but the analysis should still distinguish its carriers and the people who give them meaning.C2 · #4516
• Attributing anger to the wind may intensify the description without justifying an interpretation of the destruction as punishment for a particular offence.C2 · #4517
• The metaphor of a silent library describes the reader's relationship to the collection; it need not mean that the books contain no answer to the question.C2 · #4518
• When the forest 'defends itself' in a description, we should check whether the personification explains a balance of forces or silently attributes a human strategy to nature.C2 · #4519
• Removing a personifying verb from a translation may smooth the sentence while depriving the object of the interlocutor's role it had in the original.C2 · #4520
• An afterword may propose a privileged interpretation without removing details from the published story that allow it to be challenged.C2 · #4521
• The author's account of working on the book records their view of the process, not every decision made while writing.C2 · #4522
• A later afterword may respond to the book's reception, so its emphases should not automatically be projected onto the intentions behind the first version.C2 · #4523
• Discussing a rejected ending reveals a possibility considered during the work, but does not add those events to the published book's plot.C2 · #4524
• If the afterword argues with an earlier review, let us identify the target of the dispute so a defence against one objection does not sound like a general explanation of the whole book.C2 · #4525
• Calling a result not the worst may convey cautious praise, but without tone and context it should not automatically be elevated to enthusiasm.C2 · #4576
• Giving a failure a milder name changes how the event is presented, but does not remove its consequences for those affected.C2 · #4577
• An apparently modest remark may highlight an achievement through contrast with its scale; the translation should not remove that disparity in advance.C2 · #4578
• Denying a lack of courage does not yet establish whether the speaker praises the act itself or merely acknowledges that it required boldness.C2 · #4579
• A restrained formula repeated by several people may be a local way of giving evaluations rather than a concealed mockery of the addressee each time.C2 · #4580
• After the deception is revealed, the character's earlier assurance may sound different to the viewer, although the character still did not know of the danger when making it.C2 · #4581
• When adding an explanation to a line of dialogue, one should not put information known only to the audience into the character's mouth, as that would alter the scene's distribution of knowledge.C2 · #4582
• A character who knows the secret may deliberately avoid reacting to another's allusion; the absence of a visible response therefore does not prove that the character fails to understand it.C2 · #4583
• The audience may know one character's secret and remain uncertain about another; an advantage in one plot line does not make it an omniscient observer of the whole.C2 · #4584
• The viewer's unease at a carefree gesture need not mean that the gesture warns the character; it may arise solely from information previously given to the audience.C2 · #4585
• The gap between fragments may draw attention to their juxtaposition rather than promise that omitted events can be reconstructed unambiguously.C2 · #4586
• The return of the same phrase in distant parts of a work links the fragments, but does not prove that they describe one uninterrupted event.C2 · #4587
• Making every fragment a similar length may erase the distinction between a sudden flash of memory and sustained reflection on which the composition relies.C2 · #4588
• A fragment's heading may be an editorial voice added years later; before treating it as the key to the utterance, it is worth establishing who supplied it.C2 · #4589
• Reading the fragments in another order may reveal additional connections, but should not pretend that the author's sequence had no function.C2 · #4590
• An enumeration may create a rhythm of excess precisely because its successive elements do not follow the practical order of a catalogue.C2 · #4591
• The last small object in a long list may change the tone of the whole enumeration rather than be the least important item merely because of its position.C2 · #4592
• Repeating the conjunction before every item may slow the enumeration; removing those repetitions for fluency may therefore also change the pace of reading.C2 · #4593
• A list mixing things and feelings need not contain a category error if its purpose is to show what the narrator holds in memory as a single whole.C2 · #4594
• Ending with the words and so on leaves the series open, but does not assure the reader that every item they supply would fit it equally well.C2 · #4595
• An elevated tone may turn an ordinary gesture into a symbol of community, but need not mean that the gesture objectively had a greater scale.C2 · #4596
• Addressing future generations expands the imagined audience, but does not by itself prove that the speaker knows their future expectations.C2 · #4597
• An elevated tone may arise from broken-off sentences, not only elaborate vocabulary; simplifying the syntax need not therefore deprive an utterance of its solemn character.C2 · #4598
• An abrupt shift from elevated language to an everyday detail may deliberately restore a human scale to the speech rather than reveal stylistic inconsistency.C2 · #4599
• When assessing elevated rhetoric, it is worth separating suitability for the occasion from a personal dislike of elevated language; those two judgements need not lead to the same assessment.C2 · #4600