2014年ESL之商务英语 16 Making Verbal Mistakes

 

Making Verbal Mistakes

Omar: Ha ha. 

Faith: What’s so funny? 

Omar: I’m editing Paul’s speech so that it can be posted on our website, but I didn’t realize how many verbal mistakes he made. 

Faith: Were there a lot? 

Omar: Yeah, he mispronounced the last name of the manager in charge of new products, for one. He also stumbled over the name of the new products. 

Faith: I did notice that he had a few problems with delivery. 

Omar: That’s putting it lightly. He stuttered when trying to list the products’ features. It’s true that some of the verbiage¹ was written like tongue twisters, but I thought he would have had it down cold by now. 

Faith: I noticed he made a few slips of the tongue, but I didn’t notice all that. I guess I wasn’t listening too closely. But what were you laughing about when I walked in? 

Omar: Paul made a Freudian slip. Instead of saying that “innovation is our bread and butter,” he said that it was our “bed and butter.” Maybe that’s why he had so many flubs. His mind was elsewhere. 

Faith: I think you’ll have plenty of material for a blooper reel. 

Omar: That’s true. In fact, if this were a film, I’d have more outtakes than usable footage! 

 

Script by Dr. Lucy Tse 

1 verbiage   

n.冗词；冗长

参考例句：

• Stripped of their pretentious verbiage,his statements come dangerously close to inviting racial hatred.抛开那些夸大其词的冗词赘语不论，他的言论有挑起种族仇恨的危险。
• Even in little 140-character bites,that's a lot of verbiage.即使限制在一条140个字也有很大一部分是废话。