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BBC Learning English

Video Words in the News 

25 September 2013

Lahore Walled City

Transcript:

The historic Walled City in Lahore, Pakistan, is a maze of narrow streets, busy bazaars and unplanned tenements.

But now the area is receiving a makeover.

Underground, sewage pipes and electricity cables are being laid; while at street level, wooden doors and terracotta tiles are making a comeback.

The authorities hope all this will make the area more attractive to tourists.

Vocabulary:

maze

an place in which you can easily get lost because there are many similar streets or 

paths

tenements

large buildings divided into apartments, usually in a poor area of the city

a makeover

a set of changes intended to make a person or place more attractive

sewage pipes

tubes through which waste water and human waste is carried away from houses and 

buildings 

terracotta

hard, baked clay; often red/brown in colour

Exercise:

Use one of the words or phrases below to complete each of these sentences from news reports. 

Note that you may have to change the form of a word to complete the sentence correctly.

maze / tenements / makeover / sewage pipes / terracotta

1.  The cholera epidemic began in Haiti in 2010 near a camp for UN soldiers, where there were leaking ________. Some human waste was also dumped near a river outside the camp.

2.  The entrance to Hillfield Gardens in London Road has had a ________ as part of a Gloucester City Council scheme to renovate structures in local parks.

3.  Dhakki is a ________ of narrow streets and alleyways, winding up and around a hill that flanks Peshawar's oldest and most famous street, Qissa Khwani - the street of the storytellers.

4.  It is difficult to visualise, but until the nineteenth century much of the site now occupied by Parliament Square was a labyrinth of medieval alleys and lanes crammed with shops, slums, taverns and _________ that harboured Westminster's notorious thieves and vagabonds.

5.  Thomas Hardy even referred to Reading as "Aldbrickham", the old brick town, in his novel Jude the Obscure.

Most of the town's Georgian and Victorian buildings are built of locallyproduced brick, tile and ________. 

Answers:

1.  The cholera epidemic began in Haiti in 2010 near a camp for UN soldiers, where there were leaking sewage pipes. Some human waste was also dumped near a river outside the camp.

Source: Haiti cholera victims threaten to sue the UN

2.  The entrance to Hillfield Gardens in London Road has had a makeover as part of a Gloucester City Council scheme to renovate structures in local parks.

Source: Hillfield Gardens gates in Gloucester restored    

3.  Dhakki is a maze of narrow streets and alleyways, winding up and around a hill that flanks Peshawar's oldest and most famous street, Qissa Khwani - the street of the storytellers.

Source: Bollywood's Shah Rukh Khan, Dilip Kumar and the Peshawar club

4.  It is difficult to visualise, but until the nineteenth century much of the site now occupied by Parliament Square was a labyrinth of medieval alleys and lanes crammed with shops, slums, taverns and tenements that harboured Westminster's notorious thieves and vagabonds.

Source: The hidden history of Westminster    

5.  Thomas Hardy even referred to Reading as "Aldbrickham", the old brick town, in his novel Jude the Obscure. 

Most of the town's Georgian and Victorian buildings are built of locally-produced brick, tile and terracotta. 

Source: Reading's chalk mines leave legacy for home owners