I Sell My Dreams by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Para by para explanation)
One morning at nine o’clock, while we were having breakfast on the terrace of the Havana Riviera Hotel under a bright sun, a huge wave picked up several cars that were driving down the avenue along the seawall or parked on the pavement, and embedded one of them in the side of the hotel. It was like an explosion of dynamite that sowed panic on all twenty floors of the building and turned the great entrance window to dust. The many tourists in the lobby were thrown into the air along with the furniture, and some were cut by the hailstorm of glass. The wave must have been immense, because it leaped over the wide twoway street between the seawall and the hotel and still had enough force to shatter the window.
Explanation … Havana is the capital of Cuba. Havana Riviera Hotel is one of the luxurious hotels in the capital city. The narrator was having his breakfast in the terrace on a sunny morning when a monstrous sea wave came and hit the sea wall, the avenue and the hotel that stood at a distance from the sea. The wave had humongous destructive potential. It hit a parked car with such force that it hit and got embedded in the sea wall. Understandably, the car was reduced to ruins by the cataclysmic impact of the wave. The 20-storey hotel was rocked by the wave. Panic gripped all the inmates of the hotel. The entrance window lay in tatters. Tourists relaxing in the lobby were flung upwards along with their furniture. Shards of the shattered glass windows pierced some guests. The gigantic wave leaped over the two-way street and decimated the hotel building.
The cheerful Cuban volunteers, with the help of the fire department, picked up the debris in less than six hours, and sealed off the gate to the sea and installed another, and everything returned to normal. During the morning nobody worried about the car encrusted in the wall, for people assumed it was one of those that had been parked on the pavement. But when the crane lifted it out of its setting, the body of a woman was found secured behind the steering wheel by a seat belt. The blow had been so brutal that not a single one of her bones was left whole. Her face was destroyed, her boots had been ripped apart, and her clothes were in shreds. She wore a gold ring shaped like a serpent, with emerald eyes. The police established that she was the housekeeper for the new Portuguese ambassador and his wife. She had come to Havana with them two weeks before and had left that morning for the market, driving a new car. Her name meant nothing to me when I read it in the newspaper, but I was intrigued by the snake ring and its emerald eyes. I could not find out, however, on which finger she wore it.
Explanation … It took almost six hours for the fire brigade and a few enthusiastic volunteers to cart away the rubble strewn all around. The ensuing confusion deflected the attention of people from the smashed car that had remained stuck with the wall. When a crane arrived to retrieve the embedded car from the wall, a dead woman badly battered by the destructive impact of the wave was found behind the steering wheel of the car. Her face was too disfigured to identify her. The shoes and the clothes she wore were miserably ripped to pieces. It was found that the dead woman wore a serpent-shaped gold ring with emerald eyes.
The police identified her as the housekeeper of the Portuguese ambassador who lived in Havana with his wife. It soon emerged that the dead housekeeper had come to Havana accompanied by the ambassador two weeks ago. On that fateful morning, she was heading to the market driving a new car. The newspaper published details of the dead woman giving her name. However, the sight of the peculiar ring in the dead woman’s fore finger puzzled the narrator. As the body had been badly mutilated, the finger in which she wore the ring could not be ascertained.
This was a crucial piece of information, because I feared she was an unforgettable woman whose real name I never knew, and who wore a similar ring on her right forefinger which, in those days, was even more unusual than it is now. I had met her thirty-four years earlier in Vienna, eating sausage with boiled potatoes and drinking draft beer in a tavern frequented by Latin American students. I had come from Rome that morning, and I still remember my immediate response to her splendid soprano’s bosom, the languid foxtails on her coat collar, and that Egyptian ring in the shape of a serpent. She spoke an elementary Spanish in a metallic accent without pausing for breath, and I thought she was the only Austrian at the long wooden table. But no, she had been born in Colombia and had come to Austria between the wars, when she was little more than a child, to study music and voice. She was about thirty, and did not carry her years well, for she had never been pretty and had begun to age before her time. But she was a charming human being. And one of the most awe-inspiring.
Explanation …Thirty four years ago, the narrator had the occasion to meet a woman in Vienna (Austria’s capital) wearing a ring of the some bizarre design. Apart from the non-conventional design of the ring, the woman wore the ring in her right forefinger. Wearing ring in right forefinger was not an accepted practice then. The encounter with this woman happened in a restaurant frequented by Latin American students. In the eatery, the narrator was enjoying his draft beer along with sausage and boiled potatoes. He had arrived from Rome that morning. The woman’s bodily look and her attire along with her unusual Egyptian ring remained etched in the narrator’s mind. She spoked faltering Spanish, but it didn’t curb her talkative nature. The narrator assumed that she was the only Austrian in the long breakfast table. Later, it emerged that she was born in Colombia and had migrated to Austria in the years between the two World Wars (1st and 2nd). She was a young girl thenm, who came to learn instrumental and vocal music.
When the meeting with the narrator happened in the tavern, she had reached the age of thirty. Being not so good-looking, she had lived not a comfortable life. The hardship had taken its toll on her who looked older than what she actually was. Nevertheless, she was a charming person who left people around her somewhat awed.
Vienna was still an old imperial city, whose geographical position between the two irreconcilable worlds left behind by the Second World War had turned it into a paradise of black marketeering and international espionage. I could not have imagined a more suitable spot for my fugitive compatriot, who still ate in the students’ tavern on the corner only out of loyalty to her origins, since she had more than enough money to buy meals for all her table companions. She never told her real name, and we always knew her by the Germanic tongue twister that we Latin American students in Vienna invented for her: Frau Frieda. I had just been introduced to her when I committed the happy impertinence of asking how she had come to be in a world so distant and different from the windy cliffs of Quindio, and she answered with a devastating: ‘I sell my dreams.’
Explanation .. The Second World War had taken its toll on the social fabric of Viena. The city, the citadel of music, had degenerated to become a hub of spies and those indulging in black-market. The woman was a fugitive who made it her habit to her meals in the tavern where students of her ancestral land came to live. Since she never disclosed her name, the narrator along with fellow Latin American students gave the name ‘Frau Frieda’ to her. On his first meeting with her, the narrator asked her to migrate to so far-off a land like Austria. Quite quizzically, she answered “I sell my dreams.”
In reality, that was her only trade. She had been the third of eleven children born to a prosperous shopkeeper in old Caldas, and as soon as she learned to speak she instituted the fine custom in her family of telling dreams before breakfast, the time when their oracular qualities are preserved in their purest form. When she was seven she dreamed that one of her brothers was carried off by a flood. Her mother, out of sheer religious superstition, forbade the boy to swim in the ravine, which was his favourite pastime. But Frau Frieda already had her own system of prophecy.
Explanation … The woman nicknamed Frau Fieda had as many as 11 siblings. She was the third among them. Her father was doing well in his trade as a shop owner in Caldas. In her family, the members discussed their dreams while eating breakfast. The woman, then a tiny girl beginning to speak, soon adopted this habit. She narrated her dreams in the breakfast table. When she was seven years in age, she dreamed that her brother was swept away by flood. This alarmed the mother so much that she forbade the son from swimming in the mountainous stream. The boy was not happy with the curb, but it was Frau Frieda’s cautionary dream that prevailed.
‘What that dream means,’ she said, ‘isn’t that he’s going to drown, but that he shouldn’t eat sweets.’ Her interpretation seemed an infamy to a five-year-old boy who could not live without his Sunday treats. Their mother, convinced of her daughter’s oracular talents, enforced the warning with an iron hand. But in her first careless moment the boy choked on a piece of caramel that he was eating in secret, and there was no way to save him. Frau Frieda did not think she could earn a living with her talent until life caught her by the throat during the cruel Viennese winters. Then she looked for work at the first house where she would have liked to live, and when she was asked what she could do, she told only the truth: ‘I dream.’ A brief explanation to the lady of the house was all she needed, and she was hired at a salary that just covered her minor expenses, but she had a nice room and three meals a day—breakfast in particular, when the family sat down to learn the immediate future of each of its members: the father, a refined financier; the mother, a joyful woman passionate about Romantic chamber music; and two children, eleven and nine years old. They were all religious and therefore inclined to archaic superstitions, and they were delighted to take in Frau Frieda, whose only obligation was to decipher the family’s daily fate through her dreams.
Explanation … Quite inexplicably, the 7-year-old foreteller explained her dream as a message for the 5-year-old boy to shun sweets. The boy had got used to eat the sweets on Sundays. The mother abided by her prophetic daughter’s warning, and enforced the sweets ban with an iron hand. Sadly, the boy was choked to death when a piece of caramel got stuck to her windpipe. The winter in Vienna is extremely frigid. The realization that she couldn’t make a living from her ability to foresee the future dawned in her mind during one such insufferable winter. She started to look for families where she could work and live. Quite naturally, the employer asked her about the chores she could do. She replied, “I dream.”
She briefed the mistress of the house about what she meant by ‘dreaming’. She succeeded to get chosen, but the salary she was offered was a pittance. Nevertheless, she had a room for herself and got three meals a day to eat. As expected, she narrated her dreams of the previous night in the breakfast table. Everyone listened to her keenly.
The father was a retired financier and his wife was a joyful woman who loved Romantic chamber music. There were two children – one 9 years old and the other 11 years old. The family was religious and so were inclined to believe what the foreteller maid said to interpret from her dreams.
She did her job well, and for a long time, above all during the war years, when reality was more sinister than nightmares. Only she could decide at breakfast what each should do that day, and how it should be done, until her predictions became the sole authority in the house. Her control over the family was absolute: even the faintest sigh was breathed by her order. The master of the house died at about the time I was in Vienna, and had the elegance to leave her a part of his estate on the condition that she continue dreaming for the family until her dreams came to an end.
Explanation .. During the war years, when a dark cloud of death and destruction loomed over the country, Frau’s cautionary words helped to quieten the nerves of the family members. Using her soothsaying prowess, while seated around the breakfast table, she laid out a plan of action for individual members of the family for that day, so that they remained out of the harm’s way. The whole family followed her advice unquestioningly. In a way, she lorded over the whole house, and no one dared to deviate even slightly from her instructions. The father passed away when the narrator was in Vienna. To ensure she continued to offer her services to the family, the father had bequeathed a portion of his property to Frau Frieda.
I stayed in Vienna for more than a month, sharing the straitened circumstances of the other students while I waited for money that never arrived. Frau Frieda’s unexpected and generous visits to the tavern were like fiestas in our poverty-stricken regime. One night, in a beery euphoria, she whispered in my ear with a conviction that permitted no delay. ‘I only came to tell you that I dreamed about you last night,’ she said. ‘You must leave right away and not come back to Vienna for five years.’ Her conviction was so real that I boarded the last train to Rome that same night. As for me, I was so influenced by what she said that from then on I considered myself a survivor of some catastrophe I never experienced. I still have not returned to Vienna. Stop
Explanation .. The narrator stayed in Vienna for a month. With no money coming, the days were hard for him. The students’ condition was no better. They too struggled. In this environment, all the students and the narrator who came to the restaurant were hard-pressed for money. Frau Frieda continued to come there every day. She brought with her some hope and some solace to other customers, all of whom were enduring financial hardship. One night, Frau Frieda, apparently under the spell of beer, whispered to the narrator’s ears a stern warning to leave Vienna at the earliest and not return to the city for five years. Alarmed and bewildered, the narrator left Vienna for Rome the same night. The soothsayer’s caution were stamped in the narrator’s mind hard. He was convinced that he had pulled himself from the brink of death by heeding the foreteller’s warning. He had chosen not to return to Vienna in the times to come.
STOP & THINK
Q1. How did the author recognise the lady who was extricated from the car encrusted in the wall of Havana Riviera Hotel after the storm?
Q2. Why did the author leave Vienna never to return again?
Answer to Q1. …
The narrator discovered a ring in the dead woman’s body. It was a very unusual gold ring shaped like a serpent had emerald eyes. The narrator recounted that he had possibly seen this woman long ago who had worn an identical ring in her right forefinger. This fact provided useful clue to trace the dead woman back to her long-past years.
Answer to Q2. …
It was the stern message of Fra Frieda that gripped the narrator with panic. He heeded her warning to leave Vienna at the earliest to escape the danger looming over him.
Before the disaster in Havana, I had seen Frau Frieda in Barcelona in so unexpected and fortuitous a way that it seemed a mystery to me. It happened on the day Pablo Neruda stepped on Spanish soil for the first time since the Civil War, on a stopover during a long sea voyage to Valparaiso. He spent a morning with us hunting big game in the second-hand bookstores, and at Porter he bought an old, dried-out volume with a torn binding for which he paid what would have been his salary for two months at the consulate in Rangoon. He moved through the crowd like an invalid elephant, with a child’s curiosity in the inner workings of each thing he saw, for the world appeared to him as an immense wind-up toy with which life invented itself.
Explanation .. Before the Havana disaster, the narrator hzad ran into the soothsayer in Barcelona. It was a chance encounter that happened so strangely.
Spain had gone through a very disruptive civil war during 1936-39. Pablo Neruda was a Chilean intellectual who had won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was a multi-faceted talent who shined as a poet, a politician and even a diplomat.
Pablo Neruda visited Spain after the country’s civil war ended. En route to Val Paraiso, Neruda briefly stopped over in Barcelona. He was a book over. The narrator and the soothsayer lady accompanied Pablo Neruda to a second-hand book store where the celebrity writer bought a badly-frayed book paying a fortune for it. Neruda sauntered through the crowd feasting his eyes with all the interesting things he saw in the marketplace. He was curious and excited at what he saw.
I have never known anyone closer to the idea one has of a Renaissance pope: He was gluttonous and refined. Even against his will, he always presided at the table. Matilde, his wife, would put a bib around his neck that belonged in a barbershop rather than a dining room, but it was the only way to keep him from taking a bath in sauce. That day at Carvalleiras was typical. He ate three whole lobsters, dissecting them with a surgeon’s skill, and at the same time devoured everyone else’s plate with his eyes and tasted a little from each with a delight that made the desire to eat contagious: clams from Galicia, mussels from Cantabria, prawns from Alicante, sea cucumbers from the Costa Brava. In the meantime, like the French, he spoke of nothing but other culinary delicacies, in particular the prehistoric shellfish of Chile, which he carried in his heart. All at once he stopped eating, tuned his lobster’s antennae, and said to me in a very quiet voice: ‘There’s someone behind me who won’t stop looking at me.’
Explanation .. Neruda splurged over food and drink. He was both suave and polished too. But, while eating, he used to spill food items over her dress frequently. So, his wife Matilde used to put a cloth cover (bib) around his neck to protect the clothes. On the day he ate at Carvalleiras, Neruda was particularly voracious. He spoke elaborately about food delicacies, like the French often do. After his eating spree, he told the narrator that some one behind him was constantly staring at him.
I glanced over his shoulder, and it was true. Three tables away sat an intrepid woman in an old-fashioned felt hat and a purple scarf, eating without haste and staring at him. I recognised her right away. She had grown old and fat, but it was Frau Frieda, with the snake ring on her index finger. She was travelling from Naples on the same ship as Neruda and his wife, but they had not seen each other on board. We invited her to have coffee at our table, and I encouraged her to talk about her dreams in order to astound the poet. He paid no attention, for from the very beginning he had announced that he did not believe in prophetic dreams.
Explanation .. The narrator looked behind. He discovered a lady seated three tables away at a table where she was eating her food very slowly. She wore an old-fashioned felt hat and a purple scarf. She appeared somewhzat daring. Her gaze was fixed on Neruda. The narrator recognized her with ease although she had grown old over the years. She was Fau Freida whose memory was not lost in the author’s mind. She wore her snake ring in her index finger. Although Neruda and his wife were travelling in the same ship from Naples as Frau Freida, they had not met yet. The narrator invited Frau Freida for coffee to the table where he was seated along with the Neruda couple. The narrator requested Frau Freida about her magical dream power and the way she could make forecasts on the basis of those dreams. Neruda, however, remained indifferent to the soothsayer lady’s powers. He had brushed aside such powers as frivolous.
‘Only poetry is clairvoyant,’ he said. After lunch, during the inevitable stroll along the Ramblas, I lagged behind with Frau Frieda so that we could renew our memories with no other ears listening. She told me she had sold her properties in Austria and retired to Oporto, in Portugal, where she lived in a house that she described as a fake castle on a hill, from which one could see all the way across the ocean to the Americas. Although she did not say so, her conversation made it clear that, dream by dream, she had taken over the entire fortune of her ineffable patrons in Vienna. That did not surprise me, however, because I had always thought her dreams were no more than a stratagem for surviving. And I told her so. She laughed her irresistible laugh. ‘You’re as impudent as ever,’ she said. And said no more, because the rest of the group had stopped to wait for Neruda to finish talking in Chilean slang to the parrots along the Rambla de los Pájaros. When we resumed our conversation, Frau Frieda changed the subject. ‘By the way,’ she said, ‘you can go back to Vienna now.’ Only then did I realise that thirteen years had gone by since our first meeting. ‘Even if your dreams are false, I’ll never go back,’ I told her. ‘Just in case.’ At three o’clock we left her to accompany Neruda to his sacred siesta, which he took in our house after solemn preparations that in some way recalled the Japanese tea ceremony.
Explanation .. Neuda casually remarked that only poetry had the power to foresee the future. After lunch, the people at the table went for a stroll at Ramblas. The narrator utilized this opportunity to speak to Frau Freida alone. She stated that she had settled in Oporto in Portugal after disposing off her property in Austria. There she lived in a tiny house situated atop a hill. One could look across the vast sea in front till the shores of America. From her version, the narrator could conclude that Frau Freida had managed to lay her hands on the entire property of her employer’s family by cunningly selling her ability to foretell the future by using her dreams. The narrator was not surprised at all as he knew how Frau Freida could mesmerize others by marketing her dreams’ power to see the future. It was a crooked power that Frau Freida made full use of. When the narrator made a mention of this false power, Frau Freida laughed it off. The conversation ended as Neruda and his wife had waited a short distance ahead for the narrator and Frau Freida to catch up. Frau Freida suggested to the narrator to return to Vienna after the gap of thirteen years, but the narrator flatly refused to listen to her advice. The group consisting of the Nerudas, The narrator and Frau Freida and others returned to Neruda’s place at 3 pm to enable him to enjoy his siesta.
Some windows had to be opened and others closed to achieve the perfect degree of warmth, and there had to be a certain kind of light from a certain direction, and absolute silence. Neruda fell asleep right away, and woke ten minutes later, as children do, when we least expected it. He appeared in the living room refreshed, and with the monogram of the pillowcase imprinted on his cheek. ‘I dreamed about that woman who dreams,’ he said. Matilde wanted him to tell her his dream. ‘I dreamed she was dreaming about me,’ he said. ‘That’s right out of Borges,’ I said. He looked at me in disappointment. ‘Has he written it already?’ ‘If he hasn’t he’ll write it sometime,’ I said. ‘It will be one of his labyrinths.’ As soon as he boarded the ship at six that evening, Neruda took his leave of us, sat down at an isolated table, and began to write fluid verses in the green ink he used for drawing flowers and fish and birds when he dedicated his books.
Explanation … Neruda fell asleep quickly after his room’s natural lighting and ventilation were duly adjusted to ensure the best comfort. He woke up after a 10-minute nap to tell his wife that he had seen the woman famous for her dreaming gift in his own dream. His wife, Metilda was curious to know what he had seen. Neruda disclosed that in his own dream, he saw the dreaming woman (Frau Freida) dreaming about him. The narrator was amused. On returning to the ship at six in the evening, Neruda sat down to write a poem about her in his typical green ink.
At the first ‘All ashore’ we looked for Frau Frieda, and found her at last on the tourist deck, just as we were about to leave without saying good-bye. She too had taken a siesta. ‘I dreamed about the poet,’ she said. In astonishment I asked her to tell me her dream. ‘I dreamed he was dreaming about me,’ she said, and my look of amazement disconcerted her. ‘What did you expect? Sometimes, with all my dreams, one slips in that has nothing to do with real life.’
Stop and Think 1. How did Pablo Neruda know that somebody behind him was looking at him?
Answer .. Neruda was in high spirits as he ate his favourite dishes in the restaurant. He was talking a lot. He must have looked around and discovered the woman sitting a little way with her gazed fixed on him.
- How did Pablo Neruda counter Frau Frieda’s claims to clairvoyance?
Answer .. Neruda described thw lady’s claim as outlandish. He jokingly added thay only poetry had the ability to foresee future.
I never saw her again or even wondered about her until I heard about the snake ring on the woman who died in the Havana Riviera disaster. And I could not resist the temptation of questioning the Portuguese ambassador when we happened to meet some months later at a diplomatic reception. The ambassador spoke about her with great enthusiasm and enormous admiration. ‘You cannot imagine how extraordinary she was,’ he said. ‘You would have been obliged to write a story about her.’ And he went on in the same tone, with surprising details, but without the clue that would have allowed me to come to a final conclusion. ‘In concrete terms,’ I asked at last, ‘what did she do?’ ‘Nothing,’ he said, with a certain disenchantment. ‘She dreamed.’
Understanding the Text
- Did the author believe in the prophetic ability of Frau Frieda?
Answer .. The author didn’t believe that Frau Freida could foretell the future using her dreams.
2. Why did he think that Frau Frieda’s dreams were a stratagem for surviving?
Answer .. Frau Freida was neither beautiful, nor was she highly educated to do a job to earn her livelihod. So, she hit upon this crooked idea to project herself as a soothsayer who could see her in her dreams the things that were going to happen. It was her way of convincing people that she had this divine ability to warn people of looming dangers in the near future. In exchange, she earned monetary rewards.
3. Why does the author compare Neruda to a Renaissance pope?
Answer.. Like Neruda, the Renaisance Popes were food lovers and quite talkative while seated in the dining tables. This is why the author likened Neruda with the Popes.
Explanation … Just as the narrator and the Nerudas were preparing to leave the ship on reaching the destination port, the narrator found that Frau Freida was standing in the deck. She told that she too took a short nap when she dreamed about Neruda seeing her in his dreams. This strange coincidence left the narrator bewildered.
After this short encounter on the ship, the narrator never saw Frau Freida again till the day she died so miserably after being fatally hit by the monstrous sea storm at the site of Havana Riviera. Her identity became apparent after the narrator found the oddly designed ring.
The narrator happened to meet the Portuguese ambassador at a reception a few months after the death of the woman. On being asked by the narrator about his impression of the Late Frau Freida, the ambassador profusely praised her unique ‘dreaming’ abilities. The ambassador as the employer of Frau Freida, asked her to do nothing except sleep and dream.
Talking about the Text
Discuss in groups
1. In spite of all the rationality that human beings are capable of, most of us are suggestible and yield to archaic superstitions.
2. Dreams and clairvoyance are as much an element of the poetic vision as religious superstition.
Appreciation
1. The story hinges on a gold ring shaped like a serpent with emerald eyes. Comment on the responses that this image evokes in the reader.
2. The craft of a master story-teller lies in the ability to interweave imagination and reality. Do you think that this story illustrates this?
3. Bring out the contradiction in the last exchange between the author and the Portuguese ambassador ‘In concrete terms,’ I asked at last, ‘what did she do?’ ‘Nothing,’he said, with a certain disenchantment. ‘She dreamed.’
4. Comment on the ironical element in the story.
Language Work
A. Vocabulary
Look up the meanings of the following phrases under ‘dream’ and ‘sell’ in the dictionary dream sell dream on sell-by date
dream something away selling-point (not) dream of doing something sell-out dream something up selling price look like a dream seller’s market
B. Grammar: Emphasis
Read this sentence carefully
One morning at nine o’clock, while we were having breakfast on the terrace of the Havana Riviera Hotelunder a bright sun, a huge wave picked up several cars that were driving down the avenue along the seawall or parked on the pavement, and embedded one of them in the side of the hotel.
The position of a word, phrase or an idea within a sentence usually indicates the emphasis it receives. Generally, the most
emphatic place in the sentence is its end; the next most emphatic is its beginning; and the least emphatic, its middle.
In the sentence above the most important fact is that the huge wave embedded one of the cars in one side of the hotel.
The other details of time and place are given at the beginning.The general statement of the ‘huge wave picking up several
cars’ precedes the particular car which is pertinent to the theme of the story.
Let us rewrite the sentence, beginning with ‘a huge wave’ and the first part following ‘hotel’ and notice the difference in the
effect.
A huge wave picked up several cars that were driving down the avenue along the seawall or parked on the
pavement, and embedded one of them in the side of the hotel, one morning at nine o’clock, while we were
having breakfast on the terrace of the Havana Riviera Hotel under a bright sun.
TASK
Study the following sentences and underline the part which receives
emphasis
• I never saw her again or even wondered about her until I heard about the snake ring on the woman who died in the Havana Riviera disaster.
• That did not surprise me, however, because I had always thought her dreams were no more than a stratagem for surviving.
• Although she did not say so, her conversation made it clear that, dream by dream, she had taken over the entire fortune of her ineffable patrons in Vienna.
• Three tables away sat an intrepid woman in an old-fashioned felt hat and a purple scarf, eating without haste and staring at him.
• I stayed in Vienna for more than a month, sharing the straitened circumstances of the other students while I waited for money that never arrived.
C. Pronunciation
The syllable is the basic unit of pronunciation. A word may
have a single syllable, such as ‘will’, ‘pen’ etc. A word, sometimes,
can have more than one syllable as for instance ‘willing’ (willing). Each syllable contains a vowel sound, and usually one or
more consonants.
You can show division of a word into syllables like this
foolish fool-ish(2) agreement a-gree-ment(3) arithmetic a-rith-me-tic(4)
TASK
• Say your name aloud and decide how many syllables there are in it. Do the same with the names of your classmates.
• Pick out five words each for two syllable, three syllable and four syllable words from the lesson.
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