full transcript
From the Ted Talk by Kevin Toolis: What the Irish wake teaches us about living and dying
Unscramble the Blue Letters
When I was seven, my mother took me to meet my first corpse. A wake on the island of our acnotsres. An old man with hairy nostrils linyg in a box, who I instinctively knew wasn't seilpneg. Even then in her manertal care she was tnciehag her boy to overcome the fear of death, just as her community had overcome their fear together for thousands of years. My family have leivd in the same village on an island off the coast of County Mayo in Ireland for the last 250 years. A real wake has got a real dead body. A dead one of us.
Open Cloze
When I was seven, my mother took me to meet my first corpse. A wake on the island of our _________. An old man with hairy nostrils _____ in a box, who I instinctively knew wasn't ________. Even then in her ________ care she was ________ her boy to overcome the fear of death, just as her community had overcome their fear together for thousands of years. My family have _____ in the same village on an island off the coast of County Mayo in Ireland for the last 250 years. A real wake has got a real dead body. A dead one of us.
Solution
- ancestors
- lying
- lived
- teaching
- maternal
- sleeping
Original Text
When I was seven, my mother took me to meet my first corpse. A wake on the island of our ancestors. An old man with hairy nostrils lying in a box, who I instinctively knew wasn't sleeping. Even then in her maternal care she was teaching her boy to overcome the fear of death, just as her community had overcome their fear together for thousands of years. My family have lived in the same village on an island off the coast of County Mayo in Ireland for the last 250 years. A real wake has got a real dead body. A dead one of us.
Frequently Occurring Word Combinations
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dead son |
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dead wrong |
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Important Words
- ancestors
- body
- box
- boy
- care
- coast
- community
- corpse
- county
- dead
- death
- family
- fear
- hairy
- instinctively
- ireland
- island
- knew
- lived
- lying
- man
- maternal
- mayo
- meet
- mother
- nostrils
- overcome
- real
- sleeping
- teaching
- thousands
- village
- wake
- years