Speak

Definition

speak /spi:k/ v ( pt spoke /spǝƱk/; pp spoken /spǝƱkǝn/) ၁။ စကားေျပာသည္။ He can't speak because of a throat infection. ❍ The noise was so loud I could hardly hear myself speak. ❍ speak into a microphone ❍ Please speak more slowly. ၂။ (က) ~ of/about sth ေျပာသည္။ She spoke about her plans for the future. ❍ The witnesses spoke of a great ball of flame. ❍ The area has been spoken of as a possible site for the new factory. (ခ) ~ (to sb) ; ( esp US ) ~ (with sb) စကားစျမည္ေျပာသည္။ စကားေျပာသည္။ ေျပာသည္။ ေခၚသည္။ I saw her in the street the other day but we didn't speak. ❍ Pay attention when I'm speaking to you! ❍ I was speaking to/with him only yesterday. ❍ The President refused to speak to/with the waiting journalists. ❍ ‘Do you know him?’ ‘Not to speak to. ’ (ဂ) ~ (to sb) ; ( esp US ) ~ (with sb) (တယ္လီဖုန္း)ေျပာသည္။ May I speak to Susan (ie at the beginning of a telephone conversation)? ❍ ‘Is that Susan?’ ‘Speaking (ie Yes, this is Susan speaking). ’ ၃။ (က) (not in the continuous tenses) (… လို)ေျပာသည္၊ တတ္သည္။ He speaks several languages/a little Urdu/an unusual dialect. ❍ Do you speak English? (ခ) (… လို) ေျပာသည္။ What language are they speaking? ❍ I spoke (in) German at the meeting. ၄။ ~ (on/about sth) ; ~(against sth) မိန္႔ၾကားသည္။ ေျပာသည္။ ေဟာသည္။ speak in public ❍ She spoke for forty minutes at the conference. ❍ I told him to speak on any subject he wanted. ❍ speak in favour of/against the motion. ၅။ ေျပာသည္။ ဆိုသည္။ speak the truth ❍ He spoke only two words the whole evening. ၆။ ~ (to sb) (usu in negative sentences) ( infml ) ေခၚသည္။ ေျပာသည္။ They're not speaking (to each other) after their argument. ❏ be on speaking terms (with sb) [ IDM ] အေခၚအေျပာ လုပ္သည္။ ေခၚသည္။ ေျပာသည္။ She has not been on speaking terms with her parents for years. ❏ not to speak of ; no sth/nothing to speak of [ IDM ] ေျပာပေလာက္ေအာင္ မ(ရိွ၊ ဟုတ္ စသည္)။ We haven't had any summer to speak of. ❍ We've eaten no food to speak of today. ❍ She has saved a little money, but nothing to speak of. ❏ roughly , generally , personally , etc speaking [ IDM ] (အၾကမ္းဖ်င္း၊ ၿခံဳငံု စသည္)ေျပာရရင္။ Generally speaking, I don't like spicy food. ❍ Personally speaking, I prefer the second candidate. ❍ Napoleon was a giant among men, metaphorically speaking. ❍ Environmentally speaking, these products are quite harmful. See also STRICTLY SPEAKING ❏ so to speak [ IDM ] ဆိုပါစို႔။ Teachers need to learn from their students, so to speak. ❏ speaker n ၁။ (က) ေဟာသူ။ ေျပာသူ။ an interesting speaker ❍ The party leader is a very good/poor (public) speaker. (ခ) ေျပာသူ။ I looked round to see who the speaker was. ❍ The pronoun ‘I’ refers back to the speaker. ၂။ … ဘာသာစကားေျပာသူ။ French speakers/speakers of French ❍ a fluent/native speaker of English. ၃။ = LOUDSPEAKER: Hi-fi systems generally have two speakers. ၄။ the Speaker လႊတ္ေတာ္ဥကၠ႒။ the Speaker of the House of Representatives. ❏ speak for itself/themselves [ IDM ] ထင္ရွားၿပီးသား အထူးရွင္းျပစရာမလို။ Recent events speak for themselves. ❏ speak for oneself [ IDM ] ဘယ္သူကမွ် ေရွ႕ေနလိုက္ေပး စရာ မလိုဘူး။ I'm quite capable of speaking for myself, thank you! ❏ speak for sb [ PHRV ] (no passive) ကိုယ္စားေျပာသည္။ ကိုယ္စားျပဳသည္။ I can't speak for the others, but I'd love to come myself. ❍ Our party speaks for the poor and unemployed. ❏ speak for yourself [ IDM ] ( joc or derog catchphrase ) (အဲဒါ)မင္းအျမင္ကိုး။ ‘We all played very badly. ’ ‘Speak for yourself, I think I played quite well!’ ❏ speaking as sth [ IDM ] … အေနနင့္ေျပာရလွ်င္။ Speaking as a parent, I am very concerned about standards of education. ❏ -speaking ( forming compound adjs ) …ဘာသာစကား ေျပာ။ …စကားေျပာ။ French-speaking Canada/Canadians. ❏ the speaking clock n [sing] ( Brit ) (တယ္လီဖုန္းျဖင့္) စံေတာ္ခ်ိန္ေျဖေပးျခင္း။ ❏ speak one's mind [ IDM ] ပြင့္ပြင့္လင္းလင္းေျပာသည္။ ❏ speak of sth [ PHRV ] ( fml ) … ေၾကာင္းျပလ်က္ရိွသည္။ Her behaviour speaks of suffering bravely borne. ❏ speak out (against sth) [ PHRV ] ပြင့္ပြင့္လင္းလင္း ေျပာ သည္။ ရဲရဲတင္းတင္း ေျပာသည္။ He was the only one to speak out against the closure of the hospital. ❍ I will continue to speak out on matters of public concern. ❏ speak to sb (about sth) [ PHRV ] ( infml ) (… ႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍) ေျပာသည္၊ ဆိုသည္။ This is the third time I've had to speak to you about being late. ❏ speak up [ PHRV ] က်ယ္က်ယ္ေျပာသည္။ Please speak up—we can't hear you at the back. ❏ speak up (for sb/sth) [ PHRV ] …ဘက္ကေျပာသည္၊ ရပ္တည္သည္။ It's time someone spoke up for the less privileged in our society. ❏ speak volumes about/for sth [ IDM ] ထင္ထင္ရွားရွား သက္ေသခံလ်က္ရိွသည္။ These statistics speak volumes about the country's economic decline. ❍ This letter speaks volumes for her honesty. ❏ speak well/ill of sb [ IDM ] ( fml ) (သူတစ္ပါးအေၾကာင္း) အေကာင္းေျပာသည္၊ မေကာင္းေျပာသည္။ Your teacher speaks well of you. ❍ Don't speak ill of the dead. -speak /spi:k/ suff (forming uncountable ns ) ( infml often derog ) …စကား။ computerspeak.

Examples

1. [speak to] : I phoned your office and spoke to your assistant.
2. [speak with] : Let me speak with Jennifer and see what she thinks.
3. [speak of] : People spoke of their fear as the flood waters rose.
4. [speak about] : He spoke movingly about his son’s struggle with cancer.
5. Let me speak frankly.
6. There was a long pause before she spoke again.
7. He spoke so softly it was difficult to hear what he said.
8. Do you speak Chinese?
9. He speaks three languages.
10. [speak at] : The local MP will be speaking at our graduation ceremony.
11. [speak to] : Petersen spoke to an audience of 2
12. 000 at the conference.
13. [speak against/in favour of] : Only a small group of people dared to speak against the war.
14. [speak well/highly of someone] : Yvonne has spoken so highly of you.
15. [speak badly/ill of someone] : You shouldn’t speak ill of your father.
16. ‘Who’s speaking?’ ‘This is Mark Richards speaking.’
17. ‘Is Janey there
18. please?’ ‘Speaking.’
19. His clarity of intellect was reflected in a clarity of utterance which gave him a special connection with the public
20. who prized him for his ability to speak human.