It’s true, I’m not.
No matter how much I might sound like I think I am, most of what I share here is from my own informal research. Of course working in an English-language school helps, as does my own interest in language, but I could never claim to be an expert in any kind of official sense. Though, if you look at where the word comes from, then maybe I am…
Yesterday I used the word peoples in my post. Quite deliberately, of course, but it’s also quite common for English learners to mistakenly use the word.
I thought about this word recently, when writing about the story often shared about the origins of the word kangaroo. Obviously the word is now most associated with the native people of Australia. This hasn’t always been the case though.
Why do we say, mainly in American English, that someone’s green if they’re inexperiened or naïve?
It’s actually quite simple really: it’s because they’re fresh and new, like new green plants growing in the spring. Still, there could be many other adjectives we could use instead of green in this case. I think there’s a particular significance to the way we use green here. Perhaps more than other colours, green has a greater significance than just its surface detail.
… whatever will be, will be.
You might know the song. And you might know the language the title is in. Or you might think you might know…
Just double checking I spelled that correctly. After looking at panthers yesterday, I began thinking about other interesting animal names. One you might know is hippopotamus.
This isn’t about the film at all, I’ll let you know right now. The title is a blatant, shameless attempt to trick people into reading this. But now that you’re here, haven’t you ever wanted to learn more about the words leopard and panther?
English-Language Thoughts 