French

Teacher, can I say…?

Niall O'Donnell 9 Comments

This is the beginning of one of the most common questions English teachers get asked. And the answer is usually, Well, it’s technically correct, but we never actually say that in English. Which in turn is usually met by frustrated sighs. For all the language’s flexibility, we often fix on only one of the many possible ways to express an idea. This is often a tremendous source of frustration for learners, especially if they’re feeling pleased about using a certain grammar form, only for their teacher to tell them what they’re saying doesn’t really sound natural.

Often, this stems from direct translation from one’s mother tongue. In French for example, it’s standard to use nouns to refer to feelings. For example: Continue reading →

Eleven

Niall O'Donnell 12 Comments

One of the first things most people do when learning a new language is to learn the numbers from 1 to 10, and shortly after that, from 11 to 20. And it’s generally quite easy to remember them in the case of European languages, as they’re somewhat similar to their English counterparts. Look at French, for example:

Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf, dix.

Not necessarily all obvious individually, but seen all together, they’re clearly the first ten numbers. The same goes, I think, for 11 to 19:

Onze, douze, treize, quatorze, quinze, seize, dix-sept, dix-huit, dix-neuf.

Clearly a combination of ten and the relevant number, and the same applies to English (eighteen = eight + ten, for example). Except, that’s not quite true in every case, is it? What about 11 and 12? Continue reading →

Turkey: International Bird of Mystery

Niall O'Donnell 9 Comments

Since most of us probably won’t be eating it for another 11 or 12 months, I think it’s time to give the turkey its due before we forget about it again.

The word turkey (used to refer to the bird) has a surprisingly convoluted etymology. And no, it’s not a coincidence that it’s also the name of a country… Continue reading →

All of This has Happened Before, and will Happen again…

Niall O'Donnell 10 Comments

It’s déjà vu all over again – Yogi Berra

One of the downsides to trying to post something every day, is that you occasionally have a moment when, about to start a new post, you think to yourself, Haven’t I written about this already? So you try to jog your memory, and then search your blog, but can’t find anything. Sometimes you remember touching on the topic in a previous post, but as it wasn’t the focus of that post, you decide to go ahead with this one. Other times, you still aren’t sure if you wrote about this before or not, and then decide to just go ahead with it, there are probably quite a few people who didn’t read the previous post, if it exists. That was way back when you’d just started out and no-one was reading your blog.

I had that feeling, not for the first time, this morning, but at least I’m not thinking about it too much today, as I’ve obviously changed tack and decided to write about this feeling instead. It’s a little like déjà vu, I suppose, only not quite as uncanny, because there’s probably a rational explanation for this feeling. If I haven’t already written about this topic, then I’ve probably touched briefly upon it, or written something similar. Continue reading →

Fata Morgana

Niall O'Donnell Leave a comment

I came across this word today while I was online. I’m not sure how I got to it, as my wanderings around the internet can be quite aimless, but something brought me to a list of Werner Herzog films, and seeing mention of his 1971 film reminded me of the term.

If you’re not familiar with it, it’s simply a fancy way to refer to a mirage. More specifically, it was originally used to refer to a specific type of mirage which can often be observed in the Straits of Messina between Sicily and mainland Italy. The name is the Italian translation of Morgan Le Fay, sorceress/witch/fairy half-sister of King Arthur in British legend. The effect was so named because people believed that the illusions they saw were her castle in the sky. And looking at this recent example from China, you can understand that: Continue reading →

S: the Story of a Letter

Niall O'Donnell 19 Comments

If you’re a native English speaker, you probably don’t think about individual letters too often. Why would you? You use them pretty much automatically. So if I asked you to talk about the letter s, you might not have much to say. But for people who have to learn English, it’s quite important, and can prove to be a tricky little customer.

The first area of confusion is with plurals. Most languages don’t add s to make a plural, like English does, so it can be very hard for speakers of those languages to remember to add the s. Even when some languages do add an s, it’s in a slightly different way. Portuguese and Spanish, for example, often add an s to a noun to make it plural. But, they also add an s to adjectives describing those nouns, leading a lot of Portuguese and Spanish speakers to do the same thing in English. French is similar, but the s is generally silent, meaning that a lot of French speakers don’t pronounce it even if they write it.

But the most common area of error is with third-person singular verbs. That might sound like gibberish, but let me demonstrate: Continue reading →

My Left Hand: a Sinister Tale

Niall O'Donnell 23 Comments

I hope you appreciate how lucky you are to be right-handed. Of course you might actually be left-handed, in which case my apologies for the assumption, but statistically you’re probably right-handed. You’re also probably right-footed (90% of right-handers are also right-footed, and about 50% of left-footers). You might not have been aware that footedness is a thing. If sports involving kicking balls don’t occupy a position of any importance in your life, the concept may not have occurred to you. If you’re not sure which is your dominant foot, go kick the nearest person in the shin with each foot (not simultaneously, you don’t want to get hurt) and see which one hurts them more.

I’m entirely lopsided: both left-handed and left-footed. I was quite proud of this when I was a child. I felt it made me stand out. As a football fan, I was impressed by how left-footed players like Ryan Giggs always seemed to be so quick and dynamic and creative. My footballing career did not quite follow his trajectory, mind you. But mostly I just liked being different from everyone else. And I still do. But as I got older, I began to realise that it wasn’t so easy being left-handed… Continue reading →