language learning

English Lessons for Experts: Past Simple & Continuous

Niall O'Donnell 8 Comments

I’ve decided to continue looking at some of the basic aspects of the English language, as I began before. From now on it’ll be a little different, as I won’t go into much detail about what a lesson might look like, mainly because the principles remain largely the same. If you’re a native speaker, you might find this enlightening, and if not, it might be a useful refresher of things you’ve already learned. Before looking at some of the main past tenses, let’s have a quick recap of the present simple and continuous, which I looked at before, but not in much detail:

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Isn’t She Lovely?

Niall O'Donnell 11 Comments

Isn’t she wonderful?

The radio seems to be inspiring me a lot at the moment. While listening to the above Stevie Wonder classic this morning, the phrasing of the title struck me as a little odd. It might not initially seem too strange, as all native speakers at least are quite used to it. But performing the slight change of doing away with the contraction, makes it seem quite different:

Is she not lovely? Is she not wonderful?

Is it not a lovely day?

Is that not a great idea?

First of all, it now feels a lot more negative, because we can see and hear the full not. And to me, it seems a lot more like a question. When we use the normal, contracted phrase, it’s technically a question, but of course that’s not what we actually mean. What we’re basically saying is: She’s lovely. She’s wonderful. We don’t really expect disagreement. Why use a question then? And more specifically, why use a negative question? Continue reading →

Doing Dutch with Duolingo: Klomp!

Niall O'Donnell 3 Comments

I feel like it’s been ages since I started using Duolingo, but it’s really become part of my daily routine. The only real gap was last week when I was on holiday last week. Overall, things are still going ok, but I’m beginning  to feel much more like a typical learner of English feels, and my complaints are really starting to mirror theirs. Continue reading →

I Go to the Stadium of Football in the Car of My Friend

Niall O'Donnell 9 Comments

Another brief thought about gin and tonic. Yesterday evening, it occurred to me that another factor in the drink being called gin tonic in so many languages might be a knowledge of the English language’s fondness for forming compound nouns. People might hear what sounds like gin tonic or perhaps ginnentonic, and just assume that we’d just pressed the two words together, as we’re wont to do.

As I’ve said before, compound nouns are often tricky for learners of English, particularly speakers of Latin languages, who often use a noun+of (the)+noun construction in their native tongue, when we English speakers form a compound noun. It might seem then that forming a compound noun should be easy to learn: instead of saying something of the something, just put the two words together. Done! Except of course, it’s not quite so simple. Continue reading →

G & T Please!

Niall O'Donnell 10 Comments

Ordering food and drink in another country can be a harrowing experience. What if I don’t know what anything means? What if they don’t understand me? What if I order it ok, but then they ask me a question I don’t understand!? Luckily, there are usually a few things that are easy to order, in some countries. One example is a gin & tonic. In many languages, including French, Spanish, Italian, German, Dutch, and Japanese, the drink is known as a gin tonic. Pretty convenient, if you’re abroad and want to order a drink without embarrassing yourself with any of that funny foreign pronunciation. But why don’t they go the whole hog, and say gin and tonic? Continue reading →

Doing Dutch with Duolingo: “Excuse me, I am an apple”

Niall O'Donnell 3 Comments

A little update on my Dutch-learning adventure.

Things are still going fairly well. I can safely say that I know more Dutch than last week. If If I’m ever called upon to identify someone as a man, woman, girl, boy, or child, and whether they’re eating or drinking bread, rice, water, milk, or juice, I should be able to perform admirably.

First a look at what Duolingo does well: Continue reading →

Doing Dutch with Duolingo

Niall O'Donnell 5 Comments

It seems like a long time ago when I decided to give a language-learning app a try. I’ve been busy since then, but finally this week I decided I’d download Duolinguo. I thought quite a bit about which language to choose. I knew right away that I already know enough French and Italian to make it difficult to know how much I was actually learning from the app. I thought about choosing a language as far from English as possible, but decided against this as, generally, we tend to learn languages with at least some basic similarities to our mother tongue. Most Europeans will learn another European language, which mostly have some basic links with each other. Continue reading →