It’s hard to believe that I’ve been doing this for a year now. It really only feels like a few months ago. A really big thanks to everyone who’s been reading and commenting. I hope you’ve found something interesting and perhaps illuminating every now and then. It makes it much easier to put in the work to write regularly when you know someone’s going to read it, so thank you.
It’s a strange thing, writing.
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
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
Have you ever thought about the similarity between the words come and become? It’s something I’ve considered from time to time, as students occasionally get them confused. It struck me again recently, when I considered the similarity between the French translations of I come (Je viens) and I become (Je deviens). Other European languages demonstrate similar, uh, similarities, though not quite so… similar. This strengthened my opinion that there might be a conceptual link between the two. Continue reading
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
One of the most common corrections an English-language teacher has to make is when a student uses a lower-case letter instead of a capital letter.
For a language you need to use a capital letter.
When you’re talking about a nationality you need to use a capital letter.
A person’s name always begins with a capital letter.
You have to start a sentence with…etc. etc.
Mistakes with capital letters are common and understandable.
English-Language Thoughts 