Learning American English

Hi all, Log on to this site from PBS for some good materials on writing argumentative essays! Enjoy, P.

So our favorite time of the week has arrived -- the weekend!  Naturally, this got me thinking and then I wondered if I shouldn't write a short blog post:  what difference is there between the  weekend  and the end of the week ?  I mean, they're practically the same thing aren't they? Not quite: The weekend is, in most western countries, made up of Saturday and Sunday.  Traditionally, outside of the retail industry, most people do not work on these days, reserving them for family or personal activities.  Below is a scene from Downton Abbey , which shows that in former times and for a certain "sector" of the population, there was virtually no difference between the activities people did during the week and on the weekends.  The dowager 's question was absolutely sincere and she was by no means making fun of Matthew, the blond man. Different from the weekend is the end of the week , which should actually be called the end of the...

Don't Get Familiar with Me! Like many students know, English has only one 2nd person way of addressing people, both singular and plural:   you.   But what does this word mean? Well, as it so happens, many languages have both a familiar and a formal term to use when addressing others: *Brazilian Portuguese has nearly totally lost all trace of the familiar tu  to standardize the você  form for both formal and familiar, with the plural being vocês . English, contrary to the above languages but like other languages such as Brazilian Portuguese, no longer makes a difference between formal and familiar.   Did you catch that adverbial?  " No longer ."  This means that English did indeed at one point have a different 2nd person.  English kept  the formal way of addressing others you  and lost the familiar!  You might think this odd, but actually it is quite common:  on the French island of Réunion in the south I...

If you don't know where English is from, you really don't understand the language.  This map shows where the Germanic languages originated from, but excludes English, unfortuately. Basically, after Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Germanic emerged in an area east of the Rhine river and extending through the northern portion of Europe to roughly what today is the east of Poland, and then again northwards. The Whole Germanic Branch 1 No Eastern Germanic languages have survived to our modern era (see below). In essence, the Germanic branch of Indo-European is organized geographically:  West, which itself is divided into Western, Northern and High (i.e. mountain ); North, also subdivided into Western and Eastern; and East Germanic.  Many of these languages share similar characteristics, though some have very original points themselves: Many have verb-final positions, meaning that in compound or complex sentences, only the first auxiliary verb is placed ...

Portrait of King Henry VIII, Workshop of Hans Holbein the Younger Hello all, I've just watched an outstanding documentary on Hampton Court Palace, west of London which you can visit.  It was one of King Henry VIII's palaces (he had between 50 and 60!) and was the home of many events, people and scandal.  You can watch it below. Enjoy! Some questions for you: Who were the Tudors? How many wives did Henry VIII have? Who were the Stuarts? What was special about William III and Mary II? Who were the Georgians?  The answers are below... but don't look until you answer them! Answers Who were the Tudors? Royal Family -- and thus dynasty -- of England made up of 5 kings and queens and one would-be queen who met a very tragic end. Henry VII (reign:  1485-1509), the first Tudor who is said to have usurped the throne after the death of King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth. Henry VIII (reign:  1509-1547),...

Just saw this on Twitter (source; www.linguaholic.com ) and I thought I'd forward it.  With my thanks to them!

A New Angel in the Firmament David Bowie in 2013 The news came in less than an hour ago of the death from cancer of David Bowie, aged 69.  For many of us who grew up and became adults parallel to his career, such news comes as a huge shock, especially for those of us -- myself included -- who had no idea that he had been ill. Bowie was a musician of course, but much more.  On the BBC this morning, he was called a true artist.  I would even go so far as to say a real trend-setter:  sexually fluid, fashion conscious, an inventor of on-stage personae such as Aladdin Sane and the seminal  Ziggy Stardust, the public always had in it mind during the heyday of the 70s and 80s, "what will he do next?"  Rather, "eat will he become next?"  I can remember listening to "Let's Dance" on my cassette tape Sony Walkman (C) so much that the quality of the sound began to deteriorate from the tape being played so much. David Bowie, Aladdin Sane tour, 19...

On the radio this morning -- a great source of inspiration for me -- there was an interview with a person who used an interesting and relatively new expression,  one that I've also heard on television and in movies.   The person was talking about the recent troubles on the Shanghai stock market and said: "And that's when the first problems started, then it all went south and the government shut trading down." To go south could be understood from this context to mean "to fall apart" and it does. But what is the origin of this term?  Dictionary.com, quite a good source, lists its origin in the 19th century, when outlaws would "go south" of the border to Mexico or even to Texas -- at the time more or less a no-man's land between the U.S. and Mexico -- to escape punishment and likely death by hanging.  It also mentions that Native Americans believed that after death, a person's soul would head toward the south. Some ...

A Holiday Greeting to All! Many people have asked me over the years what to say at Christmastime:  Merry Christmas or Happy Christmas.  The answer?  Easy:  "Merry" is the American version and "Happy" is the U.K. version.  It's up to you which one you use. So where does the word merry come from and what is its meaning? According to the dictionary , merry is a word that comes from the Middle English meri(e), myrie or murie , and before that from the Old English / Anglo-Saxon myrige or merige , and means "full of cheerfulness" or "joyous."  The word was used by both British and American writers well into the 19th century -- for example, Dickens uses it profusely in A Christmas Carol (1843) -- but its usage declined massively in favor of happy and other synonyms. So why on earth do we Americans persist in using it?  Very simply, because Americans, despite their innovation and forward-looking attitude (if I do say so myself......