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‘Half five’, ‘half seven’, ‘half ten’… what does it mean in British English?
The standard way to tell the time when it’s X:30 is “half past X”. For example, 5:30 is “half past five”, 7:30 is “half past seven”, and (...)
November 5, 2014 – Jakub Marian – English
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‘Hearable’ vs. ‘audible’ in English
Adjectives expressing the ability of a thing to be perceived using a sense are often derived from a root that differs from that of the (...)
October 31, 2014 – Jakub Marian – English
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Irregular English verbs: ring, sing, drink, shrink, sink, stink
There is a small class of irregular English verbs that follow the pronunciation pattern /ɪŋ/ → /æŋ/ → /ʌŋ/ in the past tense, (...)
October 29, 2014 – Jakub Marian – English
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Irregular English verbs: -ode and -ade
It is no wonder Raj in the Big Bang theory couldn’t find the right past tense of “forbid”. The verb “bid” in the sense of either issuing a (...)
October 24, 2014 – Jakub Marian – English
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‘Hair is’ vs. ‘hair are’ vs. ‘hairs are’ in English
The soft matter covering your head is usually referred to using a plural noun in other languages, e.g. die Haare in German or les cheveux (...)
October 22, 2014 – Jakub Marian – English
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By the way, have you already seen my brand new web app for non-native speakers of English? It's based on reading texts and learning by having all meanings, pronunciations, grammar forms etc. easily accessible. It looks like this:
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Irregular English verbs: say, lay, pay
Most English learners are well aware of the pattern -ay/-aid of irregular English verbs. However, this is more the exception than the (...)
October 7, 2014 – Jakub Marian – English
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‘Good luck’ vs. ‘a good luck’ in English
Just the other day, I received a reply to the confirmation email all new subscribers to my educational mailing list receive pointing out (...)
September 29, 2014 – Jakub Marian – English
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‘Wish’ + ‘would’ – subjunctive of a future action in English
I have already written an article about the use of “would” after “wish” when we speak about states and present or habitual actions. As was (...)
September 28, 2014 – Jakub Marian – English
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“Analogous” vs. “analogical” in English
These two words are a common source of mistakes. The word you will need most of the time is “analogous”, which means “similar, comparable (...)
September 20, 2014 – Jakub Marian – English
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A curiosity about the F-word in Google Ngram Viewer
Google Ngram Viewer is a tool you can use to plot how common a word or a phrase was through the years in literature. I use it a lot to (...)
September 17, 2014 – Jakub Marian – English
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