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Fire in the hole – meaning and origin
Everyone who has ever played a first person shooter in English will know the expression “fire in the hole”, used by your fellow fighters (...)
November 17, 2013 – Jakub Marian – English
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“In the picture” / “on the picture”; “in a photo” / “on a photo” in English
The equivalent expression in many languages employs a preposition translated as “on” in most other contexts (e.g. “sur” in French). In (...)
November 14, 2013 – Jakub Marian – English
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English verbs that are the same in the present tense and in the past tense
Most of the commonly used English verbs are irregular. If the past tense and the past participle differ from the present tense, it is (...)
November 10, 2013 – Jakub Marian – English
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“A lot of is” or “a lot of are” in English
The usage of singular and plural verbs in English is sometimes more complicated than in other languages. One example of this phenomenon is (...)
November 8, 2013 – Jakub Marian – English
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‘He or she’ vs. ‘they’ in English
Traditionally, in English, when you had to use a pronoun for a person whose sex was unknown because it had been previously referred to as (...)
November 5, 2013 – 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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Hyphen, minus, en-dash, and em-dash: difference and usage in English
These four little characters: “‐”, “−”, “–”, and “—”, often get confused. Most computer users use just a single character, “-”, the so-called hyphen-minus (the usual minus character you have on your keyboard), which is, technically, different from all four. (...)
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Alpha, Bravo, Charlie – what is it?
Briefly put, Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc., are words used in spelling of the 26 letters of the Latin (resp. English) alphabet. They were (...)
October 24, 2013 – Jakub Marian – English
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“Majority is” / “majority are”: Collective nouns in English
“Majority” is one of a few nouns in English that can be used
either with a singular or a plural verb. These nouns are called collective (...)
October 17, 2013 – Jakub Marian – English
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Bells and whistles – English idiom with examples
The phrase bells and whistles refers to features of an object which are not essential to it, but which make it attractive or special. Its (...)
October 15, 2013 – Jakub Marian – English
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The best online resources for translation between English and German
Translating texts between languages often takes more than just translating the words. Some words like “table”, “house”, or “carpet” (...)
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