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‘Effect’ vs. ‘affect’ in English
Both “effect” and “affect” can be used as a noun or as a verb. If you have found this page using a search engine, the odds are that if you (...)
December 1, 2013 – Jakub Marian – English
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“News is” or “news are” – singular or plural?
Several English words end with an “s” in their singular form. Most of these don’t pose any problem; few people would say “the kiss were (...)
November 30, 2013 – Jakub Marian – English
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Tall Poppy Syndrome
Tall poppy syndrome is a (usually) pejorative term used in most English speaking countries except the US. It describes a common social (...)
November 28, 2013 – Jakub Marian – English
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Witty and funny quotes about life by Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, Benjamin Franklin and more
“There is nothing so annoying as to have two people go right on talking when you’re interrupting.” (...)
November 27, 2013 – Jakub Marian – English
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Witty and funny quotes about science by Wilde, Edison, Einstein, Asimov, Feynman, Clarke and more
“Physics is like sex: sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.” (...)
November 25, 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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“Would of” in English
The expression “would of” is a common mistake. People who learn English mainly by ear (including many native speakers, unfortunately) (...)
November 24, 2013 – Jakub Marian – English
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‘Gut deutsch sprechen’ or ‘gutes Deutsch sprechen’ in German
This is a classical dilemma. Which one is correct? Fortunately, it’s hard to make a mistake here because both “gut deutsch sprechen” and (...)
November 24, 2013 – Jakub Marian – German
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Integral of $\cos^2(x)$
Let’s use integration by parts: If we apply integration by parts to the rightmost expression again, we will get $∫\cos^2(x)dx = ∫\cos^2(x)dx$, which is not very useful. The trick is to rewrite the $\sin^2(x)$ in the second step as $1-\cos^2(x)$. Then we get (...)
November 24, 2013 – Jakub Marian – Mathematics
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“Aren’t I” / “amn’t I” / “am I not” in English
When you ask an affirmative question at the end of a sentence, you are supposed to use the contracted version of a verb. For (...)
November 23, 2013 – Jakub Marian – English
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“Sympathic” does not exist in English
Sympathique in French or sympathisch in German—the word has spread in some form probably to all European languages, with one major (...)
November 20, 2013 – Jakub Marian – English
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