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What does “idiomatic” mean when speaking about language?
An idiom is an expression whose meaning cannot be directly derived from the meanings of the words it contains. Hence one of the meanings (...)
March 17, 2015 – Jakub Marian – English
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Poe’s poem The Raven explained for English learners
Each line of the poem (apart from the last line of each stanza) is divided into two halves in the following text (which is based on my (...)
March 9, 2015 – Jakub Marian – English
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‘Eat healthily’ vs. ‘eat healthy’ in English
When you want to express that the manner in which you eat is healthy, you can do so using the adverb “healthily” (or “healthfully”) or by (...)
March 6, 2015 – Jakub Marian – English
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Irregular English verbs: -ake to -ook (take, shake, forsake)
A few English verbs follow the pattern -ake → -ook → -aken in the past tense. They are all derived from the verb “take”, apart from (...)
March 2, 2015 – Jakub Marian – English
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Irregular English verbs: -eave to -eft
There are only three English verbs that follow the pattern -eave /iːv/ → -eft /ɛft/, namely (listed as infinitive – past tense – (...)
February 23, 2015 – 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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One-syllable adjectives with comparative “more” instead of -er
One of the first rules an English learner learns is that the comparative degree of monosyllabic (one-syllable) adjectives is formed by (...)
February 19, 2015 – Jakub Marian – English
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‘Got’ vs. ‘gotten’ in English
Let’s not beat around the bush with complicated linguistic terms; the difference between “got” and “gotten” is relatively simple. (...)
January 30, 2015 – Jakub Marian – English
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Lie, lied, lay, laid (and layed) in English
The verbs “lie” and “lay” are perhaps the two most confusing irregular English verbs. “Lie” has two meanings: It can mean “not to tell the (...)
January 23, 2015 – Jakub Marian – English
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‘Clothes is’ vs. ‘clothes are’ in English
The word for “clothes” is singular in many languages, e.g. la ropa in Spanish or die Kleidung in German, and its plural in most contexts (...)
January 20, 2015 – Jakub Marian – English
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‘In office’ vs. ‘in the office’ vs. ‘at the office’ in English
After I published my article about being in/at school, one of my readers asked me about the difference between “in office” and “at (...)
January 9, 2015 – Jakub Marian – English
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