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Names of fruits and vegetables in French, Spanish and German with pictures
Learning basic vocabulary in a foreign language can be a dull task. It doesn’t make much sense to go through a long list of translations and to memorize, for example, that “apple = pomme” in French, because you can’t speak a language by translating your mother tongue word for word. (...)
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Pronunciation of ‘despicable’ in English
When you despise /dɪˈspaɪz/ (dis-paayz) something, you find it despicable, which is pronounced as /dɪˈspɪkəbəl/ (dis-pik-ə-bl) (...)
February 16, 2014 – Jakub Marian – English
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Pronunciation of ‘vinegar’ in English
Vinegar is used to make food more sour /ˈsaʊər/ (saau-ə) UK, /ˈsaʊɚ/ (saau-rr) US. Although the word is related to vine /vaɪn/ (...)
February 16, 2014 – Jakub Marian – English
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English words in which ‘ss’ is pronounced as ‘z’
In French, Italian, German and some other languages that use the Latin alphabet, the spelling difference between “s” and “ss” is used to (...)
February 6, 2014 – Jakub Marian – English
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‘Etc.’ in a list introduced by ‘e.g.’
The abbreviation “e.g.” (pronounced /iːdʒiː/) comes from the Latin phrase exemplī grātiā which means “for example” or, more (...)
February 3, 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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Pronunciation of ‘archangel’ and ‘archenemy’ in English
In contrast to “arch” /ɑːtʃ/ (aatch) (UK), /ɑːrtʃ/ (artch) (US), “archangel” is pronounced with a hard “ch”, i.e. (...)
January 24, 2014 – Jakub Marian – English
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“Fish fish fish eat eat eat” is a grammatically correct sentence in English (with explanation)
Recently, I read that “fish fish fish eat eat eat” is an example of a strange but grammatically correct sentence. It took me some time to (...)
January 22, 2014 – Jakub Marian – English
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“Classic” vs. “classical” in English
The word “classic” can be either an adjective or a noun. There’s a beautiful and witty quote by Mark Twain explaining quite well what the (...)
January 19, 2014 – Jakub Marian – English
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‘Learnt’ vs. ‘learned’ in English
Both “learned” and “learnt” are considered correct as the past tense and past participle of “learn”. However, take a look at the following (...)
January 15, 2014 – Jakub Marian – English
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The name of the dot above “i” and “j”
This article could have contained just one word: tittle. Tittle, unsurprisingly pronounced /ˈtɪtl/, is the name used in typography for (...)
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