Top Tips for learning English

Perhaps, possibly and maybe

Downing Street said

The USA is or are?

Person and People

Nor I you

Lazy and idle

Well and truly

Latin nouns and common mistakes

Other/another/the others

Verbs past endings

No sooner... than...

Rote learning

Time expressions

Using didn't and wouldn't

Improve your pronunciation and fluency

Born with a silver spoon in your mouth

Inverted word order

Lest

Meet/meet with

Phrasal verbs

A question from Hisham in Egypt:

Please, I want to improve my English. How can I do it?

George Pickering answers:

Well Hisham, it's hard to give specific advice without knowing more about you so I'm going to give you some general advice which will maybe be of interest to other listeners and readers.

Point 1

Be clear about why you want to learn English. Do you want it for your job, to help you get a job, to talk to English speakers, to help you study?

Point 2

Be clear about how good you want your English to be. How good do you want to be at speaking English, listening, reading, writing?

Point 3

Have a clear image of yourself when you have achieved the proficiency that you want. What will you see, what will you hear, how will you feel?

Point 4

If possible, enrol on a language course. If you can't, put yourself in situations where you can use English which leads on to ......

Point 5

Look for opportunities to learn and use English. Speak English whenever you can. Listen to the radio and CDs in English, read and write in English. If you look for opportunities, you will find them.

Point 6

Write down new words and phrases in a notebook. Keep the notebook with you so you can look at it when you have a spare moment.

Point 7

Practise, practise, practise. There's an expression in English. If you don't want to lose it, use it. This is very true when it comes to learning foreign languages.

Point 8

Find a learning buddy or colleague. Find someone you can learn English with. Speak with each other. Send each other messages in English.

Point 9

Learn little and often. Make it a habit to learn English ten minutes each day. This is much better than learning for longer once a week.

And the final point: At the beginning of a learning period, ask yourself, "What do I want to learn today?" At the end of a period, ask yoursef, "What have I learnt today?"

There's a story about a teacher who told his students, ?You know you're making progress in English when you speak in English, think in English, and dream in English.

One day a student came into the class very excited and said, "Teacher, Teacher, last night I dreamt in English." The teacher said, "That's wonderful. What did you dream about?" And the student said, "I don't know, it was in English."

Hisham, may you achieve your dream of learning English.

George Pickering is an educational coach, consultant and trainer. He is an associate tutor at the University of Sheffield, and a British Council inspector of language schools in the UK.

Margo asks:

Hello. Could you, please, tell me what is the difference in meaning between 'go back' and 'come back'?

Catherine Walter answers:

Hello Margo, I'm going to answer your question about 'go back' and 'come back' because this is an interesting pair that belongs to a family of interesting pairs - and these pairs are differentiated on the basis of the position of the speaker.

So we use 'come' when we are talking about movement towards the speaker. So I might say to someone who's walking away from me "come back". That is what a linguist would call the 'prototypical' usage of 'come' - that is to say, the usage around which the other usages are based. But you can also use it when you're talking about a speaker's past or future position - so "They came back to our house" or "Can you come to the party?" In those two cases we're talking about the location of the speaker.

We can also, if we're telling a story, locate the centre of the action in one of the people in the story, so that 'come' is about movement towards the person we are focusing on and 'go' is about movement away from the person we're focusing on. So you might say: "He begged her to come back to him" or "He begged her to go back to her family". So 'come' is towards the speaker or towards the person you are talking about and 'go' is away from the speaker or away from the person you are speaking about.

It's a neat and pretty clear rule. Lots of rules in English aren't neat and clear but this one is and I hope that helps you.

Catherine Walter is the Course Leader of the MA in Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) at the Institute of Education, University of London, where she also investigates second language reading comprehension and supervises doctoral students. She is the co-author with Michael Swan of The Good Grammar Book and How English Works.

A question from Hailu.

Do we say "Data is" or "Data are"?

Professor Michael Swan answers:

Ok, well I say data and um I say both I say "Data is" or "Data are" but probably mostly "is". Originally, data was a plural noun, it comes from a Latin word that means things which are given, and that’s plural. The singular of that is datum or datum (different pronunciation). But English speaking people mostly don’t know Latin and so not everybody recognised the word was supposed to be plural.

It looks singular to an English speaker, so more and more people came to use it as a singular and now that’s quite normal. At the beginning "The data is" was definitely a mistake but it’s so widely used now that it’s no longer possible to say that it’s a mistake. It’s become part of the language. This is actually quite a common reason for language change. People make mistakes and the mistakes are repeated by other people, and finally they no longer count as mistakes. It happens a lot with vocabulary.

100 years ago, the word "oblivious", for example, meant "forgetful of". If you were oblivious of things that had happened, you’d forgotten them. You might say she was completely oblivious of her early childhood. But then people started using oblivious to mean unconscious of, unaware of, not paying attention to. So they might say someone was oblivious of their surroundings. Not paying attention to what was going on. This was criticised of course.

People wrote to the newspapers complaining that "oblivious" wasn’t being used correctly, the language was going to the dogs, no-body knew how to speak correct English anymore and so on you know the kind of thing. The fact remains, in modern English "oblivious" means unconscious, not paying attention, and that has become its modern, correct use.

The same thing’s happening today with the expression "a concerted effort". It really means an effort by a lot of people working together – concerted means just that; people working together – but a lot of people now use "a concerted effort" to mean "a big effort". For example, somebody might say "I’m going to make a concerted effort to give up smoking." Because they don’t really think of the real meaning of concerted as working together. For the moment, I think that’s more or less a mistake, but if it goes on everybody will end up using the expression to mean a big effort and we won’t be able to say it’s a mistake anymore. It’ll just be part of the language.

So, data is or data are, both ok.

Amadu Sidi from Niger asks:

What is the meaning of 'to be born with a silver spoon in the mouth'?

Martin Parrott answers:

It means to be born with lots of advantages that other people don’t have, and to be born, really, into a very rich family. And the origin of this expression is from silver being such a precious metal, and of course babies need to be fed with spoons. And we often give spoons to babies as a present, or we give it to the parents of babies as a present – special spoons for feeding babies and I suppose some children would have been given silver spoons, which were a very precious metal.

It means, to have lots of advantages. I don’t think anybody would ever say ‘I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth’. It is sometimes used a little bit enviously of somebody when they have had an easy life because they were born with those advantages.

Are there other similar expressions?

Similar? No I think that’s the expression that we use and I think that if we said anything else, it wouldn’t be an expression – it would be saying something original.

There are related expressions: I mean we talk about people who have ‘blue blood’, which is a little bit different, because nobody has blue blood, but if we use the expression ‘to have blue blood’, we’re referring not only to somebody having all these advantages, but to being royal. They belong to the family of the kings or queens. I think it was believed at one time that kings and queens were almost a different species from the rest of human beings and people thought if they cut themselves and blood came out , the blood that came out would be blue.

Jammy

We have a very colloquial adjective that we use. We describe people as being jammy. It’s not quite the same thing. If you’re jammy, you’re really, really lucky. And this is a word that I don’t think you’d write, but it’s a word that we use between friends to describe people who’re just very, very lucky.

A question from Anne McConnell in England:

Why aren't lazy and idle exact synonyms?

Karen Adams answers:

Well we have two words here that mean very similar things. Lazy which we know means someone who doesn’t really word very hard, but also one with a very similar meaning, idle.

That’s idle – i.d.l.e. Both words can actually be used to describe someone who doesn’t work very hard, for example “John is really lazy.” or “John is really idle.” Both mean that John’s doesn’t really work as much as he should do.

However, there are some very subtle differences between the two words which means we can’t use them completely interchangeably. For example, “lazy” will always have a negative connotation; it will give us a very negative idea of the person it’s being used to describe. So lazy is always seen as a very bad thing.

However, idle can be used in other contexts, still to mean something or someone doesn’t work, but without the negative judgement. So for example, if you press print on your computer, you may see a sign which says “Printer idle.” This means that the printer, at the moment, isn’t doing anything. Similarly, sometimes factories must close, because there isn’t enough work, an so at that point, the factory is idle. Also, the work force, the people are idle.

So when we use idle in this way we are not giving a negative comment on the people or the thing, we are just saying they’re not working.

It’s very very important to think about the adjectives you use in particular because very many of them can carry different connotations. For example: cheap and inexpensive. Both mean that something doesn’t cost a lot of money. However, in British English, we often use the adjective cheap to describe something that’s not of very good quality. So it can sometimes have a negative connotation.

Similarly, you may find two adjectives that mean similar things, but one adjective can be used with a wider range of nouns. So for example wealthy and rich. We can talk about wealthy people or rich people. Both mean people with lots of money.

However, we can also talk about rich food, rich furnishings, meaning very good quality. So here, rich has a slightly different meaning. It’s important to remember that it’s difficult to find words that are exact synonyms, which can be used interchangeably, in all contexts.

So when you learn some new synonyms, it’s important to learn not just what they share, but also what the difference is between them.

Remember, when we say someone is lazy, we mean they don’t work very hard, but we can’t say the printer is lazy, we can only say the printer is idle.

A question from Dahlia.

I just want to know the meaning of this word: rote learning, what's the exact meaning?

Martin Parrott answers:

What is 'rote learning' ? Rote learning is learning something by repeating it, over and over and over again; saying the same thing and trying to remember how to say it; trying to say it fluently and fast. Now, it doesn't help us to understand - it helps us to remember - and often we learn a poem, or a song, or something like that by rote learning. What have you learnt by rote learning, Dahlia?

Dahlia: My most studying is like rote learning.

Martin: Oh, is it?

Dahlia: I just keep saying it to pass my exam, without understanding, most of what I read, or study.

Martin: Well, if you need to remember it for the examination, then I'm sure that's very useful. It's an interesting term, rote learning. It describes the technique for learning - but often we say "I learnt something by rote", and we use the expression "by rote".

Question: If Dahlia wants to learn some useful vocabulary, that could also help her to pass the exam, but she wants to know the meaning as well, what else can you do apart from rote learning then?

Martin: Reading and underlining words, and words that come up several times, looking them up and then perhaps putting them on a list, and perhaps using some rote learning. But, Dahlia, I'm interested in what you learnt by rote for your exams - is this your English?

Dahlia: No, it's not my English. It's something related to my studying. I'm studying economics…

Martin: Yes...

Dahlia: ...and there is a lot of subjects quite difficult to understand every single word.

Martin: Yes?

Dahlia: So, we just keep just rote learning it - you know, to pass the exam…

Martin: Yeah

Dahlia: ...but, erm, many words is hard to know the meaning of.

Martin: That's right, and it doesn't actually help to understand it, does it?

Dahlia: Yeah. Most of our books are translated from, from Russian to Arabic…

Martin: Yeah?

Dahlia: …so... quite difficult sometimes to understand everything.

Martin: It is. I think sometimes in learning a language rote learning can be useful. I know that I worked in China at one time, where my students astonished me by how good they were at rote learning, and I used to set lists of words for them to learn and the next day I'd discover that they remembered them. And then as a teacher I'd just have to help them understand them.

Question: In terms of learning a language, could you offer an alternative to a student at home who maybe does want to learn vocabulary and improve their vocabulary, and maybe isn't finding rote learning good. So, I mean just as a practical tip, what other ways of learning are there?

Martin: I think rote learning may be useful for remembering it - to understand it, we have to see vocabulary in a context - so we need to be not necessarily reading a long book, but reading text in which those words occur. The best is when perhaps the word is used several times in different contexts, and we can understand from the context what it means. A good bilingual dictionary is such a useful tool as well.

Hiba asks:

Please can you tell me a little more about phrasal verbs?

I find it really difficult to learn phrasal verbs, can you explain why? Would it be helpful if I memorise a whole list of them? Do I really need to learn them all?

Martin Parrott answers:

Phrasal verbs consist of two words – they are two-word verbs.

A phrasal verb is a verb, followed by a preposition or an adverb.

For example:

‘set up’ – ‘set in’ – ‘set off’ – ‘set out’ - ‘put by’ – ‘put through’ – ‘put off'

There are two problems with phrasal verbs:

1. There is no way of telling what they mean just by looking at the individual words. The meaning of 'put off' may have nothing to do with ‘put’ and nothing to do with ‘off’.

2. One phrasal verb may have several meanings. It's only by looking at the context that we can tell which meaning it has in any situation.

Study the following examples of phrasal verbs:

'put off'

I can ‘put off’ a meeting. This means I change the time until a later time. But I can also ‘put somebody off’ and that can mean that I upset them, or I do something which makes them dislike me; a completely different meaning!

'set out'

The very common meaning of ‘set out’ is to begin a journey; so we might say I ‘set out’ at 6 o'clock, or I ‘set out’ from home. But it can also mean to put things into a particular order - so before I start working for example, I start with an empty table and I ‘set out’ my pens and my pencils, my books and everything on the table, which means I put them into the correct places.

'make up'

The most common meaning is probably to invent something, to make up a story (which is to tell a story that isn't true); to ‘make up’an excuse.

Are there easy ways a learner can remember the differences between these phrasal verbs?

Unfortunately no.

Learning lists

A lot of learners spend time trying to learn lists of them, or learning the phrasal verb and the translations, and that isn't so useful.

Context

The most useful thing to do is to read and to pay attention to the context they come in. The context is very important. Often learners can understand the meaning from the context and may not come across that phrasal verb again ever, as long as they live. So I think trying to learn them all isn't a very useful thing.

There are lots of books available, which have names like "Teach Yourself Phrasal Verbs", "Learn Phrasal Verbs" and the good ones always have a context. So they introduce them in a context and it's in that context that the learner needs to try and remember them.

You don't need to learn them

The other really good thing is that you don't need to learn phrasal verb - you can nearly always find another way of expressing yourself. Using a phrasal verb if you're confident helps you to sound more idiomatic and more English - but you can still express yourself, if you're not confident.

So that's the easy way out then: just don't use them!

But you do need to understand them and you can use your dictionary to help you - but even using the dictionary can be a problem because you will find lots of meaning for one phrasal verb - so look at the context, try and work it out from the context.

Sahid from Bahrain asks:

Can you ever say ‘school's principal’ or ‘bank's manager’?

Martin Parrott answers:

No, but! Normally you wouldn't say ‘school's principal’ or ‘bank's manager’ - you'd say school principal and bank manager.

Let's have a look at why:

In English, we can use nouns to modify other nouns. So we can say a computer expert - somebody who is an expert, a specialist, in computers, is a computer expert - not a computer's expert! Somebody who's in charge of a company is a company director. A producer who works in radio is a radio producer. And in the same way a person who is the manager of a bank is a bank manager, and a principal of a school is a

school principal.

In some languages you can't do this; but in English, you can just put the two nouns together, and that's what we use.

Can we ever say school's principal or bank's manager?

Well the answer really is 'no' but very, very occasionally you might want to talk about the fact that the principal of a school doesn't belong to that school – it belongs to this school, to my school, and in that case

I might say ‘no, no, no, he's not your school's principal, he's my school's principal’; but notice there we're not really talking about his job, we're talking about which school he belongs to.

Common mistake

The most common mistake that people make with possessives, I think, is to avoid them, and to use ‘of’. So, instead of saying ‘the dog's bone’, people say ‘the bone of the dog’ or ‘the woman's husband’ is ‘the

husband of the woman’.

Sometimes people say ‘the book is for my son’, as opposed to saying ‘it's my son's book’.

It's my son's book! Pronunciation is kind of interesting with possessives, because I think often we don't pronounce that 's' sound very clearly and so people often don't hear the possessive 's'. One of the problems

in learning to use it is that you need to learn to recognise when it's there, because often it's said so quickly that it's easy to miss.

The other thing that is interesting is that the pronunciation changes, depending on the ending of the word. So if the words ends already in an 's' or a 'sh' sound, or a 'ch' sound, or a 'ge' sound, we have to put an ‘es’ on the end, so we would say the judge, but the judge's wig, or the church, but the church's congregation.

Plural possessives: what are the rules?

The rules are only to do with how they're written down, with the orthography. To really confuse everybody, if it's plural, we put an apostrophe after the 's'. So, if we say ‘the girls' boyfriends’ and we're

talking about several girls, we put the apostrophe after the 's' when we write it. If we're talking about one girl, ‘a girl's homework’, we put the apostrophe before the 's’.

Mustafa asks:

What is the difference between 'I will meet you' and 'I will meet with you'?

Martin Parrott answers:

Yes - well, firstly, well done Mustafa, well done for being really up-to-date, because of course 'I will meet with you' -- that 'with' there is a recent form, certainly in British English. It comes from American English, but I think in American English too, it's a fairly recent form.

I will meet you

There is a difference: I will meet you or I'll meet you, could mean all kinds of things. It could mean that we're going to have a meeting, and we're going to do some work together; but it could simply mean that's where we're going to see each other, and we're going to go and do something else afterwards.

I will meet with you

'I will meet with you' does imply a number of things: it implies that it's quite formal; it implies that it's very professional reasons and it implies that somehow, we're going to collaborate on something ...and that it will go on for quite a long time.

Which is the more common expression?

I'll meet you is much more common. Personally, I love these new expression, and I use 'I'll meet with you' at every opportunity. However conservative people very often dislike, and disapprove of, these new expressions which come into the language - and so I tend to be a little bit careful about who I'm talking to when I use expressions like this. I love it!

Are there any other expressions that mean more or less the same thing? Are there any more colloquial expressions that people use to meet up with somebody else, with their friends?

Well, it's not to meet up with their friends, but I think it's relevant. We often say 'I'll meet you halfway'.

I'll meet you half way

And if you meet somebody halfway, it's got nothing to do with actually meeting, it's got to do with negotiating. So, you want something, and I want something else - then we can either fall out and do nothing, or we can both compromise and find a solution which involves both of us getting some of what we want, and not getting some of what we want - and in that case, what we talk about is meeting somebody halfway: 'I'll meet you halfway'.

'Meeting up'/'meet up'

Of course, we talk about meeting up, and that's a very common expression: in fact it's what we call a phrasal verb, but you can meet up, or you can meet up with somebody - that's always for social reasons and it involves getting together, usually then to do something else, and it may involve not two people, but a large group of people. So, at the end of an evening of doing something socially, somebody might say ‘when are we going to meet up again’?

To 'hook up'

If you hook up with somebody you meet them. It's very colloquial. Usually young professional people use this, people in their twenties, professional people, who lead a very busy life. They don't have very much time to spend with anyone, and they say 'oh, I'll hook up with you sometime' - meaning getting into contact for a quick conversation which has some definite purpose. They will then move on and hook up with somebody else.

To get in touch

We often use the expression 'to get in touch with someone'. Now, that very often doesn't involve touching, or even seeing. It's very often a letter, or an e-mail, or a phone call, or a text message - but that has the sense of contacting somebody who you haven't had contact with for quite some time. Christmas in this part of the world of course is where we tend to get in touch with people that we don't see regularly and that just means sending them a card and it's really to let them know that we're still there - and thinking of them.

Shazad asks:

In the sentence, ‘work hard lest you should fail in your examination’ can 'lest' be used without the support of the word 'should'?

Martin Parrott answers:

Yes, it can. First, what does lest mean and when do we use it? Lest is a very rare word and quite old fashioned.

Most people in Britain know it, because we see it written very often in the same place - on war memorials, on statues, which have been put up so that we remember people who died in wars; and what's very often written on these statues is ‘lest we forget’! Now, what lest means is ‘so that we don't’ or ‘so that you don't’. It's a warning. It's introducing a danger to be avoided.

And Shazad’s example: ‘work hard lest you should fail your examination’ lest introduces the danger of things to be avoided: if you don't work hard, you will fail your examination.

Here are further examples:

We often use it after a command, ‘work hard lest you fail your exam’ and ‘dress up warmly (wear warm clothes) lest you catch cold’.

We can use it without a command, we might talk about something we did in the past, so we might say ‘I worked really hard, lest I failed my exam’.

Written

What we do need to remember though is that it is a very, very formal and old-fashioned word and if you use it when you're talking, you're going to sound rather strange. It's a word which we see written - it's not a word that is used in conversation. Remember it, because you will see it written; but only use it if you really want to impress somebody in a very, very formal situation.

Can lest be used without the support of the word should?

Yes. And it normally is used without should. In Shazad's example, 'lest you should fail your examination', that use of should of course has a completely different meaning from the usual meaning of should. We usually think of should in terms of an obligation: something you have to do. And here, it doesn't mean that - here, the meaning introduces a conditional that suggests that this is a possibility, but not a strong possibility. It is not necessary. We usually do leave it out.

The interesting thing is, that when we do leave it out, the word that is left there is an infinitive - which means, that if we're using ‘he’, we don't say ‘he must work hard, lest he fails the examination’; we say ‘he must work hard, lest he fail the examination’. And that's a curious and interesting little bit of English.

Marcela asks:

A very specific question, about grammar. Is there a rule about 'inverted subject verb word order in conditionals?’

Martin Parrott answers:

Yes there is. It sounds terribly complicated - but really there are three examples when you can, kind of, invert the subject and the verb, and it's easy to learn them - but they're not terribly common.

Example 1: Future

The first case is a conditional referring to the future. You might say, if it rains, I'll stay at home. But, there is an alternative to that. Instead of saying 'if it rains', you can say 'should it rain'. Now there you're inverting, if you like, the verb should (it's an auxiliary verb) and the subject - inverting the order. That's for conditionals for the future: ‘should it rain I'll stay at home’, ‘should it be fine, I'll go out’. It's a little bit unusual, and it's a little bit formal.

Example 2: Present

There are two more phrases which involve some degree of inverting (changing round the subject and the verb). There's also what we sometimes call the second conditional: they are conditionals where we're talking about the present and imagining it's the present. It's different in some ways - so ‘I've got a friend who's really healthy and well and doesn't need looking after, but if he were ill, I'd look after him’.

We have another conditional which is sometimes called the second conditional - which we use to refer to things in the present when we imagine if they were different. So for example: ‘I've got a friend who's really healthy, never ill, never needs looking after’, but [I might imagine it!] if he were ill, what would I do? ‘If he were ill, I'd look after him.’ Now there is another way of saying that, which is ‘were he ill, I'd look after him’ - and there, we'd invert the auxiliary verb and the subject. So, instead of ‘he were ill’ we changed it to ‘were he ill’ and we leave off the 'if'.

So that's our second example. Of course, that's quite an interesting one too, because we're using 'were' instead of 'was' and remember in sentences like this where we're talking about the present and we're imagining it different (our second conditional sentences), we can use 'were' instead of 'was' after the subject. We can't say ‘was he ill, I'd look after him’ - it's the 'were' here. ‘Were he ill, I'd look after him’, ‘were he miserable, I would try and cheer him up’, ‘were he poor, I'd give him presents’.

Example 3: Conditional to talk about the past

Normally if we're talking about the past and imagining if things were different, we use ‘if’ and then we use what we call the past perfect tense. So, ‘if I had known he was tired, I would have gone home earlier’ (I stayed there all night talking to him; I didn't know he was tired). If I'd known - I had known - he was tired, I would have gone home earlier.

There's an alternative to that we can use. Instead of saying ‘if I had known’, we can say ‘had I known’. We invert the 'had', the auxiliary verb and the subject – so our alternative to ‘if I had known’ is ‘had I known’. ‘If I had seen him, I would have spoken to him’ – ‘had I seen him I would have spoken to him’. ‘If she had got the job, she would have been happier’ – ‘had she got the job, she would have been happier’.

All the same

The interesting thing about these three examples is, in a way they’re all the same. In each of these examples, we get rid of ‘if’ and then we invert (we change the order of) the auxiliary verb and the subject. And each of them is more formal than using ‘if’, and each of them suggests that the condition – that this ‘if’ clause, the condition – is a bit less probable.

A question from one of our regular listeners, Shazad Enam.

Shazad wants to know how to improve pronunciation and fluency. Is there any way of doing that easily?

Martin Parrott answers:

Easily, I don’t know. I don’t think there are easy ways to learn languages – I don’t think people who promise sudden ‘quick fix’ methods are to be believed. We learn slowly, and we learn by working hard.

As far as pronunciation is concerned, the most important thing is listening! I think, often we try and pronounce things correctly before we can really hear what the differences are. How do we check out whether we’re doing that?

Record ourselves

I think we need to record ourselves and we need to record what it is we’re repeating and listening to. So, the most useful thing perhaps is to listen to the radio with a tape recorder, to record a little bit of the radio, and then to say it ourselves, and to compare how we’ve said it, with the way it was said on the radio, in the language we’re learning.

It’s a slow process. We need to spend a lot of time rehearsing. I remember when I was learning, for instance, for hours and hours as I was walking or cycling, or whatever – I was trying to produce those sounds, difficult sounds that I was learning.

The more we do that, the more we pick up when we hear them. And of course the other thing about pronunciation is, as we improve our pronunciation, that also improves our comprehension. As we learn to make these distinction between similar sounds, we start hearing them – and that makes understanding easier.

Spelling is a problem

One of the biggest problems in English is that the spelling gets in the way because there are so many ways of spelling the same sound. Also because letters may be written and not pronounced and because letters may be written and pronounced in a very unexpected way. When we learn to read, that can interfere with our pronunciation, and can cause problems in itself.

Is there a difference between pronunciation and fluency?

They’re quite different. Pronunciation is getting the sounds right, and of course it’s also getting the intonation and the rhythm right – it’s not just individual sounds, it’s pushing them all together.

Fluency perhaps overlaps there a little bit. Fluency is saying things easily. Being fluent is more a question of being confident in the vocabulary, and how to put the words together in the grammar – being confident in that - …and just being confident in your ability to express yourself and having a go.

It’s those psychological factors much more than whether you can get your tongue around the individual sounds. In fact people whose pronunciation is poor, but who speak fluently and put it together and get it out reasonably quickly, are usually easier to understand than people who’re taking a lot of trouble over their pronunciation and therefore are slowing themselves down, and speaking one word at a time.

One piece of advice

When you’re speaking, don’t think about the individual sounds and getting those right. Think about groups of words, and think about meaningful groups of words, and getting those out as quickly and as smoothly as you can.

A question from Muhammad from Syria.

Muhammad wants to know why we put the indefinite article “a” before quarter, but not before half, when asked about the time?

Prof. Michael Swan answers:

It’s an interesting question, and I’m not sure I’ve got a very good answer; it’s just one of those irregularities. There’s often no real explanation: it’s just that languages are tidy in one part, and untidy in others, perhaps because of the way they’ve been passed down from person to person over the centuries – so it’s not surprising if changes creep in, and things get a bit messy! Perhaps we dropped the article before ‘half’ because it’s such a common word.

In fact, we can actually say “quarter”, instead of “a quarter”, when we’re talking about the time. If you asked me the time at 6.15, I might well say “quarter past six”, instead of “a quarter past six” – but that’s pretty conversational, and “a quarter” is more normal if we’re speaking carefully, or writing.

And certainly, as you say, we never say “a half” when we’re talking about time; say, “half past six”, or even “half six”, but not “a half past six”.

Interestingly, we also use “half” without “a” in other situations, and not just when we’re giving the time. For example, if I eat half an orange – that’s how I say it! But, I would say “a quarter of an orange”, not “quarter of an orange”.

So that’s it: we say “a quarter past four”, not “a half past four” – just one of those irregular things.

Minutes

Talking about time in English is actually quite complicated. Ahmed from Egypt asks about this. In ordinary conversation, what most people say is “five past”, “twenty past”, “twenty-five to”, “a quarter to” and so on….Interestingly, we usually don’t say “four past”, or “six past” – we put in minutes there. We say “four minutes past”, “six minutes past” and we drop minutes with the fives: “five past”, “twenty past”.

In older English, when people were counting, they often said “one and twenty” or “two and twenty”, instead of “twenty-one” or “twenty-two” and so on – and I remember that my mother, when she was talking about the time, she would say “five and twenty-to-three” – so it was still alive, say, fifty years ago.

"After" and "till" in American English

As you probably know, American English has some ways of talking about the time that aren’t used in British English: they might say “after” instead of “past” for example. An American might say “ten after six”, where I would say “ten past six” – and where British people say “ten to six”, some Americans might use “of” or “till” or “before”.

So that’s conversational time-giving: “five past”, “twenty past”, “twenty-five to”.

In a more formal style (for instance if we’re giving the times of events), we’re more likely to put it differently and to say “three ten”, “six fifteen”, “seven forty-five”….and when we’re talking about timetables we often use the 24-hour clock. So, we might say that a train arrives at “eighteen twenty-two”. But if you ask me what time it is, just as the train arrives, or just as it’s supposed to arrive, I’ll look at my watch, and I won’t say “it’s eighteen twenty-two”, I’ll tell you “it’s twenty-two minutes past six”.

A question from Claudio.

My question is the following: How can I pronounce the end of the regular verb the best? Sometimes it sounds like t sometimes d, sometimes like id. I want to know the rules.

Professor Michael Swan answers:

Claudio, that’s an interesting question, thanks.

Let’s start by thinking about the difference between two kinds of sound: some sounds are what we call voiced – if you pronounce “m” or “l” or “v” or “d” you make a sound in your throat. We call that voicing and if you put your hand on your throat when you say those sounds, you can feel vibrations.

Try it, put your hand on your throat and say “m” “l” “v” “d”.

Those are voiced sounds. Vowels are voiced too. If you say “A “e” “o” you can feel the voicing and if you didn’t voice them, they would be quite different “a” “e” “o”. But some sounds are not voiced. For example “p” “t” “k” “f” if you say them, “p” “t” “k” “f”, there’s no vibration in your throat at all. They’re whispered, unvoiced.

OK, now let’s get back to past tenses. If a verb ends with a voiced sound like “m” “l” “v” or a vowel, we make the regular past with another voiced sound, “d”, so we say “seemed, filled, lived, played”. The voicing isn’t very strong, especially if you’re talking fast, but it’s more or less there. And if a verb ends with an unvoiced sound like “p” or “k” or “f” we make the past with another unvoiced sound “t” so we say “hoped, looked, stuffed”. So that’s the difference between past forms with “ed” and past forms with “t”.

Now what about “id”?

Well, we use this after a “t” or a “d”. It’s pretty hard to say “wait’t” or “end’d” so we add a vowel and we say “waited” (waitid) or “ended” (Endid).

So those are the three possibilities: “d” after a voiced sound, t after an unvoiced sound and “id” after “t” or “d”. There you are. It’s a bit complicated, but I hope it’s clear.

And now, something for you to think about; plural “s” can be pronounced in three ways: “z” “ss” or “is”. Days, books, buses and the same goes for third person “s” and possessive “s”: “z” “ss” or “is”. So, when do we use which one? See if you can work it out.

Good luck with your English studies Claudio, and thanks very much for your interesting question.

Claudio:

It was a great pleasure to talk to you.

A question from Yenny.

I want to ask the difference between 'other', 'another' and 'the others' and how to use them.

Professor Michael Swan answers:

Well Hallo Yenny. This is Michael Swan. It’s an interesting question. They’re quite complicated, aren’t they? Basically, there are two ways to use other. You can use it before a noun, like an adjective, so you can say: "Another office", or you can use it alone, just like a noun, you can say “I’ll have another” and they work differently.

If it’s like an adjective before a noun then you don’t put 's' on the plural because adjectives don’t have 's' – we say the other houses, not the others houses just like we say the big houses, not the bigs houses. So the other houses, the other people, the other political parties.

But if it’s alone, like a noun, we do put 's' for the plural. So we do say I’ll take this cake, and you can have all the others. Or this car cost £8,000, and the others cost £10,000 upwards. We often use the others to mean “ the other people” so I might say “If you tell Jane, I’ll tell the others” – means the other people.

Another – that’s just a spelling irregularity – for some reason we write it as one word. Don’t ask me why, it’s just one of those things. It started back in the 16th century, and we can’t go back and ask them about it. There’s one odd thing about another. You can use it before a plural expression with a number.

So for instance I might say I’ll need another three days to finish the work. Or she’s borrowed another £20. This might be connected with the fact that plural quantities are often treated as singular in English, so we say “£5 is a lot to pay for a cup of coffee.” Not ''£5 are a lot''.

So, back to other – no 's' in the plural if it’s an adjective, the other houses, 's' if it’s a plural noun, I’ll tell the others. OK? Thanks for your question and good luck with your studies, Yenny.

Yenny:

Thank you.

A question from Katie Burton in China:

Some of my Chinese colleagues asked me about the phrase 'well and truly'. We can say 'well and truly stuck' but not 'well and truly beautiful'. Are there any rules for using this phrase or is it just a case of learning it? Is 'well and truly' an adverb and what should follow it, or is it an adjective and is it only for negative things?

Karen Adams answers:

Thank you for your question Katie. And first let me explain what 'well and truly stuck' means. If something is 'well and truly stuck' you really can not move it. So for example if your car breaks down and you try to push it and it won't move it may be well and truly stuck. So 'well and truly' here means absolutely stuck, you can't move it. And really when we say something is well and truly stuck it shows that we are actually a little bit frustrated or we really aren't very happy about the fact that we can't move it. So for example if I come home and I want to have a biscuit and I look in the biscuit tin and there are none there I can say 'well they are well and truly finished'.

However 'well and truly' is a very difficult phrase to use because it doesn’t go with lots and lots of different adjectives. If you were to say the words 'well and truly' to someone in Britain they would imagine that the next word would be stuck. 'Well and truly' is an adverbial phrase to describe the adjective stuck. And they just go together.

There are no clear rules to for why certain adverbs go with certain adjectives, they just do. So, for example, if you say to someone in Britain the adverb – 'stunningly' – the adjective they're most likely to think of is 'beautiful'. These are what we call fixed phrases. They're phrases which just go together, they collocate – co locate – they go together. It's not just adverbs and adjectives which go together in this way. We often find nouns and nouns go together. So for example 'fish and …. chips'. Or adjectives and nouns, for example we can say - 'heavy smoker', someone who smokes a lot, or 'heavy drinker' someone who drinks a lot. But someone who eats a lot? No it's not a 'heavy eater' it's a 'big eater'. Basically these phrases which go together form patterns, there are no real rules to learn. You just have to be able to work out what the patterns are.

So how do you learn these phrases which go together? Well the two best things you can do are to read and to listen. When you're reading a newspaper or a book try to work out phrases that you see coming up more than once. If you see a phrase which goes together maybe two or three times then you can think 'mmm I think those go together, I think those collocate.'

And similarly if you're listening to the radio, when you're listening to the BBC World Service if you hear the phrase two or three times, make a note of it, because then you know 'mmm this is a collocation, this is a phrase which goes together.'

So hopefully Katie that answers your question. To sum up, 'well and truly is an adverbial phrase and most often you use it with the adjective 'stuck', 'well and truly stuck.' You can use it in one or two other circumstances, but usually you will hear it with he adjective 'stuck'. Although now I'm well and truly finished and I'm going to go and have a cup of tea.

A question from Yaciel Toledo in Cuba:

My full name is Yaciel Edelio Tellez Toledo. I come from Cuba. I wrote to you because I am in doubt with the correct use of 'person' and 'people'. That was my question - because I know that 'person' and 'people' both are nouns and I would like to know when I'm going to use 'person' or 'people'.

Karen Adams answers:

Hi Yaciel and thank you for your question, there are several points to make here. The first one os to do with singular and plural nouns, I'm sure you know that most nouns in English are made plural by putting an s on the end, so for example, girl – girls, boy – boys. But some nouns have irregular plurals, for example child – children. And 'person' is one of those nouns that has an irregular plural. 'People' is in fact the plural form of person. So for example we talk about one person and two people. So in normal everyday speech you will hear people talking about 'many people', 'there were a lot of people at the concert', for example.

However it becomes slightly more complicated because sometimes you do see the word 'persons'. For example if you're in a lift or elevator you might see the sign 'Four persons only'. And sometimes if you're listening to the news, to news reports you may hear news reports talking about persons. So for example 4 persons were injured in the accident, or police are looking for 5 persons. Persons is normally a more formal use, a more formal plural form.

It gets slightly more complicated when you find the word peoples. People can be used to mean a nationality – all of the people of one country – so for example 'the people of Cuba'. And when you're talking about a group of nationalities you may find the word 'peoples', for example, 'the peoples of South America'. So that's another slightly more complicated and not so common use of the word 'peoples'.

Finally you may find the word 'person' attached to a number. For example 'a two-person car', 'a three-person room'. This is where 'person' is being used to describe the noun. '2 – person' is the adjective describing 'car' and as you know we don't put an 's' on an adjective. So far example we talk about a 'two-week holiday' not a 'two-weeks holiday' or a 'three-year course' not 'a three-years course'. So hear we use 'two-person car'.

So in summary, normally you find 'people' as the plural form of 'person' – one person, three people. Sometimes you'll find people used to describe the nationality so you'll find 'peoples' to describe different nationalities and sometimes you'll find the word 'persons' in more formal styles of writing or in signs for example.

I hope that answers your question.

A question from Francoise Maroy in Reunion Island:

Is "The United States" considered as a singular or a plural noun?

Karen Adams answers:

Thank you for your question Francoise; this is a really interesting one. Basically in English, there is a group of nouns which can be either singular or plural depending on what you want to say about them. So for example, if we’re looking at the United States the country we would normally use the singular verb so for example – “The United States is a very big country.”

However, if we’re thinking about the government in the United States we might want to use a plural noun - “The United States are a major power in the World.” This singular plural difference is one that we see reflected in a number of other nouns in English. For example, when we’re talking about the government we can say – “The government has won the election.” Or we can say “The government have won the election.” This depends if we see the government as a collection of individuals - “The government have won the election.” – or if we see the government as one thing - “The government has won the election.”

Another noun that works like this is team. “The team has won the trophy.” It means we’re looking at the team as one unified thing – as one thing. However, if the team have many difficulties, we could be talking about the individuals within the team. So this is a group of nouns that can be singular or plural depending on what you want to say about them.

It’s quite a small group of nouns, and usually the nouns in this group refer to politics or the state – so for example when we are talking about the police, the army, the navy, we can use plural or singular.

The thing to remember, is when we look at them as a collection of individuals, we would normally use a plural noun, and if we want to look at them as a unified institution we use the singular.

So in answer to your question Françoise, the United States can be singular or can be plural, depending on what you want to say about them. However, normally if you’re talking about the country, use the singular verb.

I hope that helps.

A question from Paul in Hong Kong:

Sometimes, I see news reports stating that "Downing Street said". I think that as Downing Street is a structure it cannot speak out itself. How can you explain this form of writing style?

Thank you for your help

Sarah Bradshaw answers:

Downing Street is of course the home of the Prime Minister and it's used by journalists and others to mean a 'Downing Street spokesperson' or 'a representative of the British Government has said' or 'the British Government has expressed a view that...' But now we just use the address of the Prime Minister: 'Downing Street says' or 'Downing Street thinks that...' So it is a strange thing to think of a street speaking, but it's really talking about the British Government when you hear 'Downing Street'.

Other examples of (I think we'd say) institutions in the United Kingdom where we use an address instead of a person to attribute speech to, would be, for example: 'Fleet Street thinks that...' And Fleet Street is traditionally the home of British newspapers, so when you hear the expression 'Fleet Street thinks that the economy might be in trouble', for example, it means that the journalists of the United Kingdom think something to be true.

Another example is Buckingham Palace, where the Queen lives: 'Buckingham Palace says that there will be a royal garden party next month', for example. Again, Buckingham Palace can't speak; it's a building. It means that the official representatives of Buckingham Palace have told us that there will be a garden party next month.

So when you hear an address used in this way it usually represents an official body of people in some way; the collective thought or represented words of a body of people.

A question from Ketsarin in Thailand:

Hello, my name is Ketsarin; I'm from Thailand? And I would like to know the difference of the words 'maybe', 'perhaps', and 'possibly'? and when to use those words in each situation. Thank you

Sarah Bradshaw answers:

Ok, well thanks very much Ketsarin. Well, all of those words mean more or less the same thing, as I'm sure you know. They all show that something is possible, or might be true. However, the real difference in meaning between them is when we use them and in what context. One is informal, another is neutral and another one is formal.

So 'maybe', we can say, is a rather informal word. For example, 'Maybe we'll skip school today.' Or: 'Are you going to Anna's party?' 'Hmmm... maybe.'

Getting to the word 'perhaps'... 'Perhaps' is, we could say, more neutral and polite. It's just a neutral way of expressing possibility. For example: 'There were 200, perhaps 250, people at the theatre'. Or: 'Perhaps we should start again.'

Now moving on to 'possibly'... 'Possibly' sounds, I think we could say, a bit more formal than either maybe or perhaps, and especially in agreement or disagreement. For example, in answer to the question 'Do you think he will apply for the job?' the answer: 'Hmm. Possibly, possibly not.' Or: 'He may possibly decide to apply for the job.'

So, I think that we could sum it up that largely - not every time, but largely - there's a difference in register: 'maybe' is quite informal, 'perhaps' is neutral, and 'possibly' would be a little bit formal. Does that answer your question?

Ketsarin: Yes, I think so.

Sarah: Ok! Well, thank you very much.