Language Trainers Blog

I generally speak pretty good English. (As far as I know,) I make few mistakes, and those that I do make, I am aware of. It doesn’t really excuse me, but I know when I say The Ukraine, it should just be Ukraine (although they used to use the article, so…partial credit?). Then there’s the none is versus none are argument, but I stand firm that none are is OK.

So imagine my delight when I came across a comprehensive list of common errors in English Usage by Paul Brians, Emeritus Professor of English at Washington State University. It has an easily navigable list, with each link leading to a simple explanation of what is correct and what should be steered clear of (no in depth grammar lectures here). Of course, it is not an exhaustive list, but I guess that depends on your definition of common. The list covers some of my pet peeves (e.g. could of, would of, should of; accept/except; affect/effect), as well as some that I didn’t even know were issues, like pre-Madonna instead of prima donna. Did you know that the original phrase is “you’ve got another think coming”, not “you’ve got another thing coming”?

So, if you want to have a bit of a laugh at the people who make some ridiculous mistakes, or just check you’re not about to make one yourself, check out the list. Did anything surprise you?

Edit: After checking, it appears there is no entry for the often misspelled Valentimes Day. Happy St Valentine’s Day! Have some good Valen-Times!

One of the exercises my teacher likes to do with me is to get me to tell her about my day, or my weekend, or what I want to do in the near future.  It helps me practice speaking and writing (i.e., creating output) about things that are relevant and familiar to me, as well as focusing on useful language and grammar.

Talking about what you did on the weekend helps with past tenses, next week is for future, current habits practice present continuous.  You can use the subjunctive (if… situations) by imagining what you would have done if you had made a different choice or if something else happened (e.g. if I missed the bus this morning, I would have…).

If you don’t have a person to give you feedback, there are plenty of websites where other users will correct your work (e.g. LiveMocha, Lang-8), and you can correct theirs.  Alternatively, you could start a blog of your diary entries and invite readers to give you some advice about improving your writing and/or speaking.  You could also write about your language learning experiences.

What kind of output exercises do you like to do?

So I guess I don’t have my finger on the pulse, because March 4th was National Grammar Day, and I had no idea it was happening until it already had*.  The day, a chance to celebrate grammar and language in general, was started in 2008 by the founder of SPOGG (Society for the Protection of Good Grammar), and hosted by Mignon Fogarty (also known as Grammar Girl, who brings us the brilliant Quick and Dirty Tips).

Check out the National Grammar Day site for ways to celebrate and find out more about grammar and language, including links to some great cartoons, resources, e-cards and t-shirts. Let that grammar slacker in your life know it’s important to you (well, if it is, of course).

From the site, 10 grammar myths exposed:

1. A run-on sentence is a really long sentence.
2. You shouldn’t start a sentence with the word “however.”
3. “Irregardless” is not a word.
4. There is only one way to write the possessive form of a word that ends in “s.”
5. Passive voice is always wrong.
6. “I.e.” and “e.g.” mean the same thing.
7. You use “a” before words that start with consonants and “an” before words that start with vowels.
8. It’s incorrect to answer the question “How are you?” with the statement “I’m good.”
9. You shouldn’t split infinitives.
10. You shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition.

(Click here for more information about the list above.)

Did you celebrate the occasion? Do you think grammar deserves its own day?

*I think this is a failing of people who start ‘national’ days.  They should really go big and go international. Grammar is important everywhere!

Back in 1985, cognitive scientists at Princeton University began work on a lexical database called WordNet.  It’s essentially a dictionary and thesaurus which groups and links words according to their meanings.  WordNet provides users with synsets, which are groups of words or phrases which essentially mean the same thing.  It’s a great tool for writers, students, language learners, and anyone who needs a definition, synonym, or broader view of a word or phrase.  WordNet is searchable online, and a downloadable application is also available.

A fantastic extension of WordNet is VisuWords, which allows you to see a visual interpretation of the WordNet links for words of your choice, or random words.  Each visual map shows the possible meanings and synsets for the central word and the relationships between them all.  It’s also interactive, allowing you to move parts around to see them more clearly, and synsets move around in quite a calming and hypnotic way.  The above image is what comes up when you plug ‘language’ into the search engine.

WordNet has inspired wordnets for many different languages, and a full list can be found on the Global WordNet Association website.  Many of them are browsable online (e.g. MultiWordNet On-line*), and some also have visual interfaces (e.g. Asian WordNet Project**, aimsigh.com (Irish)).  The GWA’s aim is to integrate as many wordnets together as possible, to make a global grid.

*Searchable in English, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew, Romanian, and Latin.
**Searchable in Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, Lao, Bengali, Indonesian, and others.

One of my favourite linguistic phenomena is the eggcorn.  It occurs when a person hears something slightly different to what was said, but the misheard form still makes some sort of sense.  If a person never sees the phrase written down, it’s very possible for them to think that their interpretation is the correct version.

A good example is the word eggcorn itself, which some people believe is the correct pronunciation and spelling of acorn.  It qualifies as a true eggcorn, because acorns are egg-shaped, and corn is a kind of seed, so eggcorn almost makes sense.

A little digging around the internet has revealed some gems, and the Eggcorn Database is a great source.  It encourages public submission, discussion, and possible etymologies.  It even includes some that it doesn’t technically classify as eggcorns.

Here are some of my favourites:

• (chocolate) eclair >> eggclair
• (social) leper >> leopard
• an arm and a leg >> a nominal egg
• eau de cologne >> odor cologne
• cold-hearted >> coal-hearted

Social leopards

The vocative comma is an important, but often forgotten, piece of punctuation.  Its purpose is to separate the person being addressed from the rest of the conversation, so we know who’s being spoken to.

In spoken English, we use pauses to signal the separation, and these should be reflected with commas when we write.

Consider this snippet I found on talkenglish.com.  It is from a questionable conversation that was under the category ‘Talking About Girls’:

A: “I think she is out of my league.”

B: “Chicken. Somebody is only out of your league if you think so. What do you see in her anyway? She is a little chubby dude.”

She is a little chubby, dude. She’s a little on the heavy side, buddy.

She is a little chubby dude. She’s a small, fat man.

If we listened to this conversation, the meaning would be clear, but in its written form, it’s ambiguous at best.

Another example from Flickr poses the question, is she a vegetarian man, or a vegetarian, man?

FreeRice is an excellent website that combines education and charity.  The concept is simple: answer a question correctly and the UN World Food Program will donate 10 grains of rice to a hungry family somewhere in the world.

FreeRice started out as an English vocabulary game.  They would show you a word and then give four possible definitions or synonyms.  Since then, they have added English grammar, French, Italian, German, Spanish, and several other subject areas like mathematics, chemistry, and geography.

The difficulty level automatically adjusts depending on whether you get the question right or wrong, so the more questions you get right, the harder it becomes.  A great feature is that it will tell you the correct answers to the questions you miss, and repeats them later on in the game - an excellent revision method.

The  highest English vocabulary level they use is 60.  I’ve gotten to a maximum of 50 the last few times I’ve played.  The most memorable word I’ve learned today is jalousie, which is a type of window blind.  I actually guessed the answer correctly, even though it looks like a terrible attempt at spelling ‘jealousy’.

There’s no minimum or maximum number of questions, so there’s no excuse for having no time to feed people in need.  See if you can get to the highest level in your area of expertise, or even better, in the language you’re studying.

They say that nothing is free, but the cost of this is hardly worth mentioning, and the benefits far outweigh the effort of pointing and clicking!

After being saddened because so many people lack the ability to use an apostrophe, it’s lovely to see that the punctuation mark being used as a yardstick in the National Geographic, albeit because of its size, not its grammatical function. It still amazes me what is constantly being discovered in the world.

At under half an inch tall (13 millimeters), Satomi’s pygmy seahorse—named after dive guide Satomi Onishi—is a strong contender for the world’s smallest seahorse. With their tails stretched out straight, two Satomi’s pygmy seahorses would fit head-to-head across the face of a penny.

These miniscule seahorses from Indonesian reefs have been seen giving birth to tiny offspring, each about the size of a 12-point apostrophe.

Article from National Geographic.

I’ve just read an article about language learning which had a lot of thought-provoking points.

The one that stuck out the most was about changing along with your new language development. Too many times I’ve heard people stubbornly speaking a foreign language by trying to find the closest words from their native language. I know it’s almost impossible to develop a totally natural accent in a foreign language, but the article advises us to relax and let ourselves be influenced by the new language and culture.

6. When we learn, we change. We need to accept this change.

When we learn, our neural networks change, physically. When we learn a new language, we adopt some of the behaviour patterns of another culture and our personalities and our perceptions change. Many of the difficulties that grown-ups face in language learning, come from the a resistance to change. It is often more comfortable to follow the patterns and pronunciation of our own language, rather than to commit to fully imitating the new language.

The full article, 7 Concepts of Natural Language Learning, is well worth reading. The author, Steve Kaufmann, is a former Canadian diplomat who speaks 10 languages to a high level. I’d say he’s fairly qualified to give out some advice on the subject of language learning.