Talking about your home (rooms)

Adverts for homes are a little different in the UK than in Finland, or indeed the US. In Finland, houses and flats are advertised as having, firstly, so many square metres of floor space, then as having so many rooms + kitchen + sauna etc. In the UK, the first item is the type of dwelling and number of bedrooms… read more

Talking about your home (types)

This new page describes the basic housing types, using British English (US English uses many different words for housing). Read more:

Tonne or ton?

Container Terminal - photo courtesy Wikipedia

I just came across the problem of whether to use ‘tonne’ or ‘ton’ in a text, so I did a little research and came to the following conclusion. This conclusion, however, is not so simple – so, first of all, let’s look at the technical definition – read more:

 

Valentine’s Day around the world

St Valentine’s Day and similar days celebrating love
Adapted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the UK, sending cards, flowers, chocolates and other gifts to prospective or current romantic partners is traditional. However, in Wales, many people celebrate Dydd Santes Dwynwen (St Dwynwen’s Day) on January 25 instead of (or as well as) Valentine’s Day. The day commemorates St Dwynwen, the patron saint of Welsh lovers … read more:

Newspaper Headline English

News stand in Paddington, London - courtesy Wikipedia

Newspaper headlines make use of a great variety of less usual words, which can also make them harder to read by non-native speakers. Headlines also try to be ‘punny’ (making use of close synonyms or related words as a joke) and alliterative (using a string of words with the same initial letter or sound). They tend to use shorter words than normal, and often leave out unnecessary grammatical ‘extras’. All this makes headlines short and eye-catching (and less than easy to read) … read more:

Adjective word order in English

Now here is something that perhaps you haven’t thought about, and indeed neither had I until I started teaching English. We could use many adjectives to describe the scene above, but what order should they be in? To a native speaker it is learned as a child and just feels like the ‘natural order of things’, but different types of adjectives are set in a certain order when used together … read more: 

The Top Seven Military Big Spenders …

The Top 7 World Military Budgets by Country - the figures in the bottom axis show proportion of GDP.

 At just over $687 billion dollars a year the USA tops the charts for Military Big Spender of the World by such a big margin that we can only compare other countries with each other. However, the combined defence budgets of the 27 EU member states in 2010 amounted to $299.7 billion (1.63% of European Union GDP ). This makes the EU a significant 2nd (not represented on the chart as it is not (yet) a country) … read more:

 

Saggar Maker’s Bottom Knocker

A Saggar Maker’s Bottom Knocker was a job title held by certain persons involved in the making of saggars, which are ceramic boxes designed to contain pottery wares, and which protect them from the direct heat of flames in a kiln. It has to be one of the oddest job titles in existence. Do You know of any other strange job titles?

Saggars in a museum

The winter we have waited for

Winter beauty from Vaasa in Finland – photo by Malcolm Pemberton

Winter in the Far North can sometimes be something of a challenge, even for those who were born here. When I say ‘Far North’ I am referring to Vaasa in Finland, where I live, which lies at 63 degrees north. This is, in fact, two degrees further north than Anchorage in Alaska, but still three and a half degrees short of the Arctic Circle, or some 210 nautical miles … read more: 

Two new grammar pages

This is just a quick post to draw your attention to two new grammar pages:

Basic Verb Tenses (for Levels A1 and A2)

The Apostrophe (a reference for all levels)

All feedback welcome