There are many things I love about England. People are generally kind, thoughtful and polite; London is exciting. multi-cultural and great for shopping; and the countryside is beautiful – occasionally dramatic but often soothing.
If you had to describe your country in three words or phrases, how would you do it? Feel free to use any combination of adjectives, nouns or verbs – unleash your English vocabulary here!
I think reading iin English is a great way to improve vocabulary and writing skills. But it can be very frustrating to have to keep looking in a dictionary because you don't understand all the words. Of course, you don't always need to know every word, and often you can guess the meaning of the word from the context, but it's sometimes difficult to know what word you need to look up, and what word you can "ignore".
What do you do when you read? Do you look up every word, or only those you're sure are important to understand?
There's been a lot of tweeting about the millionth English word just announced, but a BBC article questions whether the new word is the millionth.
The article points out that the exact size of English vocabulary is impossible to quantify. If you count every technical term, there are more than a million words. If you don't count "specialist slang" there are perhaps three quarters of a million words.
And the millionth English word is…? (Hint: it's internet-related!)
There's a thread on the Help Me! forum about the meaning of different phrases and expressions in English. The most recent question is about the idiom "red-handed", which means "caught in the act of doing something wrong". For more idioms of colour, see here.
Here are some more idioms and phrases to talk about stealing:
be caught red-handed: "The thief was caught red-handed."
be caught with your fingers in the till (till = cash register in a shop): "She was caught with her fingers in the till and she lost her job."
have sticky fingers: "Don't leave your bag unattended. Some people in this office have sticky fingers."
to nick = to steal: "The kids used to nick sweets from the shop when they were young."
to pinch = to steal: "He pinched some money from his mum's purse."
to fall off the back of a lorry (UK) = to refer to stolen goods.
"Where did he get your DVD?"
"Don't ask. It fell off the back of a lorry."
Here's a great idea – open a twitter account and practise idioms / phrasal verbs etc in your tweets to friends, family and followers.
I saw this idea in a tweet from English Phrases who explain how to do it here.
Don't forget: to follow english-at-home.com on twitter, go here.
There have been a couple of posts recently on the Help Me! forum about confusing word pairs, such as economy / economics; historic / historical. Are there any pairs of words that you find confusing in English? If you have any, post them here in a comment, and I'll give an explanation or definition.
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