The Long and the Short of It

Really clever linguists can draw maps. They join points on a map which separate the way language is used.

One such line runs through Warwickshire not far from Stratford upon Avon. Below the line most people will use a long ‘a’ sound and above it most will prefer a shorter vowel sound.

Build Your English Vocabulary in a Flash with Flash Fiction

Do you relish intriguing stories that stir your imagination? Do you find you don’t have time for that long novel because days or weeks go by before you return to its pages again.

If the answer to either of those questions is "yes", then you’re the perfect candidate for flash fiction, an even shorter version of short stories. We dealt earlier with building your English language skills with short stories. Now, we’re going a step further and discussing this even shorter form, which means you will always have time to read a story.

Slang is it good or bad?

to have, to have not

Is slang a good thing? Language guru David Crystal in his huge work on the English language , ‘The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of the English Language’ gives a whole list of reasons why it is used – to which the person I’ve just asked about it says ‘It extends the language.’

To have or have not

The English verb ‘to have’ has a few peculiarities. It doesn’t always mean what it seems to say. If you say ‘I had an ice-cream’ you don’t mean you still have it – it has either long melted or been eaten. If you say ‘I have had a mango ice-cream’ you perhaps mean I tried one once, but never again. However, if you say ‘She had a baby last year’, in by far the majority of cases the baby still exists, she still has it. The ‘had ‘refers in this case to the actual birth. If you say on the other hand ‘She had a boyfriend last year,’ this probably means either she had one and she hasn’t got one now, or at least that she hasn’t got that particular one any longer.  We also talk about the "haves and the have nots", which describes the relationship between the rich (the haves) and the poor (the have nots).