Enriching your English learning with content from around the Web
Beide Artikeln machen kluge und dumme Argumente, aber general trifft das Rant die Wahrheit sehr genau. Im Gegenteil beschwert das Gegenrant sich wie ein Kind.
Obwohl es unfair ist, dass das Rant eine Gruppe “of Italian, French, Spanish, Russian and American expats” als Beispiel nutzt — wie…
Don’t forget your teethbrush
Posted by Andy Bodle, guardian.co.ukArts minister, but art thieves. Drugs tsar, but drug dealers. When you put a noun in front of another noun, should it be singular or plural?
We’d just taken our seats in a Vietnamese restaurant when my companion pointed at the menu and giggled. …
Forming sentences with 2 verbs is one of the last and most difficult steps to mastering (especially spoken) English. For example: The car continued driving down the street.
Or is it: The car continued to drive down the street.
Sometimes it doesn’t matter. Sometimes it does. The problem: There aren’t a lot of rules to help you know when the second verb takes the infinitive form or the -ing. You just have to learn the patterns and, over time, develop a feel for it.
Maybe this photo will help get you started. From Face2Face by Chris Redston and Gillie Cunningham, published by Cambridge.
It is a similar problem when talking about companies, countries and governments. Are they a single entity or representative of the sum of its (their?) parts?
“Apple is the wealthiest company in the world.” Sounds much better than, “Apple are … .” But a sentence later, when a pronoun takes the place of the proper noun, things get fuzzier: It makes popular technology devices.
Maybe it’s just my personal style, but using “it” drains the subject of its (their?) humanity. As if there aren’t a bunch of thinking, autonomous people making up the company, dreaming up that technology, designing it, shaping it, producing it and ultimately using it. As if the company stands on its own — stoic, uniform and pre-determined. A kind of Skynet of business.
“Apple is the wealthiest company in the world. They make popular technology devices.”
Can that really stand? I will have to put on my (one pair of) glasses, which are on the table next to me, and read it again.
10 Brainteasers to Test Your Mental Sharpness
Work in Progress, forbes.comTo test your mental acuity, answer the following questions (no peeking at the answers!):
1. Johnny’s mother had three children. The first child was named April. The second child was named May. What was the third child’s…
Test yourself
