The English language is constantly changing. It also seems like it’s changing faster and faster as the years go by. The rise of the Internet has certainly helped with both of these tendencies. Forums, chat rooms and other online messaging systems have allowed groups of like-minded individuals to band together regardless of their physical location, …
Vocabulary
All languages, English included, have words that seem identical but are in fact slightly different. French also has these words, and understanding when to use each adds a lot of nuance to your speech and can make you sound much more fluent. Today, we’ll look at the word “motard,” one way to say “motorcyclist” in …
We don’t all have the same interests and values, and that’s completely fine. As long as you aren’t hurting others, you shouldn’t be judged very harshly for your interests. Yeah, one person may love extreme rock climbing, and another person would rather do literally anything else. Neither person is wrong; they just have different interests. …
In a perfect world, everybody would be kind and act in good faith towards one another. Unfortunately, that is not always the case in our reality. Whether intentionally or not, conflict is bound to arise, and people wrong each other every day. We’ve all been wronged at least once, but some folks have a very …
Expressions are funny things. Some expressions and proverbs teach us fundamental life lessons. After all, we all know that “talk is cheap” and “actions speak louder than words.” Also, the television shows we watched as kids taught us that “fortune favors the brave” and that “knowing is half the battle.” These proverbs all make us …
One of the lovely things about modern technology is that it makes once-tiresome tasks a piece of cake. Don’t like talking on the phone? You can text someone! Don’t like writing long messages? Twitter is great for that! Sometimes, though, technology can hinder almost as much as it helps. While online grammar checker Grammarly is …
Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, things just don’t go your way in life. For example, you may have studied hard and tried your best to earn a good score on a research paper. However, when the professor finally returned it, you saw that the score was much lower than you had expected. Other …
Metaphors are part and parcel of any language. Most of the time, we don’t even realize we’re using them to communicate with one another. We tell each other that we need vaccines to fight a disease, that someone gave us a warm greeting, and that some responsibilities can be hard to bear alone. Moreover, some …
“There’s more than one way to skin a cat.” This is an old proverb that dates back to 1854, when it was used by Seba Smith in “Way Down East or Portraitures of Yankee Life.” The proverb means that there are several ways to achieve the same thing or attain the same goal. And, that …