Daedalus

These are spelled with u in the UK as well, and I'm sure it's the same for Australia. There are more like this, words ending in -our, like colour, honour, behaviour and armour, usually end in -or in American English. There's also differences in words like centre and theatre. And there are several more differences.

We have the same thing in Dutch too. Note that these are combinations of all nouns. The last noun of the word is the actual thing you're describing, and from there, each word before it describes it in further detail. Therefore you cannot just throw words together in random order, or the meaning would be lost. A common mistake is to separate the words, interestingly enough, in Dutch this is known as 'English disease', because word combinations in English generally are separated. So that's the difference between word combinations in English and in German (and Dutch) - they're separate in English, but the meaning is the same and the importace of the order of the words is too. For example, look at the word 'knob'. It's quite broad, it can be used to describe any knob in the world. We can describe it more in detail by adding a word: 'doorknob'. Now it's a knob that's specifically made to fit on any door. Add even more words for more detail: 'cellardoorknob' is a knob to fit on doors that close off any cellar. A fun game is to take one word and keep adding, like I did above, but usually in the opposite direction. You could start with 'cellar' and make your way through to 'cellardoorknobfactorymachinerepairmanstoolbeltfastener' - a single noun to describe a fastener on a belt to hold tools from a repairman of machines in factories for knobs that fit on doors that close off a cellar.

I am not sure if it works the same way in English. Because in Dutch, the verb 'annoy' comes with the extra 'themselves', it cannot be substituted for 'irritate', but this is probably not the case in English. Some people may say that 'irritate' is used for a longer period of time, while 'annoy' is for shorter annoyances. "My neighbour's loud music every day irritates me" vs The screaming child on the bus annoys me".

A portmanteau, or portmanteau word, is a combination of two or more other words. The word portmanteau was introduced by Lewis Carroll, to explain words in the poem 'The Jabberwocky', such as frumious (fuming + furious), slithy (slimy + lithe) and chortle (chuckle + snort). Portmanteaus are found in many languages, you'll probably find some in your native language as well. They're not just limited to 'ordinary' words either, cities and countries can have portmanteau names, and names of several people can be mashed together. I personally quite like portmanteau words. Some examples (other than those listed above) are: * smog (smoke + fog) * brunch (breakfast + lunch) Do you know of any more? And do you know any in other languages?

I thought about "cellar door" as well, when I saw this thread. It is referred to in the film "Donnie Darko". It's said to have been the favourite word of Edgar Allen Poe (and that the closest thing to it he could think of was "Nevermore" in the Raven).

That reminds me, in Dutch, a common error (which annoys a lot of people) is to use 'irritates' when one means 'annoys'. It's because some verbs have a word similar to 'oneself' or 'me' built into them. Annoys has this, but irritates does not. So people will say "I irritate myself about something" when they mean "I annoy myself [this is correct grammar in Dutch] about something" or "Something irritates me".

I've followed a short course on tutoring, so I know a thing or to about learning. First of all, different students have different learning styles. A good tutor or teacher recognizes their students' strengths and weaknesses and delivers their lesson so all learners get an equal learning opportunity in the style they're best at. I am sure Pimsleur is one of those styles, so there will be people who really learn well with this method. But there are also others who don't benefit a lot from it, they'd be better off using a different technique. I personally tried a similar method when I was young, listening to a cassette tape. But I found I just didn't have the patience for it. Even today, I can't just sit and listen to something. I've got some audio books I just never take the time for to listen to. Secondly, above video is targeted at an American audience. I don't know anything about their school system, but from what I gathered, it's approach is theoretical first, practical later. I can tell right away that is not a good way of teaching, as I've just said, different students have different learning styles, you can not expect everyone to be able to learn like this, you will have to vary your lessons. When I was in high school, in the Netherlands, we learnt English, German and French, at least for the first few years (after that I chose Physics and Math, so I ditched the languages). We learnt reading, writing, listening and speaking all at the same time. In addition, most of the television we watched at home was American, British, Australian, Canadian, or otherwise English language, all in their original form, just subtitled Dutch. So there was no shortage of instantly translated English. In fact, when watching comedies, even when the subtitles containing a joke are already on screen, most people don't laugh until the joke is actually made in the program. We read Dutch at the same time we're listening to English. I found that that is a good approach, learning it all at the same time, and preferably in something entertaining. Just find some films with subtitles and enjoy Then again, I never learnt any Japanese from watching Akira or Totoro...

I see 'whilst' being used a lot here in the UK, even by younger people in Facebook statuses, so that's what got me thinking, but it's good to know there's no rule behind it. Also thanks for bringing up 'amongst', I was similarly confused about that, so I'm glad I don't have to worry about that anymore

I heard of this documentary series a while ago, it's about the history of the English language. Unfortunately, videos of it on YouTube have been removed, so it can be a bit of a hassle to find the episodes, but at least I have found the 1st episode here, hopefully it stays online long enough The Adventure of English (BBC) - (1) Birth of a Language You can find a list of all episode titles at topdocumentaryfilms.com, so you can use that to search the other episodes on YouTube.

I know a few more. Doppelgänger, Gesundheit and Sauerkraut. German is quite similar to Dutch, I would've said that 'Handstand' was Dutch (or even plain English), didn't know it was a Germanism.

Ah, I'm not very good with that. I know what a verb is, but the rest is Chinese to me. It's the one thing I'm not very good with in my native language either. That makes sense, it also made me think about describing shades. You can say one shade is lighter than another, of course, but could you say you had two things that used to be the same shade, but then you 'lighted' one of them? 'Bleached' sounds so nasty.

I think you use 'who' if the 'who' is referring to the person taking the action. "Who was talking to you?" (because 'who' was the one talking) 'Whom' then is used when you're referring to the person you're talking about. "Whom did you talk to?" (because you were talking to 'whom') A trick you can use is to see if the answer would be 'he' or 'him'. If the answer is 'he', the question should be 'who'. "Who was that man on the bus?" "He was the man on the bus." But if the answer is 'him', then the question would be 'whom'. "For whom tolls the bell?" "The bell tolls for him." Do the 'who vs whom quiz': [link]

One that causes a lot of anger in online discussions is the incorrect use of any of these homophones: They're, short for "They are". Example: "They are coming to see us" / "They're coming to see us" Their, meaning 'from them'. Example: "Their cat is very furry" There, often referring to a place. Example: "They live over there" Or used with the verb 'to be'. Example: "There is something about Mary"

I am confused when to use whilst and when to use while. When I read my friends write 'whilst' in a sentence, I can never figure out why, or why 'while' would've been wrong. I'm guessing 'while' is more accepted, even when 'The Rules' say it should be 'whilst', and there's probably differences between American and British English as well, but I'd like to know if there's any rules for it.

I personally like the word 'lit' more than 'lighted', so it always annoyed me when I'd see 'lighted', thinking it was somehow wrong. I suppose I'll just have to accept it You say 'lighted' is often used as a verb and 'lit' is often used as a verb. So isn't that the same thing then? :S

We Dutch people believe we are excellent English speakers, and we're proud to demonstrate. We get English classes in school from an early age, we mainly have American and British shows on tv that are all in English, just with Dutch subtitling, so we do learn a lot, but that can lead to many funny situations when overconfident Dutch people try to communicate in English. There's a word for our escapades, and it's listed on Wikipedia: Dunglish (a portmanteau of Dutch and English). Although I assume it's funnier when you know Dutch, you might still have a laugh. One of the more famous anecdotes is the one where an English speaker says to a Dutch man how nice the weather is: "Spring is in the air." The Dutchman, confused, answers back: "Why should I?" as 'spring' is Dutch for 'jump', so the man thought he was asked to "jump in the air". There's a Facebook page that frequently posts such Dunglish phrases, it's called Make That The Cat Wise. Probably funnier when you actually know Dutch though

Glad you all like it. First time I played it, first that came up was Dutch. And as I'm Dutch myself, that wasn't very hard to guess

When writing longer texts, such as stories, letters, forum posts (haha), use of synonyms is recommended. It will make your writing more vivid. It can be difficult for non-native speakers to do though, as it requires a more extensive vocabulary and one may not be familiar with the connotations. There are websites that list synonyms for words, but you can't just pick any of them. A Physician can be called a Doctor, but a Doctor is not necessarily a Physician, so those are things to keep in mind as well. In most cases, you can use Physician as synonym for Doctor, but it would not make much sense to go see a Doctor of Arts if you've got a headache.

I think it depends on what topics you're interested and the writing style. For example, I really like E. Nesbit's "The Railway Children"; it has humour and is easily read, and I like the story and the theme. But on the other hand, I'm struggling with "Great Expectations", because the writing style and use of language is too unfamiliar. And for high school we had to read a certain amount of English books, everybody chose "The Hobbit", but I just can't read that. The story is too vague for me to get in to and I don't like the subject. Even though I'm fine with other fantasy, I enjoyed reading the 1st book of "The Wheel of Time".

There's a website where you can test your feel for language. They will play a random sound sample, and you have to guess which language it is. It starts of simple, with just two options to choose from, but it gets more difficult later on. Try it here: http://greatlanguagegame.com/ What's your high score? I got 450 points.

Hi, I'm new here. I'm Dutch, but living in the UK for just over a year now. It is very interesting to live in another country, there's so much differences. And while we consider ourselves to be excellent English speakers in the Netherlands, there's still a lot of things you bump into when actually using the language. I've always been quite good with languages in general, if I say so myself, I enjoy it a lot. I am very interested in all things language related. So I'm sure I'll like these forums as well.