Tricky Tongue Twisters
Tongue twisters are certainly not mindless and silly games for children. They are a good exercise for everyone who needs to get fluent and pronounce well in a language –…
languagelearning
Most Spoken Languages in the world
Our world has about 6,500 languages and about one third of them are spoken by a tiny population of less than 1000. On the other hand let’s see which are…
Crutch Words In English
Actually, hmmm . . . all of these and more are words that belong in the category of "crutch words", also known as "filler words". They do not help with…
Puzzling Acronyms
Acronyms are abbreviations created from the first letters of words and are themselves pronounced as words. This differentiates them from Initialism which are pronounced letter by letter (e.g. BBC). Acronyms…
Funny Idioms
First of all - what are idioms? Idioms are established groups of words carrying certain meanings which differ from the literal translation. In other words, a native speaker often doesn´t…
Expressing Metaphors
One gets a little wary when one hears the words ‘figuratively speaking’. The dictionary says, a metaphor “is a figure of speech in which a word or a phrase is…
Confusing Homophones
The other day I was explaining about the „good knight“. The observant ones already see where I‘m headed. While on paper it doesn't show, orally it creates a confusion and…
Most Common Mistakes In English
Grammar is generally not the most popular subject under the sun, regardless of the language or the place. The nuances range from insignificant mistakes to serious errors that can even…
Perhaps You Didn’t Know, But These 10 Common Words Were Named After People
One day you are an average person and suddenly, the very next day, your name becomes an item in a dictionary. An Eponym is a person after whom an invention,…
Fascinating Oxymorons
"Awfully pretty","virtual reality" and the "only choice"... these are a few examples of the daily use of oxymorons – rhetorical phrases with self-contradictory meanings. Some of them have been fully…
The Ambiguity Of Contronyms
Encountering a word that contradicts its own meaning can be a challenge to understanding. Nevertheless, such words exist, and are called contronyms, and their opposite meaning depends on the context…
Popular Palindromes – A Language Exercise
Words or sentences that read the same backwards and forwards have been a popular pastime since ancient times. One of the oldest ones dates back to 79 AD. Given their…