Two years old!

It was November 2009 when I started writing this blog. At the beginning it was just an assignment for a course on Web 2.0 I was doing, but it soon caught on me, and I kept writing about grammar points my students find difficult to understand, or cultural topics, because learning a language is not just a matter of grammar or vocabulary, but also of the habits and culture of the people that speak it.

I don’t write as often as I would like, which is not due to a lack of topics but to the lack of time, as my job and my family take up most of my time. Anyway, I always try to write at least once a month: I find it disappointing when the blogs I follow don’t get renewed in months. But what keeps a blog alive and kicking is not the person who writes it but the people who read it. So, a big thank you to all my readers! This wonderful cake is for you!

Birthday cake
Image in: http://cdn.sheknows.com/articles/second-birthday-cake.jpg

Here is a slide show with the “cartoons of the week” for the last twelve months. Most of them have been taken from Time, and others are from somuchpun.com. I hope you like them!

Between or among?

Between, betwixt, among, amongst, amid, amidst are all prepositions and their meanings are  quite similar, that’s why students of English are often confused about their use.

Between and among are the most widely used, as the others are more formal (amid) or even archaic, that is, they are no longer used by speakers, and can only be found in written or literary texts. That's the case of betwixt, which is the same as between.

Between two legs.
 Image in:http://pixdaus.com/pics/1321124354kxjhGNP.jpg

We say that something is between two things if the things are on either side of it: I was sitting between my mother and my father. (Note that the root of this word, “tw”, is related to number two). Between is also used when there are more than two things but each one is clearly distinct from the others: Luxemburg lies between Belgium, France and Germany.

However, we say that something is among (or amongst) a group of things when these things cannot be told apart, that is, a collection of things we do not see separately: 
They used to live in a little hut among the trees. 
She grabbed the title among a total of 20 competitors. 
I saw him walking among the crowd.

If something is among a group of similar things, it is one of these things. In this case, it means “included in”: Among the collection of pictures there is one by Picasso.

Poppies among lavender.
 Image in: http://pixdaus.com/pics/1225922721p2nsG8a.jpg

Amid or amidst is very formal and is mainly used with ideas and abstract nouns:

The politician finished his speech amid tremendous applause.
The law was approved amid a great deal of controversy.
It can also mean “surrounded by”: The house was in a beautiful position amid vineyards.

Vineyard in Greece by Spiro Anaxos.
 Image in: http://pixdaus.com/pics/1313681910cfTIcPE.jpg

Idioms:
To be sandwiched between... is to be so close to two people or things that there is not enough space to move. My poor little car was sandwiched between a Rolls Royce and a Mercedes.
To read between the lines is to discover a meaning in something that is not openly stated: He is not going to say what he really feels, but you can read between the lines and guess that he isn’t happy with the situation.
Between you and me, or between ourselves are used to mean that something is or should be kept a secret. Now between ourselves, for this is strictly confidential, I'm quite alarmed at the prospect.
If you are between the devil and the deep blue sea, you must choose between two unpleasant situations. We seemed to be between the devil and the deep blue sea: it didn’t matter which way we went.
To come between two people is to disrupt their relationship. You have a nice example in Sade’s song “Nothing can come between us”.


Now you can check what you have learned by doing this exercise:

http://focus.olsztyn.pl/en-exercises-prepositions-test-9.html

7 billion people

You must have heard in the news that the world population has reached 7 billion people these days. They even show images of a baby that, according to the United Nations, is supposed to be the 7 billionth person in the world. I wonder how they can be so sure of that, as it is estimated that 5 babies are born in the planet every second! Anyway, I suppose it is just symbolic.

Image by AFP here

Several questions arise: Can the world feed so many people? Are there enough resources for everybody? Will the population continue growing at the same rate?... Nobody knows for sure, but by observing the data we have today, experts can speculate about what the future will bring.

In this video by National Geographic you will learn some facts about the global population.

One fact that is easily predictable is that the regions where the population will grow faster are Africa and Asia, as this picture by Lauren Manning shows.

World population growth, by Lauren Manning

But what strikes me most is the fact that it’s only been during the last 200 years that the population has grown exponentially, while before then it used to grow slowly. This exceptional growth can be put down to the Industrial Revolution, which brought about the possibility of increasing the resources enormously as well as improving the sanitation and medical advances. This point is explained in this video by NPR.

In the following video we can hear an explanation about where and why the population is growing so rapidly. But before watching it, you can learn the meaning of some of the terms used in it. Then check what you have understood by answering the questions.

• Billion. In USA and, since 1974, in Great Britain as well, a billion is a thousand millions (1,000,000,000), whereas in other countries such as Spain it means a million millions (1,000,000,000,000). So, be careful, don’t be misled!
• Exponential means very fast, increasing rapidly.
• Fertility rate or birthrate is a number that shows how many babies are born in a particular place at a particular time.
• Developing countries are those countries that have few industries, and many poor people live in them.
• Developed countries are those rich, highly industrialised countries.
• A milestone is an important event in life or in history.
• If something has doubled it is now twice as big.
• If something has tripled it is now three times as big.
• Growth: an increase in the number or size of something. A noun derived from the verb "grow".
• Pregnancy is the condition of a woman who is going to have a baby.
• Family planning is the use of birth control methods to determine the number of children a family will have.
• Aging population is a population that is growing old.
• Crowded means full of people.
• To manage resources is to control the use of the raw materials that a country produces.
• A household is the people that live together in a house.
• A major issue is an important topic or subject.

A tip of the hat to Richard Byrne for inspiring this blogpost.

Have or have got?

Compare these two sentences:

1. “I have a new car”.
2. “I have got a new car”

Do they have the same meaning?

Image in: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037382/

Yes, they do. Both have and have got can be used to express possession, but have got is considered to be more colloquial than have, and in more informal contexts, speakers even tend to drop have:
I’ve got a problem (informal)
I got a problem (very informal)
The only difference between them comes when we use negative or interrogative forms, because in sentence 2  have is an auxiliary verb, whereas in 1 it needs the auxiliary do in order to form interrogative or negative sentences:

1. “Do you have a new car?” “I don’t have a new car”.
2. “Have you got a new car?” “I haven’t got a new car”.

To see all the forms, have a look at this presentation:




In formal English, have can be used as an auxiliary in questions and negative sentences, but this form is not so much used as the other two.
Have you any brothers or sisters? instead of Do you have any brothers or sisters?


In the past tense, the got-forms are less common:
She had a headache last night. (Not *She had got a headache...).


Have got is not used in the infinitive, gerund or participle forms, have is used instead:
It’s nice to have a coat on when it’s cold. (Not: *It’s nice to have got...).


Have got is not used either in sentences with adverbs of frequency (always, usually, often...):
I’ve got a headache. But I usually have a headache at night. (Not *I’ve usually got a headache...).


Have to and have got to followed by an infinitive are used to express obligation. They are semi-modal verbs and similar in meaning to must, although not quite the same.
I have to go
I’ve got to go
I got to go
All these sentences mean the same, the only difference is that the second is less formal than the first and the last one is the least formal of all.
In informal English and also in songs we can hear gotta instead of got to. This new form is similar to other contractions that are now very common in English, such as gonna (going to) or wanna (want to). We can hear some of these in this song by The Black Eyed Peas: “I’ve got a feeling”.


Apart from the meanings of possession and obligation, have can also be found in collocations such as have a bath, have tea, have lunch, have dinner, have a test, etc., but that will be dealt with in another post.



Exercises:
Fill in the gaps with the correct form of have or have got

Negative and interrogative

Choose the best option

Correct the following sentences

English place names

This summer I have spent a wonderful fortnight in Bedford, a beautiful market town north of London, by the river Great Ouse. It’s not very far from Oxford, and that made me think of the coincidence in the ending of these two names. In fact, there are many towns or villages whose names contain the suffix -ford. Not only that, there is an important number of endings that get repeated over and over: -by, -ing, -ham, -bourne, -borough, -burg, etc. Why? These suffixes must have a meaning.

The names of towns and cities in Great Britain reflect the history of this nation. We can find words that come from the different languages that were spoken at a given time in the land.
Some are Celtic in origin, others are of Latin root and most of them are Anglo-Saxon, but we cannot forget the influence of the Viking invasions, especially in the North-East of Britain.

Let´s have a look at the different name endings that have remained from the peoples that once inhabited Britain.

Latin
The Romans stayed in Britain for several centuries, but the original inhabitants, the Celts, did not pick their language. However, the military influence of the Romans was so overpowering, that the names of their fortifications or “castra” have remained with different spellings. Thus, we can find: Chester, Manchester, Colchester, Lancaster, Gloucester  /ˈglɒstə/, Leicester /ˈlɛstər/ etc.
From the word colonia, meaning settlement, we get the suffix -coln, as in Lincoln.
The element port can have two origins, the word porta, meaning gate, or the word portus, meaning harbour, thus, we can find towns inland and by the sea that contain that root: Portsmouth, Stockport.
From the word strata, meaning street, we have the root strat, as in Stratford.

A Roman castrum
Image in: http://www.museicivicialbano.it

Celtic
Although the Celts were the oldest inhabitants, not many words of Celtic origin remain in the language. From the word aber, meaning mouth of a river, we have Aberistwith in Wales, and Aberdeen in Scotland, but nothing in England.
Other Celtic elements include coombe (deep valley), glen (narrow valley) and pen (hill): Coombe, Glenrothes, Penzance.


Old English
From the middle of the 5th century the Angles, Saxons and Jutes invaded the British Isles. They were all Germanic tribes ad their language formed the base of the English language. Thus, the place names that contain Anglo-Saxon elements are numerous. Here are a few:

• burg, borough, bury, indicate that these places were once fortified settlements. The word derives from Germanic and can be traced in most countries in western Europe, including Spain and Portugal. Edinburgh, Marlborough and Shaftesbury are some examples.
• burna (-borne) a brook, stream: Winterborne
• dun - a hill: Ashdon (meaning hill with ash trees)
• eg (-ey) an island: Aldersey.
• ford - shallow place where water can be crossed. Oxford was originally a place where oxen used to cross the river.
• halh - a nook, corner of land, as in Bramhall
• ham - a homestead. It is found in hundreds of place names. Tottenham, Clapham, Lewisham or Nottingham are just a few examples. The “h” is silent in many of these names.
• ingas (-ing) the people of …: Charing, Kettering, Ealing. Sometimes -ing is combined with ham or tun: Birmingham, Wellington.
• leah (-ley) a clearing: Crawley.
• stede - a place, site of a building, as in Stansted.
• tun - an enclosure, farmstead, is by far the most common ending of English place names: Luton, Norton.
• well - a well, spring: Stanwell, Southwell.
• wic - a farm or settlement: Keswick, Warwick, Norwich. Notice that the “W” is silent in these place names.
• worth - an enclosure, homestead: Letchworth.




Image: 'Edinburgh fountain #2 (HDR)' 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/19663529@N00/282526144

Old Norse
The Vikings raided and finally settled in England in the 9th century, establishing the Danelaw in the North-East and East of the country. There are many Scandinavian place names, especially in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. These are the most typical endings:

• by -  a farm, then a village: Grimsby
• gil -  a ravine: Scargil
• holmr (-holm) flat ground by a river. There are many places called Holme or containing this word in their names.
• thorpe - a secondary settlement, farm: Althorpe.
• thveit (-thwaite) a meadow, a clearing: Gunthwaite.
• toft - a site of a house and outbuildings, a plot of land: Blacktoft.

Area of Danelaw

Image in: http://www.ancientworlds.net

French
After the conquest, the Normans changed very few place names in England. Most times they just added the name of the family that owned the land. Thus, Ashby-de-la-Zouch or Herstmonceaux state who their owners were in the past. Other French names are those beginning with Bel or Beau, meaning fair or beautiful: Beaulieu, Belgrave, Beaumont.

Richmond is also French, meaning strong hill (riche mont). 

Richmond castle

Image in: http://www.richmondancestry.org/

As you can see, the different endings or elements of place names give us a lot of information as to the origins and history of that place, relating it to the people that used to inhabit it long ago.

If you would like to know the original meaning of a place name in England, this website of the University of Nottingham can be of great help.

How many names does zero have?

One of the things my students find incredible about the English language is that a figure like zero should have so many different names. Have you ever come to think about it? I don’t know if this happens in other languages, but at least it doesn’t happen in Spanish...

It’s not only that it has many names, but also they are used in different contexts. Let’s have a look:

• Zero. This word derives from the Arab word sifr, meaning “empty”. It is mainly used in mathematics: counting, percentages, decimals..., and also when talking about the temperature: 0º C (zero degrees Celsius)
• Nought or naught  in American English is an older word for zero. It comes from Old English nowiht, meaning “nothing”. Today, its use is very similar to that of zero. He wrote a cheque with a figure containing five noughts. The famous game tic-tac-toe in which the players try to make a line of three noughts or crosses between vertical and horizontal lines is also called nougths and crosses.

Noughts and crosses
Image in http://www.flickr.com/photos/49719028@N00/103958463 

• Nil comes from Latin nihil , meaning “nothing”. It is used in sports such as football, especially in British English. They won by three goals to nil.
• O (often spelled oh) is used when giving telephone numbers and addresses, talking about time and also in the designation of James Bond: 007 (double o seven). It’s 4:09 (four oh nine). I live at 207 Melbourne Avenue (two oh seven).

http://fondoswall.blogspot.com

• Love is used in tennis. It’s origin is difficult to trace, but it’s been used to mean zero in this sport since the 18th century. Nadal is winning 40-0 (forty love)

Rafael Nadal
Image in: http://www.flickr.com/photos/66727626@N00/362013007

• Duck is zero in cricket. The term is short for “duck’s egg”, which is supposed to look like the shape of the number “0”. Jones was dismissed for a duck in the first-innings.
• Zilch is slang for zero or nothing. The U.S. personal-savings rate has risen from zilch last year to 3 percent of disposable income.
• Zip is American slang for zero. I received zip for money after doing the job for them.

Do you know any other name for zero?

In the following video we will hear how to say different numbers, including some of the names of zero