Collocations: have and take

Image: 'Day 092/366 - To Do List' 
http://www.flickr.com/photos/26104563@N00/2381294958

A collocation is a combination of words that occurs frequently enough to be recognized as a common combination. When learning a foreign language, it’s really useful to learn collocations instead of single words, because they are much easier to remember and, by using them, you will sound more natural and people will understand you more clearly.

In a previous post we saw the collocations with do and make. Today we are going to see when to use have or take. The difference here is not so straightforward, because sometimes both verbs can be used and, in other cases, Americans use take while British people use have with the same meaning.

Have can be used with object nouns to refer to a number of different activities. In these cases, the verb has little or no meaning by itself, that’s why it is known as a “delexical verb”. In American English take is used instead of have when referring to common activities such as washing, resting, eating or drinking:

• Have/take a holiday/vacation, a rest, a nap,
• have / take a shower, a bath...
• Have/take a meal, breakfast, lunch, dinner, a drink...

He has taken a bath...literally!!
Image credits

Sometimes both verbs can be found with no change of meaning on both sides of the Atlantic:

• Have/ take a break
• have/ take a bite (eat something)

Apart from these cases, have and take can be found in the next collocations:

Have	Take
a good time, fun, a laugh, a party	care (of)
a talk, a chat, a conversation, a word with	a decision
a baby (give birth)	exercise
a problem, difficulty in, trouble	notes
a relationship	a taxi, a cab, a train, a bus...
an excuse	a look
a grudge against someone	an exam
work	a photo, a picture
a (nervous) breakdown	a risk
a headache, toothache...	an interest in
	cover

In all these cases have is not an auxiliary verb, so we need do /does /did for questions and the negative. Besides, it is never used with got, and it cannot be contracted (‘ve / ‘s).
* We hadn’t lunch yesterday.
We didn’t have lunch yesterday.
*I have got a talk with my brother about that issue.
I have had a talk with my brother about that issue.
*I’ve dinner at home every day.
I have dinner at home every day.
On the other hand, it can be found in any tense, even the progressive or continuous tenses.
She is having a baby next month. (present continuous)

Now you can try these exercises:

House or home? Types of dwellings

The difference between these two nouns is not always clear.

A house is a type of building where someone lives. It is intended to be used by just one family and it may have more than one floor.
Home is the place where someone lives and feels that they belong to. Your home can be a house, an apartment or a farm, but if you live there, that’s your home.
However, you can also find the term home with the meaning of “building” when you think of it as a property that can be bought or sold. They are building a lot of new homes next to the railway station.
You can also use the term home when you mean your town or country. After living abroad for many years, I long to go back home to Spain.

Image credit

A dwelling is any place (house, flat, …) where a person lives. It refers to the actual building. The development will consist of 60 dwellings and a number of offices and commercial premises.
Abode is a formal word to say dwelling. Welcome to my humble abode.

Homework and housework are also different. The former means the school tasks that you have to do at home, while the latter means the work that you do to take care of your home, such as cleaning, washing, etc. Please, note that both these words are uncountable. The children were doing their homework on the dining table while their parents were doing the housework.

Other related words are:

• Homesick: you feel homesick when you are away from home and really miss your family and friends. Exchange students usually feel homesick.
• Homeless: people are homeless if they don’t have a home.
• House-proud: someone is house-proud if they spend a lot of time making the house look clean and attractive.  Her husband does the cleaning, washing and shopping. He’s very house-proud.

Idioms:

• At home. If you feel at home with something, you feel quite comfortable with it. He feels at home with his new job.
• To set up home is to start to live in a house. After living for several years in new York, he has decided to set up home in Toronto.
• If drinks are on the house you do not have to pay for them, as they are provided free by the owner of the bar. Let’s go to that new pub, the first drink is on the house tonight.
• If two people get on / along like a house on fire, they become friends very quickly.
• If you work from home, you do not work in an office. Today, more and more people are working from home thanks to the internet.

Note that the preposition to is not used before home. I’m going home. When there is no idea of movement, at is used in British English, while Americans don’t use any preposition at all.
He usually stays at home at the weekend. <British>
He usually stays home on the weekend. <American>

In the following presentation you can see different types of dwelling, especially those that you can find in Great Britain.

Now you can do the following crossword to check what you have learnt.

Santa Claus: a universal symbol of Christmas

The idea of Christmas is intimately connected to the image of a chubby old man dressed in red and wearing black boots and belt and a white beard. This man, called Santa Claus, St Nick, or just Santa, is the personification of Christmas. It seems that you can’t have one without the other. But in fact, while Christmas has been celebrated for many centuries, Santa Claus, as he is known today, is only about 200 years old.

Image  credit

Before Santa was “born”, people in England believed in a man called Father Christmas who used to dress in green and go from home to home, feasting with families, but he did not use to bring gifts to children and he certainly would not go down a chimney!

The origin of Santa Claus can be found in the Greek bishop St Nicholas of Myra (Turkey), who was a very generous man that used to help people in need. His cult has spread in Europe from the 4th century to our days, and he was made patron saint of Amsterdam. It was precisely the Dutch immigrants in New York (formerly known as New Amsterdam) who brought to America the belief in a gift-bringer called Sinterklaas.

Image credit

The American writer Washington Irving wrote about him in “A History of New York”, written under the pseudonym Diedrich Knickerbrocker. He described Sinterklaas as an old man in dark robes that arrived on a flying horse to give presents to children. But it was in the famous poem “A visit from St Nicholas”, written by Clement Clark Moore when we first see Santa going down chimneys and travelling in a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer. Moore even gave names to the reindeer! This famous poem is traditionally told to children on Christmas Eve.
You can hear it in this nice video:

Inspired by Moore’s story, the illustrator Thomas Nast drew many cartoons depicting Santa as we know him today, and he added some new ideas such as his workshop in the North Pole, his helpers, the elves, and the lists of good and bad children.

Image credit

But it was undoubtedly the Coca-Cola advertisements in the 30´s that contributed to the image of a human-sized Santa (rather than an elf) that we have today, when the three personages have merged and mingled to form one single character.

Image credit

Call him Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas or Santa Claus, people all over the world will always think of a chubby, cheerful old man dressed in red and wearing a white beard that goes down chimneys to give presents to children, and flies away in a sleigh pulled by reindeer.

Is Santa Claus one of the symbols of globalisation?

This is a nice quizz about Santa, by the BBC.

Glitterfy.com - Christmas Glitter Graphics

Wear, dress or put on?

Some students get confused with these three verbs. Dress and put on are quite similar, but the former is intransitive and the latter always takes an object.

She always dresses in dark colours
Image: 'IMG_2897 Leather dress from behind'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/67575879@N03/6154818221

Dress is an intransitive verb, that is, it doesn’t have an object:
She always dresses in dark colours.
Put on is always used with a direct object: You put clothes on: She put on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.
Note that you cannot use put on in the first example, nor dress in the second one.
*She always puts on in dark colours.
*She dressed a pair of...
On the other hand, wear is a transitive verb. You wear clothes, shoes, jewelry... on your body, but before that, you had to put those clothes, shoes or jewelry on you.

Please, note that you carry an umbrella, a stick or a bag.

She’s carrying an umbrella
Image: 'Chinese New Year'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30265340@N00/2256618233

Have a look at this presentation for further explanations.

Wear, put on and dress

View more presentations from Inma Dominguez.

Other verbs related to clothes are:

• Take off is the opposite of put on.
• Try on. You try clothes on to see if they look good on you.
• Fit. If something fits you it’s just the right size for you.
• Suit. If something suits you, it looks good on you or rather it makes you look nice.

Try this jacket on, I think blue suits you. Oh, no, take it off, it doesn’t fit you: it’s too small!

• Don is the same as put on but just more formal.  Lorenz donned a kaffiyeh, an Arab headdress of folded cloth that's held on by a cord.

Kaffiyeh
Image: 'DSC_00055'
http://www.flickr.com/photos/90638744@N00/2167990641

Idioms

• If you wear your heart on your sleeve, you make your feelings or opinions obvious to other people. “You have to play it cool with a girl like her; you mustn’t wear your heart on your sleeve.
• To be dressed to the nines means to wear very fashionable or expensive clothes. He was dressed to the nines in a black Dolce & Gabbana suit.
• If someone is dressed to kill, he or she is wearing strikingly attractive clothing. She  was dressed to kill in a low top, short skirt and leather boots.

Now you can check what you have learnt by doing this test:

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