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by Liz Walter
Way back in 2015, I wrote a post that touched on some differences between American and British English. Today’s post looks specifically at differences in pronunciation. There are of course many, some (more or less) systematic, and some not. I hope that covering some common words will help to raise awareness of issues to look out for.
Continue reading “You say ‘to-may-to’ and I say ‘to-mah-to’: UK/US pronunciation”
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by Liz Walter
Some people seem to sail happily through life, always looking forward to what’s coming next and always expecting things to go well. Others are quite the opposite, always expecting bad things to happen. Today’s post looks at some of the language we use to describe these two extremes.
Continue reading “Glass half full: talking about optimism and pessimism”
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by Liz Walter
There are often occasions when we don’t want to do something or when we refuse to do something. There can be many reasons for not doing something, and the language we use to talk about it may depend on them. Today’s post looks at some of the most common ones.
Continue reading “I don’t have the heart for it: not wanting to do things”
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by Liz Walter
We all know that there’s no such thing as a perfect life. Even people who are generally happy and successful will always have some experiences that make them upset or frustrated. Today’s post looks at the language we use when we speak about this.
Continue reading “Taking the rough with the smooth: talking about imperfect situations”
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by Liz Walter
Today’s post is the second of a pair covering words and phrases connected with competitions and contests of all types (you can find the first post here). This post focuses on vocabulary associated with winning and losing.
Continue reading “Decisive victory or narrow defeat: talking about competitions (2)”
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by Liz Walter
From the Olympic Games through to ‘biggest cabbage’ at the local gardening show, most of us take part in competitions of some sort or another. Today’s post looks at the language we use to talk about them.
Continue reading “Tournaments and contests: talking about competitions (1)”
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by Liz Walter
My colleague Kate Woodford recently wrote a post about the stock market, which included several synonyms for going up and going down. The context was of prices, values and amounts, but most of these words can be used very literally for objects as well – prices rise but so do hot-air balloons. This post continues the theme with a few more words for going up and down, some of which are used in rather specific contexts.
Continue reading “Ascending and descending: talking about going up or down”
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by Liz Walter
It is very common to use prepositions and preposition-based phrases to talk about where a place is in relation to where you are yourself. This could be within a country, a region or a city. There are some subtle differences in the way speakers of British and American English do this. In this post, I’ll discuss some of the most common ones.
Continue reading “Up north and down south: prepositions for expressing directions”
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by Liz Walter
When my dear Granny had completed a task to her satisfaction, she used to exclaim, ‘That’s a good job jobbed!’ Although she wasn’t the only person to use this phrase, it’s pretty rare, so this post will cover some much more common ways of talking about doing things successfully.
Continue reading “Killing two birds with one stone: talking about achievements”
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by Liz Walter
My last post looked at idioms that come from the sport of boxing. This post presents some more common sporting idioms. Back in 2019, I wrote about idioms with the word ‘ball’. I won’t repeat those here, but there are plenty of others!
Continue reading “Open goals and jumping the gun: more sporting idioms”