A native speaker of English is a person who has grown up speaking English as their first language or mother tongue. In terms of English teachers this usually means from one of the major English speaking countries: the USA, the United Kingdom, Ireland,...
A Palindrome is a word or phrase which can be read correctly either right-to-left or left-to-right. These are palindromes: civic deified dewed kayak level madam minim racecar radar redder refer rotator rotavator rotor sagas solos sexes stats If punctuation is ignored,...
The International Phonetic Association or IPA is the major as well as the oldest representative organization for phoneticians. It was established in 1886 in Paris. The aim of the IPA is to promote the scientific study of phonetics and the various practical...
In general terms, a Lexicon is a list of words. It is almost synonymous with vocabulary. For example, we can talk about: a personal lexicon - the words which an individual knows a social class lexicon - the words used by a certain class of person; of course this can...
Lexicography is basically all about compiling dictionaries. It's about sitting in a stuffy, darkened, room carefully going over words: examining them, investigating them, analyzing them. It's about asking what exactly words are and what they mean. Perhaps even why...
Maltese is primarily the language spoken in Malta (alongside English). The language comes from Siculo-Arabic which is the form of Arabic spoken in Sicily about 1,000 years ago. The vocabulary of Maltese is about 50% derived from Italian and Sicilian with around 15%...
The Facts Surat is a port city in the state of Gujarat situated on the banks of the Tapti river, in central India. Surat is one of the largest and most populous cities in India. It is the administrative capital of the Surat District, the 2nd largest city in the state...
Simply put, Morphology is the study of the words in a language. It does go deeper, but generally speaking it studies and looks at language in terms of: spelling pronunciation definition part of speech etymology (and obsolete usages) non-standard or slang/taboo usage...
Puns are ambiguous; they are words (or phrases) which sound the same but which have two very different meanings used for humorous effect. (A traditional explanation of a pun is a "play on words" but since this defines everything from puns to Spoonerisms to...
Phonemes are the smallest possible sounds in a language which have a distinct meaning. So what does that mean in practice? Well, take these two words: kiss - miss When we say them, the only difference is the very first sound of each word: k and m This means that those...
A Neologism is newly created (or "coined") word. New words often apply to new concepts or inventions, or perhaps when an old idea takes on a new meaning. Some random neologisms: aspirin hyperspace internet Islamaphobia wiki bling wmd phishing Quite simply, these words...
Generative Grammar is a branch of theoretical linguistics that tries to provide a set of rules that can accurately predict which combinations of words are able to make grammatically correct sentences. Generally speaking it suggests that humans have the ability to...
What are Anagrams? Anagrams are simply rearrangements of letters from one word or phrase to make another word or phrase. The word itself comes from the Greek, anagrammatismos, ana- (up, again, back, new) + -gram (letter). For example, the following are a few...
Simply put, a lemma is the base form of a word, typically found in a dictionary where it's known as a headword. From the lemma we can form many related words. So, for example, here are a few lemmas and their forms: do: do, does, did, doing run: running, ran fruit:...
Discourse Analysis - or DA - is all about examining and analyzing spoken or written language (and to a lesser extent, sign language). It's about taking language, putting it under the microscope and looking at it closely to see how it works and then taking it out and...
As they say, a Morpheme is the smallest linguistic unit of language which has meaning. Putting it simply, if you take a word like unquestionable you can break it down into 3 morphemes: un = notquestion = askable = able to be Each of the 3 morphemes has a meaning and...
Greek is spoken by about 12 million people. The majority of these are in Greece and Cyprus whilst the Greek diaspora are generally bilingual. This article looks at the kinds of problems Greek as a mother tongue speakers have in learning English. Background In Greece...
An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a root (or stem) of a word to form another word. For example, take the word reason and add two affixes: un + reason + able Prefixes and suffixes are common types of affixes. A prefix is an affix which is placed before a...
EFL is an acronym we use to talk about English as a Foreign Language. EFL students are students learning English as a foreign language, that is, as a language other than their mother tongue or primary language. EFL students usually live in non English speaking...
Professor emeritus at the University of Southern California. Krashen is a linguist, an educational researcher, and an activist. Krashen has contributed to the fields of Second Language Acquisition (SLA), Bilingual Education, and Reading. He is credited with...
New Zealand English (NZE) is a variety of English which is close to Australian English in pronunciation but has several subtle differences often overlooked by people from outside these countries. Some of these differences show New Zealand English to have more affinity...
Linguistics is the scientific and academic study of language. It tries to answer basic questions such as What is language? How is language represented in the mind? How does language work? The underlying goal of linguists is to discover the underlying rules of all...
When a student learns English in order to live and work in an English speaking country we say they are learning English as a Second Language. For example, these kinds of people learn English as a second language: an Afghan refugee resettled in Australia a Russian...
LEXEME is the term used in Linguistics to refer to a word (a minimal unit of language) with a distinctive meaning (a semantic value) and often a specific cultural concept attached to it. banana, love, animal, run These are all lexemes. Lexemes can be seen as the...
If someone learns English but they live in a non-English speaking country they are most likely learning English as a Foreign Language or FL. They do not need English for everyday survival and needs, but they will need it to conduct business or take an exam or when...
Phonology is the branch of linguistics concerned with the study of the sound system of a language. Contrast this with Phonetics which which studies the sounds of speech and they way in which they are interpreted. Generally speaking it is not necessary to have an...
Inflection refers to the way we change the form of a word to show different parts of grammar such as voice, person, number, gender, mood, tense or case. A simple example is when we change I to me depending on where it is used in a sentence. The person remains the...
Homophones are words that sound the same but with very different meanings. The words are usually spelt differently or, if they are spelt the same, come from different roots. For example, the words may be spelt the same, such as rose (as in the flower) and rose (as in...
English for Tourism is a branch of ESP or English for Special Purposes. Whilst sometimes it is about teaching people who will visit an English speaking country, more often it is teaching English to people who will work in the tourist industry, for example: hotel...
There are many approaches to the study of language: cultural, social, artistic, historical etc. There is also an approach which looks at language and how the brain manages to decode and use it. To explore this idea, take a look at this famous sentence: Colorless green...
