The more you use language, the more you realise that certain words tend to hang around together like best friends forever. For example, if you have a decent knowledge of English you can probably guess the missing words here: a foregone __________ New Year!a _____...
Italian (= italiano or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken by about 60 million people in Italy, and by another 10 million Italian descendants in the world, particularly in Argentina, Uruguay, southern Brazil and Venezuela where they form a very strong...
MT Influence or Mother Tongue Influence is when the grammar or vocabulary of a student's Mother Tongue influence the way in which they use their Target Language or TL. For example, in Greek (and a number of other languages) people say open or close a light...
TESL stands for Teaching English as a Second Language. It's pronounced TESL to rhyme with WRESTLE. Simply put, this means teaching English to people who are not native English speakers but who live in a country where English is the main language. For example, teaching...
These 2 terms are related and often overlap. They're used to talk about different methods used to communicate. Simply put: Pidgin is a simplified form of language used by two different groups to communicate. Creole is a pidgin which has formed into a full language...
A Syllable is a unit of spoken language which typically consists of a vowel, optionally with a consonant before and/or after it. The number of letters in a syllable is not important as it is the sound of the syllable which matters. One way to think of syllables is...
A Corpus (plural Corpora) is a large collection of written texts which are used in computational linguistics for analysis of the way language is used. They are most often analyzed using a concordancer. Types of Corpora A corpus can be one or more of the following:...
An Antonym or Opposite is a word which - generally speaking - has the opposite meaning to another word. For example, the following are antonyms: big ↔ small fat ↔ thin tall ↔ short old ↔ young male ↔ female Some words will have more than one antonym depending on...
An Utterance is the spoken equivalent to a sentence. As a sentence is bounded by a capital letter and a period or full stop (or other punctuation) so an utterance is often (though not always) bounded by silence or a breath or pause. Having said this, there is no...
While need or motivation can be strong impulses in second language learning, they do not influence language acquisition. The question is do we as children acquire language for any other reason than that we are communicating (speaking) animals and language is as...
Etymology is the study of the history of words. It tells us when words entered a language, where they came from and how they have changed over time. Basically etymology explains what our words used to mean and how they sounded in the past. As an example take a look...
Intonation is the system of rising and falling levels, as well as variations in pitch sequences, when we speak. People don't talk in a monotone (unless they're very boring) but instead there is rising and falling in what they say. In other words, intonation is the...
The word diphthong (also spelt dipthong) comes from the Greek δίφθογγος meaning with two sounds, or with two tones. To see what we mean, try saying these words out loud and concentrate on the sound of the vowels and the shape of your mouth when you say them....
The way in which someone learns a second language is known as Second Language Acquisition or SLA. Overview SLA is often regarded as mimicking the way in which native speakers acquire their first language (or Mother Tongue (MT)) and it is often felt that imitating...
It is often said that dreaming in a foreign language is proof of one’s complete mastery of that language. Dreams are the expression of our subconscious. If in our dreams we use a foreign language intelligibly then that can only mean that we have achieved the...
Multilingualism is the ability to speak more than one language. In some definitions this means speaking a language as a native speaker or to native speaker standard, however some definitions are more flexible allowing multilingual to mean being able to communicate in...
Simply put, Syntax is the collection of rules which go together to form sentences and phrases in a language. For example, the rules of syntax say that an English sentence can be formed thus: {subject} + {verb} + {object} Michael + rowed + the boat The rules of syntax...
English is the reason we're here. This article is an overview of the language and explores a little of its history and statistics. English (like all other languages) isn't a pure language. It is basically a mixture, a hodgepodge of other languages which has developed...
In linguistics, the term Language Register is used to talk about the type of language a person might use in a certain social context, in other words, how formally they will speak. For example: A speaker might say I never done nuffin' when talking to their friends,...
Here's a scenario for you: a ship sinks at sea and 10 survivors manage to struggle to a desert island. Each survivor comes from a different country and speaks a different language. And none of them speak any other language other than their own. Ten years later a...
The word consonant comes from the Latin word consonare meaning sound together. The English language contains 21 consonants (along with 5 vowels). The 21 consonants are: b, c, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, w, x, y, z In English, no words can be formed...
The English Alphabet contains 26 letters. These can be divided into vowels and consonants. The vowels are: a,e,i,o,u The consonants are: b,c,d,f,g,h,j,k,l,m,n,p,q,r,s,t,v,w,x,y,z Every word has at least one vowel sound. When we write them, however, some words do not...
Your Mother Tongue (or MT) is the language you learn and speak as a child. It is sometimes known as First Language (FL), Native Language (NL) or Arterial Language. Note that it is NOT always the language spoken by your mother! It is usually the language learned in the...
An English Grammar - as a countable noun - is a book which explains the grammar of the English language. Compare this to grammar - as a non-countable noun - which is the set of rules which explain how language is used. Thus we can say a grammar is full of grammar....
Varieties of English are the different kinds of English used around the world. Often these are geographically based. The varieties are more or less similar and while most English speakers can understand each other, there are occasional problems. The four people in the...
Phonetics is the branch of linguistics which studies the sounds of speech and they way in which they are interpreted. Contrast this with phonology which is the study of the sound system of a language. Phonetics looks at the way in which sounds are produced (the...
The IPA or International Phonetic Alphabet is an alphabet of sounds (not letters). It is used to show how to pronounce words. Using the IPA in your class is a useful tool to give your students. It will help them understand the pronunciation of English words they...
Punctuation is the use of different marks to show how a sentence is constructed and should be read and understood. It is, if you like, the written equivalent of pauses and emphasis. In English the following punctuation marks are used: apostrophes brackets or...
When we talk about Language Functions, we are talking about the reason we use a language. This can be contrasted with grammar which is how the language works. Functions are why we use language: to greet people, to order a meal, to ask the time and so on. Grammar, on...
The word vowel comes from the Latin word vowis meaning voice. In English we should make the distinction between spoken vowels and written vowels. In spoken English there are approximately 12 basic vowel sounds (see below); in written English, however, there are just 5...
