The plural of phenomenon is either phenomena or, especially in North America, phenomenons. However, I frequently see people incorrectly use phenomena as the singular form, for example in This phenomena is very general … The correct form is of course This phenomenon is very general …
I have previously discussed the fact that the letter p is often silent in English, see here, and that this causes quite some problems with non-native speakers. Today, I want to discuss the letter w, which is also often silent. For example, the w is not pronounced in any of the following words (click to
With the movie about Abraham Lincoln out on DVD now, let me discuss the pronunciation of the name Lincoln. In contrast to the incorrect pronunciation often used by nonnative speakers, the second l in Lincoln is silent. The phonetic spelling is hence [ˈlɪŋkən]. You can listen to it here. A quick search on youtube brought
The word thru is an informal abbreviation for through, and hence not part of the standard English language. Therefore, it is not acceptable in formal writing. Interestingly though, thru has become so widely used that you can often see it used in internet communication and text messaging. And of course there is the drive thru,
The phrase et al. is often used when referring to scientific papers by a group of authors, and means “and others”. Instead of naming all the authors (the average number of authors on scientific papers has been increasing for many decades, see here, here, and here for interesting discussions of this phenomenon), it is common
The word surface is often mispronounced as [ˈsɜfeɪs], that is, with the second syllable, face, pronounced just like the word face itself. I have the impression that this mistake has become much more frequent here in Germany owing to the increased popularity of Microsoft’s Surface tablet. The correct pronunciation of surface in both British and
Have you ever asked yourself why words such as curry, courage, and hurricane are pronounced differently by different people? Well, I did, and I recently learned that there is a very simple explanation for this phenomenon: the two different versions represent the British and American pronunciation. In my experience, even advanced non-native speakers have difficulties
English words which are frequently used in German often acquire their own, modified pronunciation (for example, London). Less frequently used words do not have their own German pronunciation, but are supposed to be pronounced as in English (for example, Boston). Today I want to explore the difference between English and German pronunciation of English words,
Thinking back to my time in school and at university, I remember that the word cache (a type of computer memory, see here) was pronounced [keɪʒ]. Therefore, it differed from cash, which was always pronounced as [kæʃ] at the time. I’m not sure if this was related to the absence of native speakers around me,
The Greek alphabet is used in many fields, including science (mostly physics and mathematics, where one often runs out of letters to use in equations), finance, and technology. Some of you may even use it on a post card from your holiday in Greece. Once you are able to write and correctly identify a given