I have previously written about the different pronunciations of the th (an example of a digraph) in English, see this post. Today, I want to discuss the tricky words smooth and smoothie, which are very often pronounced incorrectly. The main reason is that many nonnative speakers feel uncomfortable with the sounds [ð] and [θ]. However,
Here is an interesting grammatical fact about the nouns mail and email. In English, mail is an uncountable noun (see here), which means that Send me a mail is not grammatical. However, even though email (or E-mail) is a short form of electronic mail, it can be both countable and uncountable (see here). Hence, Send
Today, I want to present three expressions that can lead to serious life-and-death-type misunderstandings. Two of them are false friends (English expressions that are used in German with a very different meaning), and one is a very dangerous literal translation. Body bag Whereas a body bag in German is a bag to transport your personal
In my experience, many German native speakers (including myself) tend to mispronounce the noun worm, referring to a long thin creature with no bones or legs, that lives in soil. The mistake usually made is to pronounce worm as [wɔː(r)m], just like the word warm, listen here. However, the correct pronunciation of worm is [wɜː(r)m],
As a reader of an English blog, you have most likely heard of the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) test. It is a standardized test of English language skills, which is used in many areas (in particular for university admissions). Interestingly, I clearly remember that in Austria, people used to pronounce the
Have you every noticed that the name Miracel Whip (a brand name for mayonnaise used by Kraft in German-speaking countries) actually goes back to a sensible English name, namely Miracle Whip? From the Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries: miracle: an act or event that does not follow the laws of nature and is believed to be caused
Take-home message for efficient readers If you don’t care about the details, let me state very bluntly that both Porsh and Porshuh are incorrect from a German point of view and do not match the pronunciation used by Porsche in their English commercials. This does not mean that you can’t use these pronunciations in English,
The English language offers some very interesting ways to shorten names. First, it is common to abbreviate double names (two first names, as opposed to double-barrelled names which correspond to two last names) by their initials. For example, the son of Anthony Soprano in the fantastic TV series The Sopranos is usually called A J
Only recently, I became aware of the correct pronunciation of the preposition of (although I did pronounce it correctly most of the time before). Surprisingly, the correct pronunciation does not involve an f! The frequently heard but incorrect pronunciation [ɒf] is only correct for the word off. According to the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, the strong
Certain English words and expressions are commonly used also by speakers of other languages. Know-how is a term that can be heard in many business meetings, while comeback and come on are often used in sports. Similar to the case of no comment, see this post, there is often confusion about the correct English pronunciation.