If you are interested in the vocabulary, you can know a lot of interesting details about some common English words NICE-BEAUTIFUL-PRETTY- GORGEOUS- STRIKING in my new interview with Richard from England.
Here is the link:
In my course “SECRETS OF ENGLISH WORDS” you can also find such lessons:
Put off- postpone
Carry out- perform- execute
to keep- to maintain
to be interesting- to be interested
to hear and to listen to
Singular or Plural after some words
Mistake- error- blunder- slip
How to make the comparative form?
etc.
If you are interested in English vocabulary, you can read and listen to my new interview with Richard: LONG- LENGTH- PROLONG and other related words with the root ‘long’:
Friendly correction: it’s put off, with one t. Putt has a different meaning (to ‘putt’ in golf is to hit the ball when you are close to the hole, on the green, using your putter; another meaning for putt is to go slowly) with different pronunciation (rhymes with ‘hut’).
In a new discussion CONFUSING WORDS Richard tells about some English words which have the same pronunciation and the same spelling but very different meanings, for example: an air- to air; fair play- a fair lady; a spring- to spring into action- springs in the bed; to die- a die; mean- to mean etc.
Here is the link to this lesson:
Here is my second discussion with Richard about English CONFUSING WORDS, part 2.
We are talking now about some English words that are spelled the same, but have differences in the pronunciation and in the meaning, for example: 'contract and con’tract, 'desert and de’sert.
Here is the link to this lesson:
I don’t know if you discussed this in your interview, but there are quite a few adjective pairs like this with an -ing and an -ed form. They are not interchangeable. The -ing form (interesting, amazing, fascinating etc) describes the thing that inspires the feeling (interested, amazed, fascinated etc).
So:
Ancient history is interesting. I am interested in it.
The pyramids are amazing. I was amazed when I saw them.
Once I had a small lesson with Nerelle about this pair of constructions “to be interested- to be interesting” for Beginners 2.
But it would be useful to collect the most common examples with ‘-ing’ and ‘-ed’ and to give them in one of our discussions with Richard.
Thanks for your suggestion, jungleboy!
Dessert has two s’s. It’s tasty. Desert is dry and is where monotheistic religion comes from. Although to desert can mean to run away too. Desert the desert.
This is a subject that could benefit from more coverage of the differences between British and American usage. In the US:
“Rent” is used for the giving side as well as the taking side, as hinted at in the lesson. Often, but not always, when used on the giving side, it’s phrased as “rent out”: “My sister has a house on the lake that she rents out on weekends to vacationers.” The vacationer might say, “We’re going to rent a house for the weekend when we go to the lake.”
The use of the word “let” in the meaning of “rent out” is not at all a common American usage. Most of us will understand it, but in certain milieus if you were to say “I’m going to let the lake house”, you might get a strange look and a question about just what it is that you’re going to let it do.
When I fly to a distant city I will rent a car, I will never hire one. Avis or Hertz will rent it to me.
