[For the Oxford Words Blog:] Loving Latin

Puno dancers

Have you ever wondered just how far your language GCSE will get you in the wild? I set out to road-test my dusty Spanish qualification last year by travelling through Chile, Peru, and Bolivia, sometimes alone and sometimes with fellow English speakers, with a short stop-off as a classroom assistant in darkest Peru.

My (lack of) knowledge of Spanish soon became más claro on the tarmac at Madrid, when I shuffled down the transatlantic plane and asked the man sitting in my row whether this was indeed seat J21.

Jota veintiuno,” he repeated, clearly and slowly.

íSí – jota veintiuno!” I said back to him joyfully.

No, no – jjjjjjjjjjjjjota,” he repeated with an elaborate flourish of a hand gesture. “Con jjjjj. Jjjjjjjota veintiuno.

Jjjjjjjota veintiuno,” I said carefully, and his face lit up in delight. At this point I realized that I was holding up an entire Airbus A340 due to my impromptu Spanish lesson, but this didn’t seem to matter to the hundreds of passengers waiting in line behind me, who just smiled con mucha paciencia (with patience being an essential quality, I found, for life in Latin America).

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[For the OxfordWords blog:] 10 British animal idioms and expressions

Dogs in window

Think you’re the cat’s whiskers – or even the dog’s bollocks – when it comes to knowing your animal idioms in British English? You’re probably right – so the next time you’re listening to your friend rabbiting on, why not try dropping one of the following common British expressions into your conversation? You’ll soon sound like you’ve been speaking British English for donkey’s years.

1. Make a pig’s ear of something

Dictionary definition: handle something ineptly

Have you ever seen a pig’s ear? While in Britain these fatty, hairy appendages have traditionally been given to dogs as a treat, their use in international cuisine is starting to have an impact on the London restaurant scene. It’s quite possible, however, that pig’s ear was originally pig’s rear – which perhaps makes more sense.

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[For the OxfordWords blog:] 10 common mistakes with prepositions made by learners of English

Grammar

A preposition is a very common little word like at, for, in, on, and to, which the dictionary defines as

a word governing, and usually preceding, a noun or pronoun and expressing a relation to another word or element in the clause.

For example:

PREPOSITION:
Thida works at the market.
This coffee’s for Luca!
Alejandro lives in Peru.
Agnieszka’s on the bus.
Mika’s listening to J-pop again.

Native English speakers rarely make mistakes with these very common prepositions. However, non-native speakers frequently get them wrong, often because they translate directly from their own language rather than listening to native English speakers (and yes, you always listen to something or someone).

The best way to improve your command of prepositions is to:

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[For the OxfordWords blog:] 10 mistakes made by learners of English

Banana skin

Do learners of English make particular mistakes in grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary depending on their mother tongue? (While linguists distinguish between an error, made by a student who doesn’t yet know the correct rule, and a mistake, made by a student who knows the rule but momentarily forgets it, I’ll use mistake to cover both cases.)

It makes intuitive sense that some (particularly lower-level) mistakes are more likely to be made by speakers of certain languages. One well-known example is that speakers of Slavic languages, such as Polish, often miss out articles (*she bought new car) while speakers of Romance languages, such as Italian, occasionally drop in too many (I love the my sister!). These kinds of mistakes reflect the nature of the students’ mother tongues, and are arguably fairly minor, but other kinds – such as the greater tendency among speakers of certain Asian languages (like Khmer or Japanese) to mix up he and she – may lead to real communication difficulties.

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