Unlocking the Secrets of English

'Csaba (r) is right' - One of my British tutors used to say. I always wondered what that 'r' was doing there. It is an intruder and mostly appears between a schwa that ends a word and the following vowel that starts a new word. Native speakers do that without noticing. Vanilla (r) ice Put...

We were walking dogs from the nearby shelter and one of them dragged me gently towards a fence as there were other dogs on the other side. I don’t want to ‘be sitting on the fence’ I thought to myself. So, I decided not to let him go there. I wasn’t – actually – ‘sitting on the fence’.

This often causes confusion as to the proper use. English-as much as I love it - is an isolating language (from that angle like Chinese) so we must be careful where we put the elements into the sentence. Certain roles or all roles are assigned by the position unlike in Hungarian, where we have a...

When I first heard the British expression 'Give it some welly', I did not know what it meant, and I gave up my wellingtons. (just joking) Yes, they are aptly named after the 1st Duke of Wellington. So, the boots - wellingtons - have only so much to do with the expression as they are worn on your...