Different from or different than?

When does one use different from and different than?

Parts of Speech - General Overview

What are Parts of Speech ?

 

All the words in English can be divided into 8, 9 or more groups according to their function in the language. These groups are traditionally called parts of speech and are today referred to as lexical categories or word classes. The following terms comprise the most basic grammar terminology every English user must be familiar with in order to understand how language works to create meaning.

Nouns (success), verbs (succeed), adjectives (successful), adverbs (successfully) and interjections (wow!) are sub-grouped into content words, namely, words that provide the concepts and ideas underlying the sentence. Content words are constantly being added to or removed from the language (an open word class), as changing usage patterns influence dynamic changes in a language's vocabulary.

Conversely, Determiners (the), pronouns (we), prepositions (at) and conjunctions (and) are sub-grouped into structure words, whose number almost always stays constant in a language (closed word class). These are words that tie the content words together into a grammatically correct sentence and reflect the inner grammar rules of the language structure. These, as opposed to content words, change very slowly, if at all, throughout a language's history.

It is vital for any English writer to be familiar with the parts of speech in order to have the terminology to study and analyze the language and identify mistakes in writing. Moreover, a word can function as a different part of speech depending on its role in the sentence structure (the terms of which are also vital for successful writing). This affects the word's meaning and structure, making it important to confirm whether you are using the correct part of speech in the correct position in the sentence.
The defendant's lawyers object to any claims made by the prosecution.
[ object is a verb, meaning to oppose]

They also showed an object found in the scene of the crime as exhibit A.
[ object is a noun, meaning a physical item]

 

 

Parts of Speech in the English Language

 

I. Content Words

 

1. The Noun

 

1. A Noun is a word that names a person ( teacher), thing ( pencil), animal ( cat), place (Paris) or abstract idea ( love). As practically anything in the universe has a name, and as there are many things in the universe, nouns comprise the largest group of words in English (about 65%). Nouns name common everyday objects such as pen, through to general conditions such as friendship, all the way to the most technical terminology for the tiniest part of a jet engine.

The Present Progressive Tense

Talking about dynamic ongoing activities happening at a specific present time only

The Present Progressive tense (or Present Continuous) is a much-used verb tense in English that describes on-going actions at the moment of speaking, stressing that the doer is in the middle of the activity and hasn’t finished yet (the action is incomplete). It is used to refer to a temporary dynamic activity occurring at a specific time in the present, not on a regular basis. To know more, read these sections of our grammar review on the Present Progressive in English.

1. Slogan
2. Usages
3. Form
4. Common time expressions
5. Negative statements and questions types
6. Summary

1. Slogan: “I am in the middle of doing something, please don’t disturb !” or

“It doesn’t happen all the time”

The slogans encapsulate the basic meaning of the Present Progressive, so use it when hesitating about what verb form to choose in your English writing. Remembering one short slogan can help you navigate through all the grammar rules it relates to.

Creative English Writing

Welcome to the Free English Writing Guide. The Free English Writing Guide provides articles that offer tips and suggestions on how to write successfully. How to write business letters, cover letters and reports or produce creative English writing of a high standard in essays, articles and novels. 

Writing is a complex skill that requires time to develop as many elements are weaved together to form one final product. Writing is more than just putting words and sentences together, as it should also address questions of writing purpose (to convince, inform or narrate), audience (friends Vs. business associates, teenagers Vs. University professors), genre (argumentative, descriptive, narrative), style (avoiding sexist and biased language, conciseness, and emphasis), register (formal. Informal, technical, jocular) and format (article, report, contract, letter, e-mail, memo etc.). To achieve a good piece of writing, there are some essential and well defined stages within the writing process that make sure you will actually end up with the piece of writing you intended to have.

 

Different writing purposes frequently warrant the usage of specific formats, which by convention are expected to be used, using specific headings, graphic layout and specialist terminology. As nearly all writers in all levels, find it sometimes hard to start writing what they have in mind, a good writing template with a ready-made structure, key words and phrases can serve as an excellent springboard. For example, when writing informative texts in expository style for school or for journalistic purposes, it is recommended to use an agreed upon structure for a review article, a student's 5-paragraph essay on Napoleon or a news item. Persuasive writing is based on a strong persuasive style, which empowers opinion essays, newspaper editorials or business proposals. Academic writing, for college or university, expects certain models for writing assignments, from a research report or a book review; through to a lab report, literary analysis, or a term paper; and all the way up to a full thesis.

The world of business writing uses common formats for business e-mails, press releases, financial plans or even simple memos confirming a business meeting. Resumes stand in a category of their own, as various occupations merit various resume styles. Legal documents, such as real estate contracts, power to an attorney or wills, or medical documents such as insurance policies and autopsy reports require careful attention to technicalities. Various letter formats are very useful for letters of resignation, complaint or recommendation.

In contrast to the hard factual approach taken in expository writing, Creative writing lets you give vent to personal thought, subjective feelings and practically anything that comes to mind without having to provide evidence to support arguments. Such writing includes diary entries, personal blogs, love letters and just about any kind of free written reflection. Finally, literary writing, attempted by layman and artist alike, produces narratives for short stories or novellas, lyrical poems and sonnets, and dramatic prose for plays or movie scripts.

English Vocabulary: Beginnings

There Just Seems to Be No End to It - Part 1

The English language has become the international language of the world. In addition to the 400 million people speaking English as a first language, about 800 million use or study Englishas a second/ foreign language. As English grammar is relatively simple compared to other languages, it is the vast English vocabulary, which poses a real challenge in the quest to master the language.

Almost every word in English seems to have many synonym sets with rough to subtle differences in meaning between members of each set. For example, to name the place where one lives, you can use home, house, quarters, or lodging (standard); residence, domicile, orhabituation (formal); and shack, digs, spot, or pad (informal, slang). A set of words can also be found to describe a person who talks a lot: articulate, eloquent, fluent (positive connotation); vocal, talkative, verbose (neutral connotation); chattering, gossipy, and gabby(negative connotation). There just seems to be no end to English words...

The most complete dictionary of English, the Oxford English Dictionary, or OED (second edition, 20 volumes, 1989) has more than 600,000 word entries (including archaic forms and variant spellings). Nevertheless, English is estimated to have more than a 1,000,000 words, as the second half of the 20th century enriched the language with an abundance of specialist, technical and scientific terms, not to mention slang and contributions from local English varieties (American, British, Australian & New-Zealander English, Indian English, and more). Just for comparison, Arabic has "only" 200,000 words, German 160,000, French 140,000, Japanese 116,000, and Hebrew 100,000 (rough estimates).

How is it that English has such a huge vocabulary, larger than any other language on earth? In addition to various word formation mechanisms existing in other languages, such as onomatopoeia, derivation, affixation, compounding and functional extension, the major source for the large variety of English words is its dramatic history. The 1,600 years of English existence have been witness to massive revolutionary changes in the language as it mixed with and continuously borrowed from other languages, with which it came into contact.

Early English roots trace back to the invasion of the Anglo-Saxons to Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries resulting in Old English being mainly Germanic. 83% of the most common 1000 words in today's English are of Anglo-Saxon origin.

Old English words

nouns: house, mother, father ,cow, God, gold, work, land, winter verbs: be, have, do, say, come, make adjectives: good, new, and long function words: he, of, him, for, and, under, on

Already in this period of Old English, the language began applying its inclination to ravenously borrow words from other languages. From the native Celts, it took clan, bin, gull, and crag, as well as names for places and rivers ( Dover, Kent, Severn, Thames). Latin words arrived even earlier with the Roman conquest of 43 B.C. ( cheese, cup, kitchen, plant, street, wine). A later wave of Latin words was brought with Christian monks and missionaries seeking to convert the Anglo-Saxons, enriching the language with both religious and secular words, such asabbot, altar, acolyte, candle, martyr, Mass, and lily.

The next addition to the vocabulary to close the Old English period resulted from the Viking invasions to Britain during the 8th and 9th centuries. These newcomers, who had settled alongside the Anglo-Saxons, contributed Old Norse vocabulary such as the following:

from Old Norse

flat, cake, take, get, call, husband, want, cut, both, ugly, fellow, hit, odd, egg, sister, law, leg, rag, window, die, are (form of the verb be) words beginning with sk: scorch, scrape, scrub, skill, and sky The personal pronouns: they, their, them

Synonymous word sets such as those presented above already show up in this period: sick vs.ill, shirt vs. skirt, wrath vs. anger, rear vs. raise, hide vs. skin, the first Anglo-Saxon, the second Old Norse, respectively. The all-in-all contribution of words from Germanic origins (Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse etc.) amounts to about 23% of the current English vocabulary.

The year 1066 marked the dramatic transition to Middle English, with William the Conqueror, king of Normandy in Western France, drawing his army into Britain. Old French thus became the spoken language of the ruling classes: the nobles, bankers, lawmakers, and scholars; the peasants and lower classes spoke Anglo-Saxon and some surviving Celtic dialects; the clergy used Latin. In the coming 400 years, Middle English gradually overthrew French and became the language of all classes, but words for government, religion, food, law, art, literature, and medicine are originally French.

from Norman French

parliament, justice, crime, marriage, money, ornament, art, pleasure, joy, rent

The parallel usage of several languages has resulted in some famous duplicate and triplicate synonym sets. For instance, kingly (from Old English), royal (from French), and regal (from Latin). As well as house-mansion, wood-forest, answer-reply, yearly-annual, room-chamber, wish-desire, might-power, worthy-honorable, and bold-courageous (the former from Old-English, the latter from French, respectively).

Another fascinating example of the social divide between language users of Middle English is shown in nouns denoting different kinds of meats. The English speaking peasants who raised the animals used the Anglo-Saxon words ( swine/pig, sheep, ox, cow, calf, deer), whereas the French speaking elite, who could afford eating these meats regularly, used the French equivalents ( pork, bacon, mutton, beef, veal, venison, respectively). Today, these duplicates remain in common use in modern English, using different words for the animals and the meats produced from them. The contribution of both Norman and Modern French to English is estimated in about 29% of the current vocabulary.

English Vocabulary Guide - Vocabulary Check / Vocabulary Checker

English Vocabulary Guide - Vocabulary Check / Vocabulary Checker

Welcome to the English Vocabulary Guide. The English Vocabulary Guide has articles about key topics on English vocabulary and semantics (the meaning of words) that will teach you about writing more correctly. Remember that even experienced writers always have their writing edited for vocabulary (word replacement with synonyms, enrichment, register, collocations or word appropriateness).

As English has the largest vocabulary compared to other languages, with estimates running between 500,000 and one million word items, it is important to know how to enrich your vocabulary. Words together form phrases, figures of speech and idioms which enrich one's language figuratively and symbolically. In addition to tips on memorizing words, our vocabulary guide allows you to access information on word formation and derivation (roots, prefixes and suffixes), phrasal verbs, synonyms, antonyms, word origins in English, dictionary use, cliches, jargon, and words commonly confused.

The Past Simple Tense

Talking about finished actions, facts, and habits in the past

The Past Simple tense (or Simple Past), sometimes called the preterit in English grammar, is a highly used verb tense for referring to finished past activities. At its core, the Past Simple is used to refer to isolated actions that started and were completed at a well-defined time in the past. To know more, read these sections of our review on the Past Simple in English.

1. Slogan
2. Usages
3. Form
4. Common time expressions
5. Negative sentences and question types
6. Summary

 

1. Slogan: “It happened, I know when, and that’s it !”

The slogan encapsulates the basic meaning of the Past Simple, so use it when hesitating about what verb form to choose in your English writing. Remembering one short slogan can help you navigate through all the grammar rules it relates to.