Lesson 249--Using Time as an adjective

 

 

Time is something special in English.  We have so many expressions and idioms that involve time. We also express time in so many ways.  Today's lesson focuses on using time to describe things.

When we normal talk about time, or duration we use plural nouns.

examples

It takes three hours to get there.

My vacation will last for about four weeks.

Jim's personal best marathon time is 3 hours, 24minutes and 17 seconds.

However, when we describe things using time (like all adjectives) we only use the singular form.

It was a three-hour trip.

Maria is taking a 6 week course at the university.

It is a 2 hour and 14 minute journey from my house to work every day.

 

The best part is that we can use either form.

Daniel is six years old.

Daniel is a six-year-old boy.

Maria works 40 hours a week.

Maria has a 40 hour work week.

Lesson 181--Some and Any Questions

When making questions there is an interesting difference between some and any.  Consider the following questions

1:  Do you have any money?

2:  Do you have some money?

In question 1, the person asking probably thinks that you don't have money.  However, the person asking in question 2 probably thinks that you do.

Consider the following two questions

3:  Do you have some problems?

4:  Do you have any problems?

In question 3, the person asking really believes that you have some problems.  In question 4, this is more of a genuine inquiry.

Lesson 58--Unusual Plurals

English loves to bring in words from other countries.  We have adapted many into English.  This can be a problem for foreign learners because they might be too similar, or too different.  Here is a short list (this is not all of them) of words that have unusual plural forms because they come from another language.  Today's examples are either Latin or Greek.


Singular                               Plural

oasis                                                             oases
crisis                                                            crises
phenomenon                                                phenomena                                                     
cactus                                                           cacti
bacterium                                                     bacteria
criterion                                                       criteria
formula                                                        formulae
nucleus                                                         nuclei
fungus                                                          fungi
appendix                                                      appendices

Please take a moment to look up these words (and their pronunciation) in the dictionary--there is an online dictionary that will pronounce the words if you want to hear them (howjsay.com)