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sábado, 18 de mayo de 2013

Mr, Mrs, Ms or Miss? The eternal problem.

When reading a text in class, the students always pronounce "Mister" if they find the word Mr, Ms, Mrs or Miss. It doesn't matter. All of them are men.
We always laugh in class, but could you imagine calling a woman "Mister García"(Señor García)?
These are the differences:

We use MISS (pronounced "mis") when we refer to un unmarried woman. (In French, we would say "mademoiselle")

We use MRS (pronounced "misis") when we refer to a married woman.

We use MS (pronounced "mis") when we refer to woman, regardless of her marital status. So, if we don't know if the woman is married or not, we should use MS.

We use MR when we refer to a man. This word comes from the ancient word "Master".

To sum up:





lunes, 13 de mayo de 2013

THIS IS NOT ENGLISH! THIS IS SPANGLISH...

It's been a long time but I'm here again. I need your help to update this blog. It's time for you to give ideas and share them here.

Last week, I was talking to some students in a class about those words that seem to be English, but they aren't. They are called "falsos anglicismos" in our language. 
A clear example is the word FOOTING. Oh no! This is NOT English...this is a Spanish invention. The word for this in English is jogging.
Footing exists but it has a different meaning. So, stop saying: I love footing!

Another example is PARKING. The place where we park our car is called CAR PARK. Parking is the gerund of PARK. No more. So, it's forbidden to say: The car is in the parking.

The following one is the funniest: PUENTING. I can't imagine someone thinks this is English, but...just in case I warn you. PUENTING is nothing. It's similar to say "hablanding" instead of speaking. The word in English is BUNGEE-JUMPING. I know it's more difficult than puenting, but...

Now it's turn to the word AUTOSTOP. No, it's not English, it's a mixture of languages. The correct word in English is HITCH HIKING. If you do autostop is because you are in Spain. Don't say this in UK or USA. They won't understand :(

To finish, ZAPPING is not English. It's Spanish with a touch of English. Zapping in English means nothing. The correct word is CHANNEL HOPPING OR SURFING. This means that tonight you are zapping in Spain, but an American person is channel surfing.

So, from now on, when you say something that sounds English, google it and get the truth!