Can we say I arrive to work at 9 o’clock or do we need to use “at”? Also can we say I was late to class or do we need to use “in”? Thank you.

Answer:

Hi Cathy, thanks for your question. The worst thing about prepositions is that there are no nice simple rules to let you know how to use them with certain words. Your question, Cathy, demonstrates this. In most cases you just have to learn the prepositions that go with certain words. Let’s look at your two verbs : to arrive and to be late.

‘Arrive‘ can be followed by several prepositions depending on what is following, look at these:

• I arrived for work in the morning. (arrive + for where ‘work’ is a task or job to undertake)
• I arrived at work in the morning. (arrive + at where ‘work’ is a place)
• I arrived in time to see her. (arrive + in time where there is a temporal aspect)

So, in terms of your first question, I would say that you can use ‘for‘ or ‘at‘ depending on what sense you want to give ‘work’ (a place or a task).

Your second question with ‘to be late‘ is a bit different as I don’t think either of your options is correct.

• I was late for class.

is the correct usage … late for something.

Hope that’s helped!

What is the difference between ‘hear’ and ‘listen’?

Answer:

Hi, Khadija. Thank’s for your question, I’m sure that the difference between ‘listen‘ and ‘hear‘ is not clear for a lot of English language learners.
Let’s have a look at them:

Listen is used to talk about or describe sounds that are being made around you and which you are making an active effort to focus on. For example:

• Did you listen to the news last night on television?
• She was listening to music on her iPod when I walked in.
• Mike listened to his teacher and then repeated what she had said.
• ‘Just listen to yourself! You talk such rubbish!’, she said angrily.

Note that ‘listen‘ is nearly always followed by ‘to‘ - you listen to some sound.

Just to repeat an important point; listening is active - that is you are making an active effort to listen to the sound.

Hear is used for sounds that come to our ears, but we do not, unlike listen, need to be actively engaged in trying to listen to the sound - it can just come to your ears! For example:

• Mike heard a bang in the night which woke him up.
• She heard someone screaming and called the police.
• I heard a loud explosion and then the building collapsed.

Note that ‘hear’ is not followed by ‘to’. But, to make it a little more complicated let’s look at this conversation:

• ‘Did you hear what I said’, asked John’s father.
• ‘No, I wasn’t listening‘, replied John.
• ‘Well, if you don’t listen you will never hear what I am telling you!’.

Now, that last sentence seems a little confused but also shows cleary how the two verbs are used - in this case, if John does not make an active effort to listen he will not hear his father’s advice (even if he may have heard sounds his father was making!)

Where hear and listen may seem very close is when you hear something like:

• Did you hear about Jane? She got married!
• I heard about the accident but I didn’t see it.

This is when information is passed to you from another source without you necessarily seeking it - in this case note that ‘hear’ is followed by ‘about’ - ‘to hear about’ something, someone or some action or event.

So, you can hear something without wanting to, but you can only listen to something intentionally.

Which one of the following sentences is correct having the meaning like “cannot accept…” ?
1) We regret to accept your letter…..
2) We regret not to accept your letter……

Hi Gireesh, I’m afraid neither one of your examples is correct. The verb ‘regret‘ is not followed by the infinitive form of the verb (e.g. ‘to accept’) but more usually by the gerund form (-ing) or by a relative pronoun such as ‘that‘. Of course, another problem here is that the verb for ‘regret accepting‘ does not mean the same as ‘cannot accept‘. Let’s look at how we can use regret + accept to give the sense you want - we’ll have to add a little more to your sentences to do this:

• We regret not being able to accept your letter …

Now, we are using an equivalent of can (meaning having the ability to do something) which is ‘to be able to‘. We then need to make that negative not being able to and then follow that with the verb accept. Of course, you may find it easier to use this variation with the relative pronoun ‘that’ :

• We regret that we can’t accept your letter.

Or, try changing the verb ‘regret‘ into an adverb:

• Regrettably, we cannot accept your letter.

So you can see Gireesh, there’s more than one way to approach this but you have to know how to put the pieces together. I’d suggest that you login to the members’ section of English4Today and go through some of the exercise in the grammar section and also take a look at the relative pronoun, verb formation and sentence structure sections of the English4Today Online Grammar.

When can we use “how about” and when can we use “what about”?

Hi Khadija. This is another one of those situations, and we’ve discussed quite a few of them here, where you can use the two phrases interchangeably:

Both can be used to make suggestions.

• How about going to see a movie tonight?
• What about going to see a movie tonight?

Or, in the case of a non-suggestive question:

• Is Mike going with you? How about Pete?
• Is Mike going with you? What about Pete?
• Have you finished cleaning your room? How about your homework?
• Have you finished cleaning your room? What about your homework?

So, use either and the earth won’t open up and swallow you!

How would the word hunter be spelled in the following sentence?
The sentence might go something like, “The hunter’s steel trap secured my foot to the forest floor.”
Would the correct spelling be hunters, hunter’s, or hunters’?
Thank you for your time,
Jadie

Hi Jadie, your question is asking how we form the possessive in English and I’d put this question in the Top 10 of questions we get asked. I’ll run through it quickly in relation to your specific example and I’ve put several links at the end of this posting to other postings about the possessive and to the section in the English4Today Online Grammar on possessives.

Firstly, I’m assuming that there is only one ‘hunter’ in which case we would show that the trap belongs to the hunter by saying the ‘hunter’s trap‘ - that is with the apostrophe s following the ‘r’ of ‘hunter’. So this sentence is correct:

The hunter’s steel trap secured my foot to the forest floor.

Just as an extra note here: hunters is plural and not possessive and hunters’ or hunters’s is the plural possessive.

See also:

• The Saxon Genitive
• Taking Possession: Placing the apostrophe
• The English4Today Online Grammar: Possessives

Suite Française

A few weeks ago I wrote a post about Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel The Road - the story of a father and son escaping from the North through a horribly desolate and scorched landscape and heading toward what they hoped to be a safer and less damaged South. The first part of Némirovsky’s book describes the exodus from Paris on the eve of the German invasion and there were many moments while I was reading this part of her novel when I thought of the The Road - a very different book but one that was also able to throw a brilliant light on how human’s can behave when all of the social and cultural props have been removed.

As this blog is about the English language I really concentrated in that post on talking a little about how the rules of English can be bent by an author to achieve certain effects. In this post, along the same lines, I don’t really want to talk about the story or even about the tragic real-life background which it so brilliantly describes - I really think that this is a bitter-sweet pleasure best left up to you as the reader. What I do want to have a quick look at are some of the notes in the Appendix 1 of the book which give an insight into Némirovsky’s writing process and which provide invaluable lessons for anyone who would like to write and that I am hoping all our English4Today Creative Writing Course students will read.  Again, I am going to talk about one or two isolated notes that I found revealing about the writing process and after that I’m hoping that you will be interested enough to read the book yourself.

These notes are all taken from Némirovsky’s jottings for the Suite Française and are in Appendix 1 of the book. They need no extra comment from me so I have added them here for you to read and think about in terms of your own writing:

Treating her theme:

If I want to create something striking, it is not misery I will show but the prosperity that contrasts with it… Contrasts! Yes, there’s something to that, something that can be very powerful and very new.

…it’s like music when you sometimes hear the whole orchestra, sometimes just the violin.

What interests me here is the history of the world.

I must create something great and stop wondering if there’s any point

In spite of everything, the thing that links all of these people together is our times, solely our times. Is that really enough? I mean: is this link sufficiently felt?

On the one hand, I would like a kind of general idea. On the other … Tolstoy, for example, with one idea spoils everything. Must have people, human reactions, and that’s all…

What’s important - the relationship between the different parts of the work…..

All in all, make sure to have variety on one hand and harmony on the other…Pursuit - people in love - laughter, tears etc. It’s this type of rhythm I want to achieve.

The movement of the masses must give the book its worth.

What would be good all in all (but is it doable?) is to always show the advance of the German army in the scenes not seen from the perspective of the characters.

By unifying, always simplifying the book (in its entirety) must result in a struggle between individual destiny and collective destiny. Must not take sides.

The most important thing and most interesting thing here is the following: the historical, revolutionary facts etc. must be only lightly touched upon, while daily life, the emotional life and especially the comedy it provides must be described in detail.

On research:

What I need to have:

• an extremely detailed map of France or Michelin Guide
• the complete collection of several French and foreign newspapers between 1 June and 1 July
• a work on porcelain
• June birds, their names and songs
• A mystical book (belonging to the godfather) Father Brechard

Comments on her text and characters:

1. Will - he talks for too long
2. Death of the priest - schmaltzy
3. Nimes? Why not Toulouse which I know?
4. In general, not enough simplicity

- keep it simple. Tell what happens to people and that’s all

… convince yourself that the sequences in Storm, if I may say so, must be, are a masterpiece. Work on it tirelessly.

I think I should replace the strawberries with forget-me-nots. It seems impossible tobring cherry trees in blossom and ripe strawberries together in the same season.

Adagio: Must rediscover all these musical terms …

This, as I’ve said, is a small sampling of her notes while writing Suite Française and I’d encourage you to get hold of the book and read both the novel and her notes to see just how carefully crafted the book is. In any case, I think that this sampling shows that the writing process is one of constant revision and questioning, testing of ideas, reduction of the complex to the simple and of careful research.

You may also be interested in:

• New York Times review of the book
• BBC article on the book and on Némirovsky’s daughter who ‘discovered’ the manuscript.
  
• Amazon page for Suite Francaise
• The Road : Previous post referred to above

Using the services of my company ENSURES the task is completed correctly, on time & on budget!
OR
2) Using the services of my company INSURES the task is completed correctly, on time & on budget!

Also please explain how I can make this determination on my own in the future.

Hi Irene and thanks for your question as this seems to be a set of those easily confused words that we have not included in our list on the English4Today Grammar Pages. We’ll make sure it is there soon though as assure, insure,ensure are, as you’ve pointed out, a group of words that we often confuse.

To assure something is to make certain that it will happen or has happened or to promise that something will be done as said:

• I assure you that I will be on time for work tomorrow.
• Economic prosperity is assured by the Presidential candidate if he is elected.
• The Presidential candidate assured his listeners that there would be no more poverty once she was elected
• They assured me that there was no danger swimming with the crocodiles.
• She assured me that she loved me even though she had forgotten my name.

To ensure something is to take steps to make sure that something happens:

• He ensured his own defeat in the election by failing to argue convincingly on any topic.
• Including air bags in cars ensures that you are protected when your car crashes.
• The captain ensured the safety of all of his passengers by double-checking the aircraft before takeoff.

To insure something is to take precautions against something undesirable happening and, of course, is best remembered when you think of an ‘insurance policy‘:

• You can insure yourself against losing your home by taking out a home insurance policy.
• The hostages were held by the terrorists as insurance against government attacks.

Now for the complications!

Ensure and insure are often used interchangeably to mean ‘to make sure of something‘. Practically, this means that as long as the meaning is ‘making sure of something‘ you can get away with using either one. Which means, of course, that both of your sentences would be correct. However, there are people who will insist upon using only ensure in this sense, using insure for talking about legal and financial protection and if you decided to follow this (rather small!) group then only your first sentence would be correct.

Insure is always used when referring to matters of legal and financial protection (e.g., insurance) :

• Insuring your car against theft is important if you live in a big city.
• I have insured myself against accidental death so that my children have some money if I die.

In terms of remembering all of this, Irene, I don’t know of any handy memory trick or mnemonic for this group but what I will do is put together an exercise for you over the next few days and post it to the members’ web with the link to it here so that you can do that a few times to reinforce your understanding of the words.

View Also:

• List of Easily Confused Words
• Free membership of English4Today

First, Happy New Year to all of our listeners, readers, members of English4Today and English4Today students.

When you’ve grown up in a Western culture, you probably think that New Year’s Day on January 1st is a pretty universal festival. After all, January 1st is the same all over the world so the new year starts at the same time everywhere. Well, in one sense this is true as the Gregorian Calendar (the 12 month calendar we now use) is used all over the world for commercial, transport and communications purposes. But a lot of cultures still keep a place for their own calendar and most of us know that Chinese New Year, for example, does not fall on the same day as the Gregorian Calendar proscribes and that the Chinese New Year festival is a party worth getting an invitation to.

Celebration of the new year is probably one of the oldest festivals around dating back to around 2000 BC when the Babylonians celebrated the new year at the start of Spring (the Vernal equinox). Spring seems a good time to start a new year but the Romans clearly didn’t feel that this worked for them and in 153 BC the Roman Senate set January 1st as the start of a New Year where it has stayed ever since.

The Romans changed the time of year when the new year started but they hung on to some important traditions that we still continue with today. The New Year’s resolution - an undertaking to do something positive in the coming year - dates back to the Babylonians. Typically, we now make resolutions to do things like give up smoking, lose weight or become better people and typically these resolutions are pretty much forgotten about by the start of February when we fall back into our habitual patterns of behaviour.

Wishing others good luck, or wishing it for yourself is also part of the New Year tradition and we’ve carried through to the present some of the symbols of luck, usually in the form of a ring or circle as it symbolizes ‘coming full circle‘, that is, completing a year’s cycle. The Dutch believe that eating donuts on New Year’s Day will bring good fortune and the French have a special King’s Cake which is in the form of a circle and that has a small lucky token baked into it. It was also once believed that the first visitor on New Year’s Day would bring either good luck or bad luck the rest of the year.

So, that said, grab a few lucky donuts, have a Happy New Year, and I’m looking forward to sharing another great 12 months with you.

New Year’s Words and Words used in this posting:

• resolution : an undertaking or promise (usually to oneself) to do something positive in the coming year
• luck : good fortune arriving by chance
• Gregorian Calendar : The modern calendar adapted from the Julian Calendar, conceived by the Roman’s, which fixes New Year’s day on the 1st January
• Happy New Year! : traditional saying during the New Year holiday
• donut : round, sweet bun usually deep-fried and coated with sugar
• Homer Simpson : famous television cartoon character
• lucky charm : a small object that the owner believes will bring them good luck

No 6 McDuck, Scrooge

Net Worth: $8.2 billion
Source: Mining
Age: 80
Marital Status: Single
Hometown: Duckburg, U.S.A.
Education: Cluck U dropout.

Planet’s wealthiest poultry in hiding due to fear of bird flu. Thought to be in “money bin,” five-story tower in Duckburg that is world’s largest repository of gold coins. As adolescent, moved to American West from native Scotland and amassed fortune in gold and copper. Keeps most of his money in bullion. Known to enjoy swimming in money. Literally. Likely heirs Huey, Dewey and Louie (grand-nephews) now living alone in Duckburg mansion. Absent Scrooge’s supervision, Dewey spotted canoodling with Parrot Hilton. Reportedly wrote nephew Donald, a deckhand in U.S. Navy, back into his will. Member since 1947. — Matthew Herper Excerpted from Forbes Magazine Website

You might notice that Forbes has set Scrooge’s wealth at $8.2 billion but that a little research (see the cartoon left) sets it at one multiplujillion nine obsquatumatillion, six hundred and twenty-three dollars and sixty-two cents. Perhaps Forbes couldn’t track all of the assets kept in Scrooge’s Swiss bank accounts. And they’ve left out of their short bio his most important characteristic and the one that gives him his name - he is a very, very mean duck with his money and prefers to hang on to it and watch it accumulate rather than spend it.

Scrooge gets his name from Ebenezer Scrooge, the main character in A Christmas Story, which you can read, of course, free of charge, by downloading our audio e-book, and has much of the original Scrooge’s personality but has been perhaps ‘disneyfied‘ into someone a bit more lovable than the Dickens character.

But Ebenezer Scrooge didn’t just pass his name to a wealthy cartoon duck he also gave English a new noun:

Scrooge

noun

A stingy person: miser, niggard, skinflint.
Informal penny pincher.
Slang cheapskate, stiff, tightwad.
See give/take/reciprocity.

So you could say, ‘My father is a real scrooge, he never spends a cent and keeps it all in the bank.’ or ‘Don’t be such a scrooge! I’m only asking you to lend me 50 cents!‘

Not perhaps the most useful word to learn but still, at this time of the year, you wouldn’t really want to hear it directed at you. So, give a little and avoid being called a scrooge!