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Question from English4.today member Anna in Germany:“Why is a medical ‘patient‘ called a ‘patient‘ and what does it have to do with the adjective ‘patient‘ ?”Hi, Anna. That’s a really interesting question! What I love about questions from our members is that they often bring up English language topics that, as a native speaker, you haven’t thought about yourself.Let’s have a look at the word patient as a noun and as an adjective:* NOUN: He is a patient of Doctor Buller.* ADJECTIVE: I have had to wait for an hour. I think I am very patient.Anna, the word ‘patient‘ comes from the Latin originally. In Latin the word patiens is the present participle of pati (to suffer or endure) – so you can see immediately how the modern English word ‘patient‘, someone suffering from an illness or injury and being cared for by a medical professional,  gets its meaning.When ‘patient‘ is used as an adjective, as  in ‘he is a very patient man‘, it means that he can endure or suffer a long wait until something is resolved.You can see that the connection between patient as a noun, as in a doctor’s patient, and patient as an adjective can both be traced back to the same Latin root patiens, meaning to suffer or endure.I hope that has helped clear it up for you, Anna.Take a look at the English4.today dictionary entries for:* patient* suffer* endure

Question from English4.today member Enrique in Spain:

What does the word ‘onomatopoeia’ mean… I’ve seen it and it is one of those weird english words that I find hard to understand”.

Here is the answer, Enrique!

Boom! Yes, that was an onomatopoeia. Not the sound itself but the word I used to describe it.

Onomatopoeia are words that imitate the sound of the object or actions they are describing. Thus from this: [sound] we get ‘woof woof’. And from this [sound] we get ‘meow meow’. And from this [sound] we get the rather approximate ‘cock-a-doodle-do’. And from explosions, electrical sounds, fights, slamming doors, etcetera, we get a whole range of comic book filler vocabulary such as ‘bang!’, ‘pow!’, ‘slap!’,’zip!’, ‘boom!’ and ‘crash!’.

You can see that some of these words like ‘boom’, a stock market boom, for example, or zip and crash have actually taken on a life of their own and refer not just to the originating sound but to a rapidly developing market, a type of accident or rapidly degenerating market, a crash, or to a fastening device used in clothing, a zip, and a compressed software file, a zip file.

The word comes for the Greek words ‘ónoma’ meaning ‘name and ‘poiéōn’ to make: the making of a name from the sound of the source. As usual, a very complicated sounding technical word referring to some of the simplest words in English.

Now, all languages have onomatopoeia and one of the fascinating things is to see just how varied words referring to the same source can be in different languages. For example in English a dog goes ‘woof woof’ and in French it goes ‘ouaf ouaf’. Now either dogs have different accents in different countries or the onomatopoeia is a very approximate and culturally influenced way of ‘translating’ a sound!

Anyway, I’ll leave you with that one. Let’s go out with a BLAST!

Here’s a list of some other common onomatopoeias.

* Achoo* Bang* Bark* Bump* Buzz* Cackle* Chatter* Clap* Click* Crackle* Crash* Crunch* Ding-Dong* Drip* Growl* Haha* Hiccup* Honk* Howl* Hush* Knock* Meow* Moan* Moo* Oink

* Plop* Poof* Pop* Pow* Psst* Quack* Ribbit* Ring* Roar* Rustle* Rumble* Shhh* Sizzle* Slap* Smash* Smack* Squish* Swoosh* Thud* Thump* Whisper* Whimper* Woof* Zip* Zoom

Question from Sahra in Brazil:

What’s the difference between these sentences:

* I’m married for 3 years.

* I’ve been married for 3 years

Answer

Hi Sahra. This is a very quick one to answer as we have answered a lot of other questions about this subject and have sections of the English4Today Grammar on it as well.

When you see ‘for‘ with a period or duration of time – as in ‘for three years‘ or ‘for a long time‘ or ‘for two days‘ then you know that the verb will be in the Present Perfect.

We use the Present Perfect when we are talking about something started in the past and continuing in the present.

The structure of the the Present Perfect is:

SUBJECT + HAVE/HAS + PAST PARTICIPLE OF VERB

I + HAVE + BEEN MARRIED + FOR TEN YEARS

Your first sentence is therefore not correct and the second one is correct.

Take a look at these references and explanations: ·

* Present Perfect ·

* Using For and Since ·

 

Forming the Simple Past, sometimes called the Preterite tense, is really pretty easy… at least for regular verbs. You take the subject, follow it with the verb ending in –ed and there you have it.

Example: Subject + verb + –ed I + play + ed I played

And, to make it easier, the Simple Past form is invariable – that means it doesn’t change no matter what subject you use. Let’s look at the verb ‘to play’, in the Simple Past it would look like this:

I played You played He, she, it played We played You played They played

A couple of things to watch out for:

* Verbs ending in a consonant + y, like cry and try: drop the y and add ied.

* Verbs ending in e like receive only need to have the ‘d’ added – received.

For the irregular verbs in English it is a bit more difficult and you will need to learn most of the most often used ones. There is a full list of irregular verbs with their past form on English4Today.

Now, before moving to the next video where we talk about when to use the Simple Past why don’t you try a couple of verbs your self. Just complete the sentence with the verb in the Simple Past:

 

STUDY —–> ?

They studied English in 2006 – notice that this is a verb that ends in a consonsant + y so we have dropped the y and added ed.

One more, PLAY—–> ?

Tim played golf when he was at university.

In Video Part 2 we will look at making the Interrogative and Negative of the Simple Past and then in Video Part 3 we will look at WHEN we use the Simple Past.

Useful Links:

* English4Today Grammar Section on Simple Past

* Irregular Verbs in English

* Crossword Puzzle: Irregular Verb Past Forms

* Wordsearch (Easy): Irregular Past Forms

* For a bit of pronunciation fun with the past forms

Question from Jadie in the USA

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

Question from Mural Mahtab in Iran:

What are the differences between these adjectives: very, rather, quite, fairly, extremely, terribly? Which one is the strongest? Thanks a million

Answer:

Hi Mural, thanks for the question. Your question focuses on another rather (or should I say, ‘fairly‘ or ‘quite‘) difficult area of English. Firstly, although these words are often placed in front of a noun or adjective – as in ‘He is a very good student’ – they are not adjectives themselves but are adverbs. To be even more accurate, they are adverbs of degree . They tell us to what extent, or how much, an action happened.

Look at these examples using some of the common adverbs of degree that you have included in your question:

* It was a very hot day.

* Irene is a rather good musician.

* Muktar plays the sitar extremely well.

* Pablo and Hector are very good friends.

* Some northern countries such as Sweden have terribly long winters.

You can see that in example 1 we have an adjective ‘hot‘ that is already modifying the noun ‘day‘ and we modify it still further by adding the adverb of degree ‘very‘ which tells us just how hot the day was – not a ‘ little hot‘, not ‘quite hot‘ but a ‘very hot‘ day … you see that this adverb tells us to what degree it was hot. And in the other examples you can also see that each adverb of degree tells us a little more about the action than if we simply used the adjective or adverb.

It can get a little confusing when some of these adverbs are pretty close in ‘degree’ to others. For example, if I said

* It’s quite hot today.

* It’s rather hot today.

There is no real difference between the two sentences in terms of the ‘degree‘ of hotness that they are conveying. So ‘quite‘ and ‘rather‘ can be used interchangeably.

Another confusing one is the word ‘terribly‘. If you think of the adjective ‘terrible‘ when you use it adverbial you may make a big mistake:

* He is a terrible violin player.

means that he is a very bad violin player – ‘terrible‘, as an adjective, usually means something bad.

However, if I use ‘terribly‘ as an adverb of degree it has the same meaning as ‘extremely‘ :

He is a terribly good violin player.

The meaning is that ‘he is an extremely good violin player‘.

Note that I can also say the opposite, ‘ he is a terribly bad violin player‘. In both cases though ‘terribly‘ doesn’t have any connotation in itself of ‘badness’ but expresses the degree of the action or event.

As to the place on a scale for the ones you have sent in, Mural, I would say – going from the weakest degree to the strongest:

* fairly

* quite /rather

* rather /quite

* very

* extremely / terribly

* terribly /extremely

If you want to use some other adverbs of degree in your conversation or written English try these!

absolutely, acutely, amply, astonishingly, awfully, certainly, considerably, cruel, dearly, decidedly, deeply, eminently, emphatically, exaggeratedly, exceedingly, excessively, extensively, extraordinarily, extremely, greatly, highly, incredibly, indispensably, largely, notably, noticeably, particularly, positively, powerfully, pressingly, pretty, prodigiously, profoundly, really, remarkably, substantially, superlatively, surpassingly, surprisingly, terribly, truly, uncommonly, unusually, vastly, wonderfully.

Other references:

Question from Heather in the USA

Which one is correct – theatre or theater?

Hi Heather – well it all depends on where you live!

Have a look at the article in the English4Today Online English Grammar called ‘Which English?’ to give you more details.

The spelling of words such as ‘theatre‘ and ‘centre‘ differ depending on where you are in the English speaking world. In the USA and Canada it is ‘theater‘ and ‘center‘ and in Britain it is theatre and centre are spelt. There are quite a few of these variations which is one of the reasons why we have an ‘American English Dictionary’, ‘Australian English Dictionary’ and a ‘British English Dictionary’. The important thing to remember is that none of the variations is more correct than another! And if you are a non-native English speaker living outside of one of the usage regions you can really take your pick without feeling that you are making a mistake!

Here’s a short list of some of the main variations between British spellings and American spellings:

British English

American English

humour

humor

favourite

favorite

realise

realize

theatre

theater

kilometre

kilometer

socks

sox

cosy

cozy

colour

color

dialogue

dialog

cheque

check

jewellery

jewelry

traveller

traveler

tyre

tire

organisation

organization

centre

center

 

This is a short list only! And spelling isn’t the only area of difference – for example, there are vocabulary differences such as the difference between fall (American) and autumn (British) to talk about the season before winter… however, that is for another posting!

Hope that has helped Michelle!

Question

Just in Time: Just + Present Perfect

Question from Henrik in Croatia:

I just called or I’ve just called? What’s right?Stevie Wonder says: I just called to say I love you. Shouldn’t it be Present Perfect instead of Simple Past?

Answer

Hi Henrik, A couple of weeks ago I answered a similar question about the grammar used in song lyrics. That time it concerned the lyrics in an Akon song and if you look at the blog posting or Grammar FAQ posting you will be able to link through to that posting.

Although I’d say the same things as in the Akon post about lyrics using a more poetic and liberal and perhaps socio-cultural grammar I thought I’d answer this question as it does bring up one interesting grammatical usage and that is when JUST, an adverb of time, is used with the Present Perfect.

In previous posts I’ve said that the main use of the Present Perfect is to talk about actions started in the past and continuing or having a connection with the present, for example:

* I have lived in Bombay for twenty years.

* She has been married since 2005.

In both of these examples the action of living in Bombay or being married started at a point in the past but is still going on in the present.

But what about this sentence which also uses the Present Perfect:

* I have just called to say I love you.

The adverb of time,just, indicates that this action is in the very recent past and is completed so why don’t we use the Simple Past (as Stevie Wonder does in the song).

Well, here we have one of those little grammatical twists that are sent to annoy us all but especially those who are trying to learn how English works.

You could use the Simple Past here and it would not be wrong.

What complicates it is that using ‘just’ with the Present Perfect to talk about a complete, recent past action is also correct. We often use it with the Present Perfect when there is result in the present or future of the past action.For example: •

* I’ve just failed my exams and will have to study for them again.

* She has just lost her car keys and can’t leave for work.

But we are talking about fairly fine distinctions here and I would say that Stevie Wonder’s grammar is spot on in this part of the song!

I just called to say I love youI just called to say how much I careI just called to say I love youAnd I mean it from the bottom of my heart

Just to keep you thinking – just can also be used to mean the only reason. For example, ‘I just called to say I love you’ could also mean the only reason I called was to say I love you. I’ll leave you with that until next time!

Question from Christy in the Philippines

When do we have to use the past participle of the verb when the tense of your statement is in the present tense. This is because I get confused when someone asks me about this. Like for ex. I think your headset is broken. I know this sentence is right, but why use past participle (broken). Thanks

Hi Christy, thanks for your question. English can be confusing and I think you’ve landed on one of the areas that is most confusing for a lot of English language learners. Let’s take a look at your example sentence:

* I think your headset is broken

Now what is that? Simple Present? Simple Past? Present Perfect? The sentence seems to be in the Present … but what is that past participle ‘broken’ doing in there?.Well, this sentence is in the Passive and that changes the way we structure the tenses.

We use the Passive form:

* when the agent (the persons or thing performing the action) is known or is not important.In the following sentence we are not concerned about WHO is producing the Champagne.

* E.G. Champagne is produced in France.

* to focus attention on the result of an action. This fits your sentence where the important thing to focus on is not WHO broke the headset or WHY the headset is broken but the fact that it IS broken:

* E.G. I think your headset is broken

* to hide the identity of the person performing the action. The writer or speaker is being tactful, secretive or evasive.

* E.G. The new building was built using sub-standard materials.

* to keep the same grammatical subject.

* E.G. Michael won the chess game with Jane but was beaten by Max in the finals.

 

Now, how do we make a sentence Passive? Let’s have a look at how we re-organize the tense structure (table taken from the English4Today English Grammar). Try and change these Passive examples into active sentences. I’ll do the first one for you:

* Passive: The house is cleaned every day.Active: I clean the house every day.

Remember, the Passive uses the:

 SUBJECT + TO BE + PAST PARTICIPLE

Subject

verb ‘to be’

past participle

Simple present:

The house

is

cleaned every day.

Present continuous:

The house

is being

cleaned at the moment.

Simple past:

The house

was

cleaned yesterday.

Past continuous:

The house

was being

cleaned last week.

Present perfect:

The house

has been

cleaned since you left.

Past perfect:

The house

had been

cleaned before their arrival.

Future:

The house

will be

cleaned next week.

Future continuous:

The house

will be being

cleaned tomorrow.

Present conditional:

The house

would be

cleaned if they had visitors.

Question from Khadija in Morocco:

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 clearly 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.