Tag Archives: Grammar

More problem prepositions arriving…

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Question from Cathy in Canada:

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!

Accepting with no regrets

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Question from English4Today member Gireesh in the United Arab Emirates:

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.

Write or wrote the quote?

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Question from Randall in the USA:

In quoting a line from a book, is it correct to use the word “wrote” or “writes” as in;

 

  • In his book, Good English, Joe Smith writes, “English is good.”

or

  • In his book, Good English, Joe Smith wrote, “English is good.”?

Answer:

Hi Randall and thanks for your question.

You’re quite right to be a bit confused about this as you will have been taught that when an action, such as writing a book, is finished, we should use the Simple Past. And you would be quite correct if you wrote:

  • In his book, Good English, Joe Smith wrote, “English is good.”

The confusion exists because when we are quoting what a writer has written in a book, newspaper or magazine we can use more than one tense despite the fact that the writing is, of course, finished. We can say:

  • In his book, Good English, Joe Smith has written, “English is good.”
    (Present Perfect)
  • In his book, Good English, Joe Smith writes, “English is good.”
    (Simple Present)

All of these are acceptable and don’t really change the meaning or intention of the sentence. Perhaps using the Present Perfect or Simple Present gives the quote a greater sense of immediacy and of being current but it is a fairly fine distinction.

Maybe, Randall, it is enough to know that you would not be wrong if you used any of the above tenses.

See also:

Saxon Genitive : A Detective Story

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Saxon GenitiveQuestion from English4Today student, Vincent in Spain:

I hear a lot of English people talking about the Saxon Genitive – what is it?

Answer:

Thanks for this question, Vincent. From time to time I’m amazed by the questions asked by our students. In this case, I know Vincent personally. He is one of our advanced English4Today Personal Tutor students and is a very keen and motivated learner. Even so … the Saxon Genitive… where did that come from! I suspect that there is a very old grammar book lurking in Vincent’s bookshelf. I think if you asked 100 native English speakers what this was you would get 95 saying they just didn’t know and 5 saying that it was the name of a 1930′s fictional detective. I have to say that the answer to the question didn’t jump immediately in front of my own eyes.

I’ve often commented in this blog on how English is a living, changing language and this applies to how we name and describe grammar items as well. The Saxon Genitive is really nothing more than a rather old-fashioned name for the Possessive ‘-s‘. Now I’ve answered quite a few questions about forming the possessive in English so I won’t repeat that here although I have placed links at the end of the blog for you to follow if you need more information.

However, if you want to confuse yourself a little about the origins of the Saxon Genitive here is a quote from the Wikipedia entry:

The term “Saxon genitive” is in analogy to the genitive in classical Latin.

Many contend that ’s now functions as a clitic rather than a case ending: it gets separated from its noun in modern usages such as “the King of Spain’s hat”, which in theory is ambiguous between “the hat of the king of Spain” (intended meaning) or “the king of the hat of Spain”. (Older usage had “the king’s hat of Spain” or, rarely, “Spain’s king’s hat”; an example in literature is “The King’s daughter of Noroway” in The Ballad of Sir Patrick Spens.)

Well, I’m sure you understood that – there’s nothing like a nice simple, clear explanation. And now you’ll no longer have to worry about who owns that Spanish hat … or king’s hat … or King’s daughter.

I think for most of us we can safely live with the fact that the Saxon Genitive is the same as the Possessive ‘-s‘.

Also in the Online English Grammar:

Vocabulary : How is that plural?

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Question from Salim in Lebanon:

Recently I stopped on the word vocabulary to find that it can be countable..so can you offer me the way we can use vocabularies in a sentence..in what sense can it be correct..thanks

Answer:
Hi Salim, this is a quick question to answer for you. The word ‘vocabulary‘ can of course be singular as in ‘the English vocabulary‘, that is all of the words in the English language, or ‘my English vocabulary ‘, all of the English words that I know, but, as you point out, it can also be plural.

Think about all of the languages in the world – each one has its own vocabulary. So there is a Chinese vocabulary, and an Arabic vocabulary, a Russian vocabulary – each one is very different, and we can say, ‘ the Chinese, Arabic and Russian vocabularies contain a large number of items’.

You can also have sub-sets of word groups in a language, such as English, where we talk about a ‘vocabulary’, for example the ‘vocabulary of marketing’ or the ‘vocabulary of banking’ – we could group these together under ‘business vocabulary’ and talk about the different business ‘vocabularies‘.

Hope that has helped.

Why be Passive?: Forming the Passive in English

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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 write, 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.

How to form the passive

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.
Past conditional:
The house would have been cleaned if it had been dirty.

Check out the section of the Passive in the English4Today Grammar for more information.

Nouns, Adjectives … and what about the verb?

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Question from George in the USA:

Is it correct to say:
And now, a wide variety of ENERGY STAR appliances qualify for Hawaiian Electric Rebates.’
Or is it more correct to say:
‘And now, a wide variety of ENERGY STAR appliances qualifies for Hawaiian Electric Rebates.’

Hello George. The noun phrase in your example is plural – ‘a wide variety of ENERGY STAR appliances‘ – therefore the verb ‘to qualify’ should be in the plural form as well which makes your first sentence:

  • And now, a wide variety of ENERGY STAR appliances qualify for Hawaiian Electric Rebates.

What is a little confusing in this sentence is that the qualifying adjective phrase – a wide variety - starting with the indefinite article ‘a‘ may make you think that you should use the singular verb form for the entire noun phrase. However, ‘appliances’ is plural (with, of course, ‘appliance’ as its singular form) and it is the noun here rather than the adjective which determines the form of the verb. For example:

  • A huge variety of insects live in the Amazon Basin.

Hope that has helped!

‘On a holiday’ or ‘for a holiday’?

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Question from Sarika in India:

Which is correct ‘on holiday‘ or ‘for a holiday‘

A quick answer to Sarika’s question:

Sarika, you can use ‘for’ or ‘on’ with holiday and both would be correct. You can also drop the article ‘a’ when using ‘on’ (the third sentence below). Look at these three sentences, all of which are correct:

  1. I went there for a holiday.
  2. I went there on a holiday.
  3. I went there on holiday.

You can substitute the word ‘holiday’ with ‘vacation’ (the more usual word in American and Canadian English) using ‘for’ and ‘on’ in the same ways.

Making the Negative with ‘DO’

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Question from Rick in the USA

Why do we say “I did not meet him” rather than “I did not met him”, since this is the past tense?

Hi Rick. I’m going to answer this one although the answer is explained in the English4Today Online Grammar under the section dealing with forming the negative.

Let’s do a quick review of how the negative is formed in English. First we’ll take your sentence in the affirmative:

  • I met him.

That’s fine… we have the verb in the Simple Past (don’t forget that ‘meet’ is an irregular verb and the past form is ‘met’). Now let’s make it negative. To make the sentence negative we have to use:

SUBJECT + DID + NOT + INFINITIVE OR BASE FORM OF THE VERB WITHOUT ‘TO’

I DID NOT MEET HIM.

What you need to remember here is that the auxiliary verb ‘DO’ is the one that carries the tense – that is, if we are using the Simple Past, as in the original sentence, then DO becomes DID. But the main verb ‘MEET’ stays in the infinitive – that is in its base form without ‘to’ – and is not put into the Simple Past.

Try making this one negative:

  • She went to Rome last month.

OK … you should have written:

  • She DID NOT GO (or ‘didn’t go’) to Rome last month.

If you’re still not sure, have a look through the English4Today Online English Grammar section on forming the negative.

May or Might: Where’s the difference?

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Question from Teddy in the USA:

What is the difference between “may” or “might”? e.g., I might have made a mistake or I may have made a mistake. Thanks.

Hi Teddy and thanks for the question!

Using ‘may’ or ‘might’ can be a little confusing for an English learner – especially if you look too hard to find any difference in usage between the two!

‘May’ and ‘might’ are almost always interchangeable – that is, you can convey exactly the same meaning using either one. Both express a possibility of some action taking place. For example:

  • It may rain this afternoon.
  • It might rain this afternoon.
  • He may miss the train if he doesn’t hurry.
  • He might miss the train if he doesn’t hurry.

May or Might?

Most grammar will tell you that ‘might’ suggests a somewhat lower probability or possibility than ‘may‘ but this is a really fine distinction and you won’t be making any grammatical errors nor confusing your meaning if you use either one.

Now, when you are using ‘might‘ as the past tense of the auxiliary ‘may‘ then you stick with ‘might’ in the sentence:

  • He might have caught his train if he had left work on time.

Don’t forget that ‘may‘ can also be used in interrogative sentences when you are asking permission to do something. It is a common ‘polite’ form. For example:

  • May I use your telephone?
  • May I smoke?

When used for asking permission we use ‘may‘ and not ‘might’. However, just to confuse it a little, it is more and more common to use ‘can‘ when asking permission although can doesn’t, in my opinion, yet carry the same sense of polite request that using ‘may’ does :

  • Can I use your telephone, please?
  • Can I smoke?