By American English, Idioms

Here is a witty article about the dialect 'Strine' spoken by many people in Australia: http://www.convictcreations.com/culture/strine.htm A quote from this article: "As a nation, Americans are one-way communicators with the rest of the world. Via Hollywood and their sitcoms, they have educated...

Hello folks, I would like to know your recommendations when it comes to an English dictionary, slang guide and the like. Of course, I already have an English-English dictionary, but it's not what it used to be -- my expectations are probably too high. By the way, I'm focused on American English....

Howdy This is the article I've written a while ago. I hope that it can be interesting for someone. This is one of my first attempts to bring all my thoughts together. "A language is a living substance, which evolves under the influence of different factors. Being very flexible English language...

Time and Newsweek are good sources of standard current journalistic American English. The vocabulary is neither too erudite nor simplistic, and the idioms are generally current, well-known and useful. If you wish to change to BrE, you might try The Economist. The content of all of these...

Thanks Friends. Let me to make a conclusion of native ideas. In British English there is " Don't Kill yourself " idiom when we want to say someone is not really trying very hard. And in American English we should use "Don't strain yourself " instead. Are Brit & American English idioms...

Hi, Chiquillo! I'll try to answer your question in more detail at some point, but as an English teacher, I can't help but point out that the idiom (at least in American English) is "the best movie IN the world". Just off the top of my head, I would tend to vote for "Gone With the Wind". What...

The situation seems more illogical in American English, perhaps! I can also accept the argument that in AmE "got" in the "has got"="has" idiom is so idiomatic and particular to that very expression and no other that it almost ceases to have the status of a past participle.

That's correct, Abbie. The past participles are 'gotten' and 'forgotten' in AmE. Nevertheless, the idiom "have got" to mean simply "have" takes "got", not "gotten". I have (got) a computer on my desk just now. I am using it to respond to this question. I have gotten/bought a computer this...

The BBI is my Favourite (capital F). It doesn't list all the prepositions but it is extremely useful for ESL speakers because it tells you how to combine nouns with adjectives and how verbs are used (it gives 19 valency categories of verbs). It also gives the most common word combinations, as...

There is a lot more to this silly phenomenon than meets the eye. After the War of Independance, Americans did their best to shun the British and their influence. They went so far as to change the side of the road on which people drove ..... just so they were not following British custom!...