In Articles^x, Idioms^x

Lady Maude Duff wrote: Anonymous wrote: What's the difference between A and B? A: The students became aware of importance of working hard. B: The students became aware of the importance of working hard. I think they are much the same, so tell me about the nuances of them.Of course,...

Lady Maude Duff wrote: Anonymous wrote: What's the difference between A and B? A: The students became aware of importance of working hard. B: The students became aware of the importance of working hard. I think they are much the same, so tell me about the nuances of them.Of course,...

Anonymous wrote: What's the difference between A and B? A: The students became aware of importance of working hard. B: The students became aware of the importance of working hard. I think they are much the same, so tell me about the nuances of them.Of course, grammatical explanation is...

General Canadian English is extremely similar to General American English. However, there are a number of differences between the two dialects. Firstly, GCE (General Canadian English) exhibits a linguistic phenomenon called Canadian Raising. Basically, the diphthong “ai”--as in "by" or "lie"--is...

Phew, I didn't get scolded much, I see! I perfectly understand whay you, CB, and MrPedantic are saying. But I see that we disagree on some points mainly because we are considering the same things form completely different point of views. So in the end it's ok if we disagree! I noticed MrP said:...

In this week's Time, there is an article talking about the fund rasing in US's 2008 campaign: "How Big Money Picks a Winner."There is an idiom in the article that I can't really understand. Here is the quote:"If I walked into Dodd's office with $250,000, I've hung the moon. For Barack? I'm the...

Hi Zhuricki No, the rules haven't changed and there is no difference between British and American English here. 'In search of' is a special idiomatic phrase and means the same thing as 'looking for' or 'seeking'. As is normally the case with idioms, 'in search of' is a fixed grouping of...

Hi,Cambridge Dic says "means" is plural, like scissors or pantsmeans (METHOD) plural noun What is the matter with the leading indefinite article then, as in "a means of"? Is it an idiom? But if we can single out one particular "means" of all available, then shouldn't it be countable?

no rule concerning this?No, not really. There is only the general principle that idioms are extremely resistant to any sort of modification. Just the change of a to the or a similar minor difference within an idiom will stand out as strange to a native speaker, much like a tiny particle...

Believer, IMO, you're losing your time. You're posting literally hundreds of postings on the issues of articles, instead of just accepting and learning the idiom, the current usage. Listen and learn. You'll advance faster. Not everything can be explain by rules, or even if it can,...