That's the general idea. Part of "hearing" what people say -- in any language -- is anticipation. I'll say ! In my native language, when I hear someone say something real fast, I hafta guess what was said, and usually my guess

Sorry, you beat me! ". . . live by/with/under this anachronism," as we would say "live by/with/under this law."

Thanks. But what would be the right thing to say?

Hi, We live in a period of time. An anachronism is not a period of time, but rather some quality or characteristic of that period which is fundamentally out of sync with the rest of it. So I don't think "We are living in an

That doesn't mean you have to post 18 times. You shuda combined them into a single post. Since we're preaching up proper English here, please, don't post "kind-of-chat" language here. I don't belong to the set

Good evening, Mister Micawber, the pressure of other work has deterred me from replying to this message of yours as promptly as possible, so I intend to do it in the present post in order to shed light on some important questions.

The "l" of "bell" when it ends a word is kind of a "half l" when compared to the initial "l" in "love" which allows the "l" voicing to be completed by going to a vowel. Yet the

Hi, It's fine. The poor humble word 'got' is used in this way all the time in speech but tends to be sneered at a bit, and avoided, in formal situations. Clive

Hello, this is my first post here but I've been visiting the site for at least several months since I have found some very interesting discussions here. My question is going to be really complicated and it will take you some time to read

Dear friend, thank you for this question. As a matter of fact, speech phenomena, of which fillers is a significant part, should not annoy speakers - such a sharp reaction may result in a nervous breakdown after a couple of days of interacting