Actually, I'm good at this... but as Clive says, we usually just say "a relative" or in the South, "kin." People who are first cousins are of the same generation and their parents were siblings. People who are second

Whooops. Remove " of this" and they are the same. Do you want some cake? Do you want any cake? Though having read Clive's post (posted while I was writing mine) I do agree that "Do you want any cake?" sounds like you are

Tanit, thank you very much for that informative post, and thanks, K, as always for your refreshing insight. The f-bomb idea is an interesting one :P

This is for people who grade, practice for or who have taken the FCE. In other forum, I saw this advice posted to someone who had written a draft paragraph: Hey, its not too bad but you should use more colloquial expresions like wanna,

Correct? Yes. Equally polite? No. The first sounds like you're going to throw it out if you don't eat it right now. "You want any of this? 'Cause it's going in the trash tonight, so if you want some, you better get some

Refer to the recipient as you and to yourself as I, just as you would if you were having a conversation. Although you may want to say "In our recent conversation" instead of making it "your" conversation -- surely he was

That would not be correct in most contexts. Go on doing something = continue to do something. Usually when a storm is coming, most people headed in to port. But not me -- I usually go on sailing.

That works only if you sleep in clothes and not pajamas. I come home from work and change my clothes - I take off my dressier clothes and put on casual ones. I ended up getting wet while watering the flowers, so I had to go in and

Here's one quote that sums it up: " Summary: The rule that between can only be used with two items, and among for more than two, is specious. The real tendency of English is for between when the connections are conceptualized as being

And I use the American one (I guess - I didn't know that was another one that was different! Thanks Clive!) and it's ALWAYS "a fever" and never just "fever."