100 Mistakes #12 - Couples, partners and pairs

In English, when you have a boyfriend or girlfriend, the two of you together are a 'couple' and each person is a 'partner'.

(In Spanish, when you have a boyfriend or girlfriend, the two of you together are a 'pareja' and each person is also a 'pareja'. Crazy!)

But we don't use the word 'partner' in this sense very often. It is usually only used when we want to refer to someone without referring to their gender. So for example, an end-of-year company party invitation might say:

"Partners welcome!"

Or perhaps, when your friend Samantha (a girl) doesn't feel like it's the right moment to announce that she has a girlfriend, she might say:

"I went to see the new Woody Allen film with my partner."

Usually, we just say 'boyfriend' or 'girlfriend'. This doesn't tell us whether it's casual or serious, and it tells us nothing about the age of the people we're talking about.

'Partner' can also be used in the sense of co-owner in a business, or by organisations talking about working with other organisations:

"My business partner emptied the company bank account and flew to Buenos Aires."
"We look forward to working more closely with our partners in China."

'Couple' is also an informal way of saying 'two' or 'approximately two':

"I met up with Richie for a couple of beers."
"There were a couple of kids running around on the grass."

'Pair' is used to talk about objects that come in twos: a pair of shoes, a pair of socks, a pair of matching baseball caps. There are also a few individual objects that we conceptualize as pairs because they have two of something: a pair of glasses (2 lenses), a pair of scissors (2 blades), a pair of trousers (2 legs), a pair of pants (2 holes for legs).

'Pair' can also be used to mean two people, but not in the sense of 'boyfriend' and 'girlfriend':

"For this activity, I'd like you to work in pairs."
"You look like a right pair of idiots in those matching baseball caps!"

A pear, on the other hand, is a type of fruit, similar to an apple. The pronunciation of 'pear' and 'pair' is the same, which can be exploited with hilarious consequences:

As I went a-walking down Winchester Street,
I saw an old man with no shoes on his feet,
And as I had plenty of money to spare,
I went into a fruit shop and bought him a pear.

100 Mistakes #9 - There is / there are

The most useful and most forgettable construction in English is: there is / there are.

In the simplest situations, we use it to talk about the things or people that exist (in a place.)

For example:

There isn't any beer in the fridge.
There are three bowls of soup but no bears.

It's difficult to remember because other languages talk about existence in a completely different way.

Some languages use a 'have' construction - in French, 'il y a'; in Spanish, 'hay'.

Il n'y a pas de bière dans le frigo.
Hay tres platos de sopa pero no hay ningún oso.

So translating directly from those languages into English would be a disaster!

It doesn't have beer there in the fridge.
Has three bowls of soup but no have no bears.

Note also that we do not use 'there is / there are' with a time clause:

There is two years that I lived in France.

There were two years since I lived in France.

I lived in France two years ago.

We can use there is / there are in different tenses or modified by modal verbs... and the notion of 'existence' can sometimes be abstract:

There was a strange man standing in the corner.

There was no point in continuing the conversation.

There hasn't been a significant earthquake in the UK since 1984.

Has there been much support for the policy?

Do you think there will be enough time to register my vote?

There won't be any more mistakes.
Should there be an investigation?
There might have been a serious problem. 

One more important point:

We use there is / there are when we talk about how many people are present at an event, even when you are a member of the group.

(No one ever remembers this. Your mind will always think "We... ", when it should be thinking "There are / there were..." You'll probably need to get a tattoo.)

There were at least 20 people.

We were four.

We were four people.

There were four people of us.

There were four of us.

They were 15.

There were 15 of them.

How many are you?

How many of you are there?

If you say "We are 20" it means that you and your friends are 20 years old.

Notice that this isn't a problem in Romance languages because you 'have' age - tengo 36 años. In English, we 'are' age - I am 36.

100 Mistakes #7 - 'Responsible' is an adjective

'Responsible' is an adjective, like 'impossible', 'probable', 'flexible', 'likeable', 'horrible'... or any other word that ends in 'ible' or 'able'.

It is impossible to use 'responsible' as a noun in English.

Who is the responsable for authorizing policy decisions?
Who is responsible for authorizing policy decisions?

Notice that in the correct English sentence, there is no 'the' because 'the' comes before nouns, and 'responsible' is not a noun.

In Spanish and French, 'responsable', can be used as a noun. Note the difference in spelling too!

I am the responsible of the Human Resources department.
I am in charge of the Human Resources department.

'In charge of' explains that you are the person who is ultimately responsible for something. Notice that it is always 'responsible for' and never 'responsible of'.

I'd like to speak to the responsible for complaints.
I'd like to speak to the person responsible for dealing with complaints.

"person responsible" = person who is responsible
(We have not suddenly changed the rules for the position of adjectives!)

If you really need to use a noun, you could try 'manager' or 'representative':

I'm applying for the position of Responsable of Sales in Central and Eastern Europe.
I'm applying for the position of Sales Manager for Central and Eastern Europe.

Are you the responsible from the Berlin office?
Are you the representative from the Berlin office?

So the next time you catch yourself saying "the responsible", kick yourself hard in the shins for being so irresponsible.

100 Mistakes #6 - 'say' or 'tell'?

You gotta tell me you're coming back to me
You gotta tell me you're coming back to me
You gotta tell me you're coming back to me
You gotta tell me you're coming back to me

You gotta say me you´re coming back to me


When you want to show that speaker A is giving some information to listener B, we use 'tell'.
We don't quote directly with 'tell'.

[Speaker A] tells [listener B] [something]

Dorothy told me [something]
Dorothy told me that she was coming back to me.

Dorothy told me "I'm coming back to you!"  (direct quote - use ´say`)
Dorothy told that she was coming back to me. (add listener B or use ´say`)

When you think that the words are important, or that it´s obvious who the listener is, you need to use "say".

[Speaker A] says [something]

Dorothy said [something]
Dorothy said "I'm coming back to you!"
Dorothy said that she was coming back to me.

Dorothy said me "I'm coming back to you!" (remove listener B)
Dorothy said me that she was coming back to me.  (remove listener B or use ´tell`)

- - - - -

We also 'tell a story' and 'tell a lie', with or without mentioning listener B. In the same way that you 'sing a song' or 'make a promise', here we are not saying the actual words that they used, we`re just saying what they did.

He told me a story about his trip to Afghanistan.
He told a story about his trip to Afghanistan.
He said a story about his trip to Afghanistan.

He's been telling lies again.
He's been telling me lies again.
He's been saying lies again.

100 Mistakes #5 - I was born

I born in Andalusia.
I am born in Andalusia.

In English, dying is something you do but bearing children is something your mother does.

'Bear' means 'carry' or 'bring into the world'. (It also means 'big, hairy, dangerous animal'!)

Trees bear fruit. Mothers bear children.

          bear (v1)
          bore (v2)
          born (v3)

We never use the ACTIVE sentence:

    My mother bore me in Andalusia
    My mother bore me on 31st September

We use the PASSIVE sentence:

    I was born in Andalusia.
    I was born on 31st September.

If you're more interested in the mother than the child, you can use "give birth to":

    Julie gave birth to a lovely baby girl at 2am this morning.

100 Mistakes #4 - grow or grow up?

´Grow´ means ´increase in size` or ´become bigger`. If you water a plant, it will grow.

´Up` is a direction of movement, to a higher position.

´Grow up` is a verb made from these two words but its meaning is not a combination of the meanings of those words!

This is very frustrating if you`re learning English because you can sometimes know the meaning of the individual words without knowing the meaning of the combination.

´Grow up` does not mean ´become bigger with movement to a higher position`

´Grow up` means ´become an adult`.

It is, like many phrasal verbs, a metaphor. When you are a child, you think that getting bigger and getting older are the same thing.

Let´s look at some examples of using ´grow up`:

When I grow up, I want to be an astronaut.
I grew up in Northamptonshire.
Michael Jackson never really grew up.

"Have you heard the new Michael Jackson album?
"Ha ha, you said ´bum`!
"Oh, grow up!"

But not:

Last year, sales grew up by 25%.  They didn´t grow up, they grew.
The price of coffee has grown up again.
It hasn`t grown up, it has gone up. (Go up = increase.)

100 Mistakes #3 - 'any' is not negative

'Any' is used in questions and negative sentences but it is not negative in itself.

Let´s talk about cheese!

"Do we have any cheese?"

This a general, unspecific question about cheese. I´m not asking about the type of cheese. I just want to know if there is any.

any = unspecific, it is not important what kind

If the answer is 'yes', you're now talking about something specific.

"Yes, we have some Cheddar and some Gorgonzola."

Notice that 'some' doesn't tell us anything about quantity.

If the answer is no, it will remain unspecific.

"No, we don´t have any cheese."

- - - - - 

If you go to the World's Greatest Cheese Shop, and ask them if they have any cheddar, they will say, "Yes madam, we have 12 types of cheddar."

If you go to the World´s Greatest Cheese Shop, and ask them if they have any ham, they will say, "I'm sorry madam, we don´t have any ham."

We don`t have any ham = We have no ham

Note that there is only one negative in a negative sentence: 'not', in the first, and 'no', in the second.

If you go to the World´s Greatest Cheese Shop, and ask them what kind of cheese they have, they will say, "We have any cheese you can think of, madam!"

We have any cheese you can think of = it doesn't matter what kind of cheese you think of, we have it...

Manchego?

Yes.

Red Leicester?

Yes.

Goat's cheese?

Several varieties.

Double Gloucester?

Yes.

Camembert?

Of course.

Cornish Yarg?

Certainly.

Wyfe of Bath?

Yes.

Cheshire?

Yes, madam. I told you, we have any cheese you can think of. We are, after all, the World's Greatest Cheese Shop.

100 Mistakes #2 - the plural of ´person` is ´people`

How many persons are coming to the party?

No, the plural of ´person` is ´people`!

Ok then, how many people is coming to the party?

 Do "people" and "is" go together in a sentence? "People" is plural, remember? (It's not like ´gente` in Spanish.)

How many people are coming to the party?

About 3, I think.

Is he bringing any food?

Which one? Who do you mean?

Are they bringing any food?

Yes, I hope so because we`ve only got 2 packets of crisps and half a bag of peanuts.

- - - - -

Note that ´persons` is occasionally used as a unit of measurement.

You might see it written in lifts: "Maximum persons: 8"

100 Mistakes #1 - What's the subject?

I teach English in Barcelona, so I hear sentences like this every day:

This year have increased sales of ice cream by 10%.
Arrives my train at 6am.
Is very difficult the English.

These sentences don't work because in English you need to put the subject before the verb. (The subject is the person or thing that is 'doing' the verb.)

Here they are again with the subject in the right place:

This year, sales of ice cream have increased by 10%.
My train arrives at 6am.
English is very difficult.
(And no, it isn't difficult. You just have to put your sentences in the right order!)

The Queen and Prince Philip want to know
where their subjects are!

The Golden rule: The subject must go before the verb (...unless it's a question or an imperative, or you get so good at English that you know when you can play around.)





So why do Spanish people get this wrong so much?

In Spanish, you can leave out the subject and put it in later. This is probably because Spanish verbs contain more information than English verbs.

Just look at the verbs 'to scream' and 'gritar':

I scream, you scream, he/she/it screams, we scream, you scream, they scream, (we all scream for ice cream!)

Yo grito, tú gritas, él/élla grita, nosotros gritamos, vosotros gritáis, ellos/ellas gritan, (todos pedimos helado a gritos!)

If we take the subjects away from the English examples, we don't have very much information. If we take them away from the Spanish examples, we have nearly all of the information.

In Spanish you can say "Yo vivo en londres", or "Vivo en londres".

You can 'drop' the pronoun if you want, and we still know who you are talking about. 

In English, you have to say "I live in London" not "Live in London"

You cannot 'drop' the pronoun. If you do, we get very confused.

       

Notice that in Spanish, the verb 'vivo' shows that I live in London, but in English, the verb 'live' doesn't tell us anything about who lives there.

So when someone keeps asking "who?", or "what are you talking about?", it's not because they've forgotten that the conversation is about your new boyfriend, it's just that you forgot to say "he"!

We don't have to say precisely what the subject is every time but we need to use a subject pronoun:

           I, you, he, she, it, we, they, this, that

Also, beware of sentences that start with a preposition such as "In 1989..." or "At the swimming pool..."
Just because there's something before the verb, doesn't make it a subject.

At the swimming pool, have started selling ice-creams. 

"Who? Who?"

At the swimming pool, the staff have started selling ice-creams. 

"You don't need to say precisely who. You just need a pronoun!"

At the swimming pool, they've started selling ice-creams!

"Hooray!"

Oh, is interesting!

Oh, that's interesting!       [that = the thing I just said.]

In Spanish, you can do the same, if you want to: "Esto es interesante!"
In English you have no choice.