When I was taking ESL classes many years ago, one of my Colombian classmates asked me: “Do you know New York?” “Of course,” I replied, “who doesn’t?” But what I thought he’d asked was if I knew ABOUT New York. Later I found out that he actually wanted to ask me if I had ever […]
How I started my career as a pronunciation coach
The confusing meaning of double negatives
You have probably heard that double negatives in English are not grammatically correct. A double negative is when you use two negative words in a phrase or a sentence. For example, ✘ “I don’t like nothing” is grammatically incorrect. The correct way to say this sentence in English is ✔ “I don’t like anything” or ✔ “I like nothing.” But there is another […]
Common mistakes Slavic speakers make in English
All languages have unique words and phrases that, if translated literally into English, can cause confusion and even sound comical. For example, the literal translation of “thank you upfront” from Polish to English – “thank you from the mountain” 😂 – is a common joke among Polish speakers. Although this is just a joke and […]
Six things I didn’t do when I was learning English
There is a difference between learning English as a Second Language (ESL) and learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL). The former is learning the language while you are in an English speaking country (the US in my case) while the latter means that you study it while you are in your home country or […]
How to sound clear in English
Last week I had a great conversation with a Bulgarian friend who shared with me that sometimes native speakers didn’t understand what she was saying. One time, for example, she asked someone “Where is Andy?” and she couldn’t understand why the woman she was talking to was so confused. When I told her that the […]
Your English, my English: the global lingua franca
When I worked for a tech startup in Silicon Valley several years ago, one day my coworker, a native English speaker, turned to our new French employee, Zack, and asked: “zacker zakry?” Zack had just arrived from France the previous week and wasn’t used to the American accent yet. He turned to me with a […]
