English Language Blog

I was recently listening to a favorite radio station which played a recording of the classic American folk song, Shenandoah. The station host confessed that he didn’t know the exact story behind the song, but he believed that it was from the time of fur traders in the American west in the 18th century. Well…

“Are we there yet?” The United States is vast. The distance to drive from Portland, Maine to San Francisco, California is about 2725 miles or nearly 4400 kilometers. While the US has many different highway systems, including state, county, territorial, and secondary roads, the country is linked by one massive grid of highways known as…

Hello, dear readers. Long time no see! It’s about time I wrote a new post. I can’t believe it is August already! It’s amazing how time flies. So you have probably guessed what today’s text is about by now. You got it, we are going to cover some useful time idioms. There are endless expressions…

If you are learning English and trying to gain knowledge of American culture, then you need to be aware of something which appears throughout the country every year around the beginning of September and lingers into December. That thing is called pumpkin spice. Its popularity, indeed, its hold on much of the American public, may…

Is there a word that you always misspell, no matter how many times you write it? Chances are, there is. You go to write a word which Spellcheck always corrects and you think, “Ha! I’m not going to spell calendar wrong this time!” And, in no time at all, you have written calander. There are…

I recently had a conversation with someone who is much younger than I am (that’s not hard to do, at my age), and I happened to say that something flummoxed me. She laughed and said, “Flummoxed? I’ve never heard that word before!” Ah. I had entered the anachronous zone, where the common language of someone…

For three days in August 1969, a small community about 100 miles north and west of New York City became the world’s most popular destination for music fans. A hastily organized, some might say disorganized, music festival ultimately resulted in probably the most historic concert in the history of popular music. It was advertised as…