Have you ever dreamt of living in a castle? I certainly have! That’s why I was interested to see this article on the Reuters website over the weekend. I already knew that there was funding available for people to maintain castles in Germany. Actually, buying castles seems to be popular with wealthy foreigners eager to …
I love Bollywood movies. That’s why I was a little surprised to see in this article that Shahrukh Khan was stopped and questioned for an hour at a U.S. airport. As a famous movie star, he is probably more used to answering interview questions from reporters than immigration officers! Can you imagine Brad Pitt or …
I know ‘binge drinking‘is a huge problem amongst young people in the U.K. and gets a lot of news coverage. I was interested to see this article on Reuters.com suggesting that it’s also a problem in other parts of the world and not just with young people, either. I have mentioned before that I like a …
I am a terrible photographer. My photos never come out how I want them to. That’s why I was amused to see this funny article on the Guardian website last week with some great vocabulary in it. The first interesting expression is in the headline: Photo enthusiasts go nuts for squirrel’s holiday snap To ‘go nuts’ …
Love and death are often closely related in English culture, from classic plays like Romeo and Juliet to modern romantic comedies like Four Weddings and Funeral. We even use the expression ‘to love someone / something to death‘ to talk about loving someone or something very much. That’s why I was interested to see this …
What is the difference between a typhoon and a hurricane? Hurricanes and typhoons are essentially the same thing. They are just different names for what meteorologists call a ‘tropical cyclone‘. The difference is that we use ‘hurricane‘ if the storm is in the Atlantic and ‘typhoon‘ if it is in the Pacific or other parts …
There was some interesting wedding vocabulary in this article in the BBC News today. The first interesting word is in the first paragraph: A Chinese bride has attempted to break the world record for the longest wedding dress by walking down the aisle in a 2,162m-long (7,083ft) gown. In this situation, the ‘aisle‘ is the …
I was browsing the BBC News archives today and this article caught my eye. I like a beer or two after work on Friday and Guinness is one of my favourite beers. The first interesting word I noticed in this article is ‘slogan‘ in the first paragraph. A slogan is a short phrase used in …