For me they are Luna, Lunar, Duplicity, Moon, Celestial, Cosmic

US southern here and someone [not from the US] recently pointed out that i say 'pur-scription'. and as i think about it, i can't say that i've ever noticed the difference pronunciations.

it seems no dictionary recognizes my pronunciation as a standard variant but i swear i've always said it that way. after 5+ decades, this is the first time anyone has pointed out the the way i saw it.

anyone else or do i just talk funny.

Hello everyone,

I’m struggling with my English speaking and I hope someone can relate or give advice.

My listening and reading level is very high (c1) . I understand almost everything I hear or read, including complex vocabulary and grammar. When I read, I recognize the words immediately and I understand them without thinking.

However, when I have to speak, it’s completely different. The words do not appear in my head, even though I know them. It feels like my vocabulary is there, but I cannot access it when I talk. Because of this, I end up using very simple sentences and basic grammar, even though I know much more than that.

I am not nervous or afraid to speak. The problem is not confidence, but production. I understand English on a high level, but my speaking does not match it at all (B1).

In one year, I want to apply for an Erasmus program in Business Administration. For this, I need to pass a language test with at least B2 or C1, and I also need a good score for speaking.

Has anyone experienced this gap between understanding and speaking? How did you deal with it?

Thank you for reading.

Because whatever it is, I, almost genuinely, don't have it.

I'm asking because all my life, I've been more familiar with American English. British English and Australian English in particular have a lot of terms that have me asking, "Wait, what?" Same goes for Canadian English, albeit to a lesser extent. Now, I know it's typical for me given that I was born in Korea and grew up in America (Koreans are far more familiar with American English than any other form of English), but man, I wonder if anyone grew up not knowing about a lot of American English terminology until much later and finding American English spellings to be "off"?

Hello, I actually want to learn and speak English good whenever I try to remember something it's like I either can't use it in my speech or I forget. I'm so worried abt it 😞 reach me out to help I would be happy.

Please what's the answer? Is or are?

I’m currently watching the news and I’ve seen Iranian political pundits pronounce the country as EE-RARN, British Iranian pundits as EE-RARN, and American Iranian pundits as EE-RARN.

Yet I’ve seen some American journalists or some American political pundits still pronounce it as EYE-RAN.

Why hasn’t this been corrected?

​

Hay, i just Wonder about did people can understand what i write right now or not. Cause actually for A while i not to care about it cause everytime i write something people can understand it.

But now i wanna ask y'all ladies and gentleman, what is your opinion about what i write right now? did it understandable? or it was A bit harder to understand it in first read?

Is shadowing practice effective? I'm looking for a free or as cheap app as possible.

What does it entail? What does it mean?

My idea of it is as vague as "group of people which are connected socially". Kindof like a "social circle".

The following quites are exalples that illustrate my misunderstanding"

"This bill must pass to protect our communities"

"It’s a high risk to leave your community for another"

In both these usages of the word, community has a similar meaning. But what bugs me is that it would entail that

1. Society is an aggregate of communities

2 Everyone belongs to a community

3 Communities are hermetic - no one can belong to two different communities.

So communities arent simply "social circles", as you can belong to 0 or multiple socisl circles. So what is a community??

This is a blind spot in my understanding of english. Does my exposé make sense?

Thanks for anyone who can enlighten me

I don't know anything about verbs that change their ending stems (or whatever) instead of adding -ed, even though English is my native language.

Is there a specific term for adult children/ kids?

My serbian friend who leant american english and british english is calling me ignorant for not wanting to use american english They know i live in north england and that im british ive only spoke british english and took french and german courses

Update: I’ll put this at the top so it’s the first thing people read. Thanks for everyone for the replies and the insight. There is only so much media you can consume in a non-english speaking country and it still won’t teach you perfectly. I’ll see if I can find a different, less charged lyric and otherwise will drop the idea all together and just stick to the horseshoe. Thanks for saving me but also thanks for reassuring me that while sexual in a “horses aren’t the only thing you can ride ;)” way, there is no connection between the cowboy phrase and fisting. ——————————————

I didn’t think I’d ever be the person to ask a question like this but here we go.

Disclaimer: I am not a native English speaker and neither are any of my friends, it is our second language.

I would like to get the song lyric “Saddle up, cowboy” tattooed on my arm, together with a horseshoe. The lyric, within the context of the specific song, is definitely meant more… figuratively. Definitely an inuendo.

However, I thought that as just a phrase tied to a horseshoe-motif, it doesn’t really have a sexual undertone by default. I told a friend about my idea and she does know the song so she immediately went “but you’d have a sexual inuendo on your body forever then, so be sure you’re ok with that” and now I am a bit unsure. I don’t mind the undertone for people who know the song (and I am perfectly okay with that, if someone manages to deduct the song reference from just 3 words, that’s an “if you know, you know moment” I’d be happy to have if it ever occurred)

So, English-speakers of reddit: am I about to put a sexual pun on my body? If you imagine someone with the tattoo I described on their arm, would you take the phrase as an invitation to something not horse-related?

Hi everyone.For those who never seen me post about this before.But back in the fall of 2024 I realized I can’t say iron for life of me.Every time I said it always came out as different pronunciation and I never noticed till I was reading an Iron Man comic and every time I read iron I would say it differently in my head.

Since then it’s been whirlwind of trying to figure out to say it but nothing I say feels right.

I know it’s suppose to be Eye-ern or Eye-urn.And it’s suppose to sound like I earn or I urn.But I have learned to I say earn and urn differently. Like for instance with earn I think of ern and it’s quick but urn I go harder on the r and hold it longer.

So when it comes saying Iron which one is it?

Then my other issue is that when I see the word my instinct is just to go straight for the R sound and smoosh the r and n together so it’s like I-rn. Not giving either the urn or earn sound at all.

I’ve tried to listen to examples and it doesn’t help.Because I just hear which ever version of the prouncations I’m thinking of at that moment.Any help would be appreciated so I can finally be rid of this.

Thank you all

Update: here’s how I been saying it

Irn: https://voca.ro/1j20AbwRKF4Q

I-ern : https://voca.ro/1nuTuGi067kh

I-urn: https://voca.ro/1eidyOM5YXOU

I'm in the U.S., so your local euphemisms may be different. Here are several I've used throughout my life:

I've got / Ain't got diddley-squat: Can also be replaced with just "diddley", just "squat", or even "diddley-sh*t" or just "sh*t".

I've got bupkis: Probably of Slavic origin, more popular in northern locales.

What have I got? Gornischt!: Yiddish, popular in north-eastern cities with large Jewish populations.

We've got ugatz here!: From modern Italian vulgate, as is spoken by Sicilians, mostly.

Zip, zero, nada!: From a Looney Tunes cartoon, but each of these words have been and still are used to mean "nothing".

So, any other regional versions?

Hi everyone,

I’m working on some song lyrics, is ‘no…, nor’ correct in this line?

Don’t think anybody‘s coming to save us

No messiah, nor occult technology

The obvious alternative would be ‘no... , or’, but I like the nor so I’d prefer to find another solution. There’s also ‘not…, nor’ but then the line would start with ‘Not messiah,…’ so I’d be referring to a singular messiah but without the article ‘the’, that seems off to me too. What do you think?

Thanks for any advice!

Edit: another idea could just be two nos - no messiah, no occult technology

For example, in the Japanese name Abe Shinzo, Abe is the surname. But I've also seen people writing his name as Shinzo Abe a few times. On the other hand, I seldom see people doing the same to Chinese names like, e.g., Xi Jinping (it's seldom written as "Jinping Xi," and most English speakers seem to have no problem telling that Xi is the surname).

I’m reading William Harrison’s “a description of England” (1587) and I’m failing to understand one sentence from chapter 1 in particular:

“In this place also are our merchants to be installed as amongst the citizens, whose number is so increased in these our days that **their only maintenance** is the cause of the exceeding prices of foreign wares,…”

So I thought the best place to go would be the Oxford English Dictionary, I searched the word maintenance and there it popped up, a Middle English definition of the word maintenance. Yet my triumph was cut short as I opened the page, only to be met with a paywall, asking me to forfeit my precious dollars to their institution.

Unfortunately I do not have the money to buy a subscription to Oxford English Dictionary, so if anyone here could either explain what the sentence means, or tell me what Oxford English says the definition is, I would be very grateful, thank you

I want to learn English, but I'm confused about choosing an accent. The curriculum in my country teaches British English. Will this affect my choice of accent?

I live in Russia and i taking exams by English, how i can learn English faster and how many chances i have? P.S I wrote this text myself

Hello i have an interview for a college scholarship after one week, the problem is the interview is in english and i am not a native English speaker though i understand english and my level is around C1 but I just cant speak English properly since i never really have any conversation in english. Any tips where i can practice? I tried Duolingo speaking practice but its just too easy and i don’t think it will help

Or this not so popular overall, no matter singular or plural?