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It is to me a curious fact that the subjunctive mood of verbs in English has so nearly disappeared in modern times. In fact, even the correct form and usage of the subjunctive in Modern English barely distinguishes itself from the indicative! In many regions and dialects, the subjunctive would appear to be entirely obsolete, replaced by the indicative in all cases. (Educated speakers, certainly in Britain at least, do however still make good use of it.) The present subjunctive form in Modern English is (in almost all cases) virtually identical to the third-person plural present indicative (e.g. 'He were', 'She own'). This is markedly different from Old English , where the subjunctive form a form was much more easily noticeable . Even by the advent of Early Modern English in the 16th century, the subjunctive was already converging with the indicative. Other Modern European languages, not only Romance ones such as French and Spanish, but Germanic languages related to En...

I've been told that the prefix "para" means "against". Parachute (against falling) Paramilitary (against military) Paraply/umbrella (against raining) But, other words does not make much sense to me: Paramedic (against medicine?) Paraglider (against gliding?) Pardon my Ausberger, but why isn't "para" used consistently?

In which cases is a word, or a group of words written in italics? Is italics used in specific contexts, or it is quite normal to write words in italics? Answer The Wikipedia page on Italic type gives a pretty good overview, along with some examples. Emphasis: "Smith wasn't the only guilty party, it's true". The titles of works that stand by themselves, such as books (including those within a larger series), albums, plays, or periodicals: "He wrote his thesis on The Scarlet Letter ". Works that appear within larger works, such as short stories, poems, or newspaper articles, are not italicized, but merely set off in quotation marks. The names of ships: "The Queen Mary sailed last night." Foreign words, including the Latin binomial nomenclature in the taxonomy of living organisms: "A splendid coq au vin was served"; " Homo sapiens ". Using a word as an example of a word rather than for its semantic content (see use-mention dis...

I am writing an essay where I need to make a reference to the United States of America. Often I hear this shortened to the US , but sometimes people also say the USA . Are there any difference between the use of the two? Is one more formal or correct than the other? As a random example of what I want to write is Is the US the most beautiful country in the world? Answer Here is an interesting discussion of US versus U.S. versus USA versus U.S.A. from Wikipedia: Manual of Style : In American and Canadian English, U.S. (with periods) is the dominant abbreviation for United States . US (without periods) is more common in most other national forms of English. Some major American guides to style, such as The Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed.), now deprecate U.S. and prefer US . Use of periods for abbreviations and acronyms should be consistent within any given article, and congruent with the variety of English used by that article. In longer abbreviations (three letters or more) inco...

While watching Barclay's Premier League matches on the Fox Soccer Channel, the announcers often identify an object by name immediately after using a pronoun. For example, in a match occuring right now, I heard: They are dangerous, Liverpool. He was clever, Suarez. Is there a term to describe this structure? Also, how did it evolve? I've gotten used to it and can appreciate the clarity it provides for a listener, but I wonder why they bother using the pronoun at all. Answer The term is Cataphora , described here . It's one of many devices for moving your words around in a sentence to shift the emphasis. In speech it's also a handy device for clarifying your pronoun references when you screw up. As far as I know, it's been around forever; a quick Google finds that An Introduction to the Grammar of Old English: A Systemic Functional Approach , by Michael Cummings, includes section "7.2.1.2 Anaphora and cataphora". A favorite instance for me is this: He’s tou...

Often in introductory textbooks, new terms are introduced with a simplified pronunciation hint. For example, pharmaceutical (FAR-muh-sue-ti-kal) It's certainly not IPA or even the types of pronunciation cues, with schwas and accented vowels, you'd see in an older American English dictionary. The syllable with the (most) emphasis is written in caps, and all the syllables are written out phonetically. Is there a name for this type of pronunciation hint? Is there a standard for it? By standard, I mean a (perhaps de facto) guide that would explain how to convert from a more formal scheme, like IPA, to this phonetic scheme. Answer This is an example of pronunciation respelling , or, more specifically, non-phonemic , or newspaper , pronunciation respelling. As this site explains: A pronunciation respelling is a regular phonetic respelling of a word. It does have a standard format to indicate sounds. Most monolingual dictionaries designed for native-speaker use employs pronunciati...

Is this correct? That is a real cool answer. I learned that that was incorrect, since "real" is an adjective which can describe a noun , e.g. "real answer" but it is not an adverb which can describe an adjective, "real cool". Instead you would have to say: That is a really cool answer. Since "really" is an adverb.