weekly posts on literature, languages, and learning
In response to a recent question from several of my students, here’s a grammar post about two confusing verbs: lie and lay. (Actually, it’s three verbs, but we’ll come to that later.) TO LAY ‘To lay’ means to put something down. It is followed by a direct object, i.e. it’s a transitive verb—after it we …
Whitman’s poem featured in this post is a very short one, originally published in the Herald newspaper on 12th March 1888. It just so happened that immediately after its publication, a major blizzard hit the state of New York, which made the poet’s timing rather unfortunate, and the subject of many jokes. It reminded me …
A while ago I posted a lengthy grammar article about the conditional sentences in English, and in this post we’ll read a poem by Rudyard Kipling that can be used to illustrate conditional clauses. It has some great vocabulary, too. (Not to mention lofty ideas!) Rudyard and John Kipling Titled “If—”, Kipling wrote this poem …
grammaticus 