The High Speech

#original_high_speech Hello, everyone! Here is a first in 2024. It is another excerpt of poetic English from 'The Forsyte Saga' by John Golsworthy, book 'To Let', chapter XI 'The Last of the Old Forsytes'. When I was finishing this book, this passage at its end was a rather difficult read with all these elongated syntactic structures. But now when I've gone over it a couple of times, it seems much more easier to understand. Maybe I've become a better reader, maybe it's just easier to understand ...

#original_high_speech Here is another extract of high-style language from 'Three Men in a Boat to Say Nothing of the Dog' by Gerome K. Gerome. This piece also comes from Chapter 6 and is shorter than the previous one but no less profuse in stylish language. Have a look at the glossary and enjoy the reading! Supportive glossary: 🔹revelry – кутёж 🔹moorings – швартовы 🔹gallant – щёголь 🔹to swagger down – сходить 🔹water steps – ступеньки, ведущие к воде 🔹gadzooks! – чёрт возьми! 🔹gramercy – н...

#synonymiser Hello, dear readers! Thanks for staying in! I seem to have found a good free source of searchable authentic English – Thesaurus.com. I have known about it before but never really used it in this way. It will certainly help me with finding relevant samples of English for my sysnonymisers in the future. Let's now jump into the word list I have prepared: these are all adjectives descriping different types of dilapidation. Please note that the adjective run-down must be hyphenated when ...

#heed_and_hear Hello, everyone! Here is another episode of A Point of View from BBC Radio 4 for another piece of 'Heed and Hear'. In it, AL Kennedy is sharing her opinion on negative news dominating the media space: how it affects the modern society, how to protect yourself from it and what can be done to counter this trend of doom and gloom. AL is starting her train of thought on a hypothetical situation of being asked for directions by a stranger, giving them an answer to said question and the...

#synonymiser Hello, dear readers! Here is the closing post of 2023 – a little collection of words relating to rituals of different kinds along with examples from articles and books to make the distinctions clearer. Hope you'll enjoy this somewhat tinier post nonetheless. And happy New Year, keep calm and carry on in 2024! Keep on doing what's good for yourself and someone else. And here go the synonyms! 🔸mores – the traditional patterns of behaviour that are typical of certain parts of society ...

#heed_and_hear Hello, everyone! This time, I want to cover another episode of 'A Point of View' coming from Tom Shakespeare ‒ an English sociologist and bioethicist. Mr. Shakespeare shares his view on the so-called ratings game ‒ the ratings that service providers so frequently ask of their customers. While these rating requests were neutrally viewed back in the day when they were not so ubiquitous, they have become quite annoying and oppressive nowadays. All these ratings are declared to help r...

#language_advice Reading Classical English Literature In the last 3 – 4 years, I have read some classical English novels. Last year, I finished The Forsyte Saga, and now I am reading Life's Little Ironies by Thomas Hardy. And I have found it very challenging – if not difficult – at times. In terms of language learning, it is a very intense memory-engaging exercise because of the big chunks of textual information you often have to sustain in your memory that come within one sentence and because o...

#synonymiser Hello, dear readers and learners, after this long-lasting break! Here is another selection of a adjectives endued with the meaning of timidity. And a few examples from different sources to exemplify their contextualised usage. And a happy new year of 2025! 🔸timid – lacking courage to behave boldly and take on responsibility ▫️ I think this government is timid on almost everything. It was timid from day one on administrative arrangements, departmental arrangements, heads o...

#original_high_speech Good day to you all! Here is an extract from the short story 'A Son's Veto' from Life's Little Ironies by Thomas Hardy; a rather sad one. As all classical literature, these short stories are particularly rich with florid language. So read this extract to learn a few more graceful words that might embellish your speech and let you have a broader variety of English vocabulary to choose from as you please as well as better understand high-flown speech and text whenever you may...

#sticky_and_tricky Which or That and Punctuation in Relative Clauses. Part 1 A relative clause is a clause that adds information about the subject or an object in the main clause. A relative clause is often introduced by relative pronouns that and which. 1. Punctuation in non-defining clauses A non-defining clause provides supplementary information about the object it describes; otherwise, it does not provide any information that helps identify the object that is denoted in the main clause. Non-...