I’ve got that Friday feeling

Hello, everyone!

It’s nearly the weekend! Hurray! This weekend my best friend and her husband are coming down from the north of England to visit. I’m so excited! Because I’m going to be busy at the weekend, I have asked another one of my pets to blog for me tomorrow. I hope you don’t mind. She’s a little bit – how shall I put this politely? – well-proportioned, because she sleeps all days and loves food. You’ll see what I mean tomorrow.

Naheed has been painting a beautiful picture of her country and it has given me itchy feet. Naheed, you mentioned an area in Pakistan called Baltistan. In the UK, one of my favourite dishes is called a balti. You’ll find it in restaurants specializing in Indian food. All the food is cooked and served in a round bowl. Delicious! Does this have anything to do with the region of Baltistan? If so, am I really eating a Pakistani dish, or an Indian dish? I’m befuddled!

Naheed also asked me about my favourite writers. Hmm, that’s a difficult question to answer. I love Roald Dahl. He’s famous for his children’s books (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, for example), but he also wrote short stories for adults, which are just weird and twisted. He had an amazing imagination. Charles Dickens is great – I read A Christmas Carol every Christmastime. And I also really like the American author, Sylvia Plath. She was a real wizard with words.

I owe you all a lot of answers today. First, the answers to those questions about articles:

This idea of having your own home and doing what you like inside it brings me onto my trip to the big smoke (London) at 1) a/the weekend.

Here, the correct answer is ‘the’ because you know which weekend I’m talking about – the weekend that’s just gone.

I’m afraid I didn’t go shopping, sight-seeing or for a trip on 2) a/the London Eye.

Again, the correct answer is ‘the’ because I’m talking about something specific (the London Eye) rather than something in general.

I went to 3) a/the home exhibition.

Theoretically, you could use ‘a’ or ‘the’ here. It depends whether the reader knows which home exhibition I’m talking about. However, seeing as you probably don’t know which home exhibition I went to, and as Naheed rightly points out this could be any exhibition, the best choice here is ‘a’.

The problem is that 4) a/the property in the UK is extremely expensive – the average house now costs more than £200,000.

For this one, you could either use ‘a’ (meaning ‘a single property in the UK is expensive’) or you could use no article at all (meaning ‘property in general is expensive’) – it depends which meaning you want to convey.

(5) An/The everyone rented, and you often had generations of families – grandchildren, children, parents, grandparents and even great-grandparents – all living under one roof.

This was a trick question – no article is needed here. You simply start the sentence with ‘Everyone rented …’, because you are talking in general.

Next, I have to tell you the meaning of those words in my last blog:

tricky = difficult
sky-high = very high
duty = something that you have to do
stopped me in my tracks = I stopped suddenly because I was so surprised
(well spotted Uddhav, this is indeed another idiom)
struck = affect suddenly
everyday = normal, part of your daily life
bird-feeder = a container you fill with bird food
pecking =hitting with a beak
decipher = to work out the meaning of something
gobbledegook = language that is impossible to understand

A couple of you – Steve from Taiwan and Quynh from Vietnam – asked about this phrase in my last blog:

‘Ooh, aren’t I evil, Naheed?’

You wanted to know why I had used ‘are’ rather than ‘am’. You are right, Steve and Quynh, the usual form of the verb ‘to be’ that follows ‘I’ is ‘am’:

I am hungry.
I am thinking of making balti tonight.

And you can also turn the order around when you make a question, like this:

Am I late?
Am I right?

So, why did I write ‘aren’t I?’ The form ‘aren’t I?’ is the form you use in a question tag.

Question tags are short phrases (literally ‘tags’) that we put at the end of a sentence. We use question tags when we want to ask for agreement, or when we want confirmation of something. For example:

You haven’t seen my watch, have you? I’ve lost it.
I left it in the changing room at the swimming pool, didn’t I?

Notice that we always put a comma before a question tag. Also, you need to remember to swap the meaning of the question word so it is the opposite of the statement. By that I mean that if you make a positive statement, the question tag should be negative. For example:

I took it off when I got changed, didn’t I?
(positive statement) (negative question tag)

If you make a negative statement, the question tag should be positive, like this:

I haven’t left it in the locker, have I?
(negative statement) (positive question tag)

You can see from these examples that if the main statement contains an auxiliary verb, this is repeated in the question tag.

I have lost it, haven’t I?

If the main statement does not contain an auxiliary verb, you use ‘do’ in the question tag.

It looks as though I’ll never find it, doesn’t it?


The form of ‘to be’ that goes with ‘I’ is always irregular in question tags. That’s why I wrote ‘aren’t I’. For example:

I’m late, aren’t I?
I’m right, aren’t I?

So really, what I wrote was a kind of shorthand for:

‘Ooh, I’m evil, aren’t I, Naheed?’

I hope that makes sense!

Finally, I’m going to decipher the estate agent’s gobbledegook for you. It’s just like doing a riddle:

2bd (Two-bedroom) grdflr (ground-floor) flat, sea views (with views over the sea), new kitchen units (kitchen has new furniture and appliances) and bathrm (bathroom also has new furniture and appliances). GCH (gas central heating), DG (double glazing), OIEO (offers in excess of) £190,000. No chain (the vendor is not in a chain – that means he/she is selling only, not selling and buying).

I feel it is only right to finish the week with a riddle of my own. On Sunday I’m going to visit a place in the UK that you might have heard of. See if you can work out where I’m going:

It’s in the big smoke
It’s old
It’s also very new
Sing along
Or watch a game
You’ll always be entertained

I’ll tell you all about it on Monday.

Catch you later!

Jo


Vocabulary

well-proportioned – a polite way of saying someone is overweight.

If you’ve got itchy feet, you feel as though you want to go travelling.

befuddled means confused


Answers to your comments

Mauricio – the view from the top of the hill is only a five-minute walk from my house. I see it every day, because I take this route when I take my dog for a walk.

Uddhav – we use adjectives to describe people and things (subjects/objects):
A young woodpecker.
A beautiful view.
We use adverbs to describe an action – to say how it is done, rather than what it is like:
The bird ate hungrily.
I climbed slowly to the top of the hill.

Kailarai – I hear you! I’m going to write something about auxiliary verbs next week. I hope this isn’t too late for your exam.

Benka – if you want to write words to describe the sound of cheerful laughter, I would use ‘Ha, ha, ha!’. ‘Ho, ho, ho!’ is also OK, but this is traditionally the sound that Father Christmas (Santa Claus) makes in English, so people might imagine you have a white beard and wear a red suit if you use this phrase! ‘He, he, he!’ sounds ever so slightly like evil laughter, as if you have a clever plan to trick someone. And ‘Hi!’ is only used to greet someone, not as laughter.

Wisarut – you’ve got me confused. Which TV programme? Do you know something I don’t?!

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