English Class
Dos and dont’s of present perfect continuous
I have been singing all day. She has been reading. Some people have been in government since 1999. The lecturer has been teaching at UNILAG for eight years. He has been sleeping in the other room. The...
10th December 2024
Davido’s outburst: Between ‘in shambles’ and ‘in a shambles’
The controversy that greeted the warning afrobeats giant, Davido, gave African Americans in the United States last week is already dying down. He had, in an interview on The Big Homies House podcast, ...
3rd December 2024
Afterall or after all?
You are likely to have been coming across the two spellings: ‘afterall’ and ‘after all’. Which do you prefer? Or you are among those who write either depending on how the spirit directs you? N...
8th October 2024
‘Protest’ and its dynamic grammatical features
A dominant issue in Nigeria today revolves around the protest planned against hardship, slated for between August 1 and 10. It has generated a lot of controversies and will continue to dominate discus...
30th July 2024
Differences between i.e. and e.g.
Among all word pairs with confusing meanings and uses, i.e. and e.g. occupy a peculiar position. They are identical especially because they are two-letter abbreviations. They are, however, not to be u...
16th July 2024
Errors to avoid when using time-related words
“Time’ is a common word that can be used in different contexts. Like the general concept of time, which is naturally important to man, the word itself is versatile, to the extent that it cuts ...
23rd April 2024
Hard vs soft consonants: Between marriagable and marriageable
The concept of hard and soft consonants primarily affects two elements in English. These are c and g. Both have two pronunciation patterns which can be hard or soft. When c is pronounced as K, as in c...
14th November 2023
Continually vs continuously
The two words originated from the same base, which is ‘continue’. Also, they are both adverbs. Relatively, they are spelt alike, while their sounds are not too far apart. Yet their meanings may be...
10th October 2023
Before I forget vs lest I forget
‘Before’ is a multipurpose word that has heritage in at least three parts of speech. As an adverb, it can tell the time of an action. It can also function as a conjunction, connecting elements...
5th September 2023
What is the difference between towards and toward?
Do you have difficulty choosing between toward and towards, forward and forwards as well as backward and backwards? If you do, you need not worry too much because many other people have the same exper...
25th July 2023
Vocabulary development: A woman can also be a polygamist
‘Polygamy’ is so familiar a word that almost everyone believes they know its meaning. Easily, use it in writing or speech. If many are thus asked to define ‘polygamy’, they gleefully say: a ma...
4th July 2023
Trade blame vs play the blame game
If the Peoples Democratic Party and All Progressives Congress are blaming each other as being responsible for a particular negative occurrence, what are they doing, idiomatically speaking? Are they tr...
27th June 2023
‘Funny enough’ and three other wrong phrases you should get right
The phrase sounds so harmless that you can hardly suspect it is a piece of error. That is ‘funny enough’, when used to mean surprisingly. You too are likely to have it used one time or the other. ...
16th May 2023
How ‘wear’, ‘clothes’ select verbs
Among words commonly used in the fashion arena, ‘wear’ and ‘clothes’ have peculiar features in terms of number. Dress, shirt, blouse or scarf can, for instance, be easily defined as countable ...
9th May 2023
Lagos couple kidnaps selves or kidnap selves?
A Lagos-based couple caused a stir days ago. They kidnapped themselves with the hope of getting a N5m ransom. According to the police, the target was to make the husband’s relatives who live abroad ...
2nd May 2023
Between ‘Don’t take it personal’ and ‘Don’t take it personally’
Idioms are an integral part of any language. As a result, they come naturally in the course of conversations. Consider the case of the English Language with its many idioms which often find their ways...
25th April 2023
Summons and other singular nouns that end with -s
We start the lesson with this question: The court has served the Central Bank Governor with a … (a) summons (b) summon (c) summoning (d) summonses I hope you understand the message the statement i...
18th April 2023
Drink, soak or take garri?
Among our other traditional foods, garri is so popular and entrenched that it has for long been recognised by English dictionaries. For instance, Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries defines it as a type o...
4th April 2023
Between precedent and precedence
By setting free the woman who stabbed her husband to death, the court seems to have set a bad … (precedent, precedence). Here comes another pair of words that are tricky to handle. They sound and ar...
28th March 2023
Spot the error: El-Rufai is my senior brother
During a recent briefing, one of our governors described his Kaduna State counterpart, Nasir el-Rufai, as his ‘senior brother’. It is popularly known that they are not blood brothers; the speaker ...
21st March 2023
Franking face? No! You either frown at or frank upon
Some people are fond of jovially saying, ‘Stop franking your face.’ They do so to show how awkward the statement sounds. The fact, however, is that some actually believe ‘franking face’ is a c...
14th March 2023
Pulling unit? Differences in the pronunciations of poll, pull and pool
Last week, we established the fact that ‘cast’ is an irregular verb that retains its base form even when used in the past tense and present/past participle contexts. In other words, it does not ta...
7th March 2023
Did Omotola dabble into music or she dabbled in it?
Dabble’ can mean at least two things. In the idiomatic sense, it refers to taking a casual interest in a cause or activity. The Cambridge Dictionary thus defines it as ‘to take a slight and not ve...
21st February 2023
No love lost: An idiom not to use carelessly
If you have affection for someone and you tell the person, ‘No love lost’, I hope they do not know the meaning of the idiom. If they do, you may have lost a good friend or lover. The reason is tha...
14th February 2023
Three contexts you can use ‘it’ for humans
Compared to nouns, many pronouns have few or no synonyms. This is particularly applicable to the personal pronouns he, she, it etc. In place of a noun like a boy, you can use guy, chap, son, young man...
24th January 2023
Five grammatical factors to consider when using ‘japa’
In an incisive article published in ‘The Punch’ and some other platforms on Sunday, lawyer and teacher, Chidi Odinkalu, examines the concept of what is arguably the most trending entry in the ‘d...
3rd January 2023
Debate over the correctness of ‘Happy New Year in advance’
Veteran journalist and expert in the English Language, Seth Akintoye, has sparked a debate over the expression, ‘Happy New Year in advance’. In a Facebook post, he argues that it is erroneous. H...
27th December 2022
Drainage: An uncountable noun not to be pluralised
In a country that is as infrastructurally challenged as Nigeria, certain words are bound to be recurrent. These include light, darkness, hospital, roads and schools. As a result, some substandard usag...
13th December 2022
Bathroom vs toilet
A Lagos-based editor, Bamidele Johnson, a few days ago caused a linguistic stir online. In a Facebook post, he wondered why some people are fond of referring to a toilet as a bathroom. According to ...
22nd November 2022
Transport fare: An error almost all of us commit
When you say you want to give someone transport fare, you are not only giving the person money for transportation, but you are also giving him or her an error. That is a grammatical error called tauto...
8th November 2022
Pluralising PVC
It is a word bound to be recurrent in Nigeria at least till the first quarter of 2023 when the general elections will hold. It will, indeed, vibrate beyond the time, based on how the country’s democ...
1st November 2022
