The inner workings of English, with all the language’s quirks and idiosyncrasies, are almost as challenging to teach as they are to learn. To make teaching it to others, or yourself, a bit easier the Fast Essay Editing blog is running a series of posts on the grammatical basics. At the very base of English grammar are the grammatical categories of number, gender, case, degree, definiteness, tense, aspect, mood, and voice. This week on the Fast Essay Editing blog we will be covering gender. The Grammatical Categories: Gender English uses a system for gender called natural gender which, while filled with quirks, is still simpler than the system used by many other languages. Unlike languages such as German, French, and Italian the English language determines the gender of something depending on the sex of the object in the real world. For example, a desk is not male or female in the real world, so the sentence the desk is brown does not distinguish if the desk is male or female. Below are the rules and quirks to watch out for when working with the grammatical category of gender. 1. The Rules. Gender in English, when it is expressed, is expressed using the 3rd person pronouns he, and she. For example, he is going to the store indicates that a male is going to the store. To show that something has no gender, the 3rd person pronouns it and they are used. For example, the people ran because they were scared is correct because the crowd of people has no specific gender. 2. The Quirks. Some words in the English language automatically describe something as being male or female. For example, the words lady, woman, girl, and female are all used to describe the female gender. The words boy, male, gentleman, and man are all used to describe the male gender. Putting the words above into a compound word can make the new compound word describe a gender as well. For example, chairman is a combination of chair and man which means “someone who presides over a meeting.” Because the word chairman contains the word man which indicates a male, the word chairman is only used to describe someone who is male. The same thing can be done with words that describe the female gender. Chairwoman means the same thing as chairman, but is used to describe someone who is female. Some words in English describe something that is male or female, but not human. For example, a rooster is a male chicken, and a hen is a female chicken. The word chicken is used to describe the animal when the speaker does not want to specify if the animal is male or female. Finally, almost all English names either describe a male or a female. For example Daniel would be a name given to a boy, while the name Theresa would be given to a girl. The grammatical category of gender, like most of the English language, can be confusing. Fortunately, in most cases the gender of something will be obvious, and you will be able to follow the rules by using he or she to describe it. If the gender of something is not obvious you can still follow the rules by using they or it to describe it. If you would like more information on gender in English, consult The Linguistic Structure of Modern English by Laurel J. Brinton and Donna M. Brinton or contact the editing team at Fast Essay Editing.…

The inner workings of English, with all the language’s quirks and idiosyncrasies, are almost as challenging to teach as they are to learn. To make teaching it to others, or yourself, a bit easier the Fast Essay Editing blog is running a series of posts on the grammatical basics. (We’ve also written a post on Compound Words, check it out!) At the very base of English grammar are the grammatical categories of number, person, gender, case, degree, definiteness, tense, aspect, mood, and voice. This week on the Fast Essay Editing blog we will be covering number. The Grammatical Categories: Number The English language expresses number using singular (one of something) or plural (more than one of something). Most native English speakers won’t think twice about expressing the number of something in writing, but there are some rules regarding how it is done. 1. Nouns. You can take a noun, such as dog, and add an s to make it plural (dogs). When you add the s to the noun, it becomes a count noun. 2. Demonstratives. Demonstratives are words that point to something specific such as this or that. To indicate more than one thing, simply use the plural form of the demonstrative. So, this cat or that dog indicates one cat or dog while these cats or those dogs indicates more than one cat or dog. 3. Pronouns. Pronouns are words that take the place of nouns in a sentence. To indicate more than one of something, you can sometimes use a pronoun. For example, I am going to the store indicates one person (you) is going to the store. To show that more than one person is going, you would say we are going to the store. 4. Specific Words. Sometimes a word can only be used to describe something that is singular or plural. For example, each can only be used to describe something singular. (Each boy is grammatically correct, each boys is not.) Likewise, all, many, and several can only be used to describe something plural. (Many boys is correct, many boy is not.) The concept of number, like most grammatical concepts in English, can get very complicated. For example, there is a way to build a sentence if you don’t want to indicate plural or singular called “the concept of generic number” (the sentence gold is valuable doesn’t tell you if there is one gold, or more than one gold). There are also exceptions to some of the rules above. For example, in an editorial, the pronoun we can refer to a single person. Hopefully this post has helped to clarify the concept of number a little bit. If you’re looking for a more in depth explanation, please check out The Linguistic Structure of Modern English by Laurel J. Brinton and Donna M. Brinton or contact the editing team at Fast Essay Editing.…

To the native English speaker, the compound word is something that happens in written text almost intuitively. For example, a native English speaker would not hesitate to write the word airplane (a compound of air and plane) because he or she would think of the word airplane as not two separate words, but as a single word describing a single object. However, for a non-native English speaker, the rules behind when to compound a word, how to compound a word, and what a compounded word means can be very difficult to decipher. 1. When to compound a word. An easy rule of thumb for figuring out if the word you are trying to write should be compounded or not is to see if you can move the entire word around the sentence, or if you can break it up. For example, if you are trying to write the phrase the man over cooked the meat and wonder if over cooked should be a compound into overcooked you could try to move the word around the sentence as two separate words to see if it still makes sense. The man cooked the meat over doesn’t make any sense but the meat was overcooked by the man does, so the word is likely a compound. 2. How to compound a word. To compound a word, you can either combine the two words together (such as overcook) or you can hyphenate the words ( such as sleep-walk). There is no solid rule for when to combine or hyphenate, so consulting a dictionary is a good idea for native and non-native speakers alike. 3. What compound words mean. The final, and trickiest, part of compound words to explain is what they mean. The English language has many compound words that have nothing to do with the individual words they’re made of. For example, fire means “combustion or burning” and arm means “the upper limb on a human.” The combination of the two into firearm however, means “a rifle, pistol, or other portable gun.” Again, the best advice when facing an unfamiliar compound word is to look up the definition in a dictionary. Hopefully this quick introduction to the compound word has been helpful. With practice, learning which words to compound and how to compound them will become intuitive to anyone attempting to master the English language.…