Breakfast lesson

Before Breakfast Lessons
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LESSON 4

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❇Confused words🤔💭💬
Let’s consider these pairs --- Sow/Sew and Beside/Besides

💠Sow/Sew
"Sow" can be a verb. When it is pronounced to rhyme with “low”, it means “to plant". Other forms of the verb are, sowed, sown, sowing. As a noun, it is pronounced to rhyme with “how”, and it means “a fully grown female pig". “Sew”, on the other hand, means “to work with needle and thread”. Other forms of this verb are, sewed, sewn, sewing .

Example

1. Every month they sow corn.
2. Farmers sowed the fields with groundnut.
3. Felicia sews her own dresses by hand.
4. I sewed the button back on the shirt.

🚫NOTE: We don’t *sow cloth, we sew it.

💠Beside/Besides
Beside (preposition) means “by the side of”, “next to”, “on a par with”. “Besides” (with "s") means “in addition to”, or “other than”.

Example

1. Philip sat beside Sandra yesterday.
2. Sitting beside that man is a great privilege.

❇Misused words/expressions❌
National Service Personnel
The “personnel” in the above noun phrase is a plural noun which means “the people who work for a particular company or organisation”. This means that one person cannot be called “personnel”. So it is grammatically unacceptable to say that one person is a “National service personnel”.

Example

1. He said he was a national service person.✅
2. The national service personnel in the office were about 50.✅
3. *Kofi is a national service personnel.❌

❇Grammar📚
Examine the sentence below carefully and determine whether it makes sense. Explain why.

🚩Adjoa and Kofi loved themselves so much that they couldn’t marry.

How is this possible? Remember we are dealing with grammar and not other social factors that contribute to people getting married or not. Does the sentence make sense?

Yes, it makes a lot of sense. The sentence means “Adjoa” loves herself so much and “Kofi” also loves himself so much. Since there is only selfish love and not a mutual or shared love, they cannot marry. But it is obvious that that wasn’t the intention of the speaker. The problem arises from the use of the reflexive pronoun, “themselves”, instead of “each other”. If Adjoa and Kofi love each other so much, it is very possible that they would marry. Use "each other" when dealing with two people or items.

The same error is committed when a speaker says “Let us love ourselves" when advocating unity, love and togetherness. We will hear this statement profusely during this election year. But when someone says that, he is unknowingly advocating individualism and selfishness. This is because if everyone loves himself or herself only, there would not be shared love, no tolerance which would in the long run bring peaceful co-existence. We should rather say, “Let us love one another” to mean you should love me and I should love you. Use "one another" when you are dealing with more than two people or items.

❇Pronunciation ◀🅿▶
💠Pizza \ˈpēt-sə
noun
;a food made from flat, usually round bread that is topped with usually tomato sauce and cheese and often with meat and vegetables.

It not pronounced as "peeza", There is a "t" sound between "pee" and "za"/"sa".

Example

1. I will buy you pizza the next time you pronounce it well.

❇Spell check☑
💠Postponed
The past tense of the verb “postpone” is “postponed”, not *postponded.

Example

1. We postponed the match.✅

❇Ghanaianisms/Ghanaian English🙊😜🙉
💠Thick tall man
Usually we say “He is a thick tall man” when we mean he has a heavily built stature (not structure). “Structure” and “thick” are used for inanimate things such as mountains, buildings, walls, etc. If you want to say that someone is heavily built, you can say he is stout and tall.

Example

1. I want to marry a stout and tall man

❇Idiom for the day🆔
💠Cut one’s coat according to one’s cloth
This idiom means that one should live according to one’s means and not more.

Example
1.The young man was advised to cut his coat according to his cloth.✅

🚫NOTE: There is no idiomatic expression in English as “*Cut one’s coat according to one’s size”

❇Word for the day👍🏽🆕
💠In (vogue)
Something (such as a way of dressing or behaving) that is fashionable or popular in a particular time and place is "in vogue. Other synonyms are "trending", "latest", "sensation", "hot", etc.

Example

1. Fixing eye brows is in vogue in Ghana. (not *invoke❌)
2. Snapchat is the sensation of the moment.

❇Conversation Tip✅
When you greet a person you have not seen for a long time, you can say,

I haven’t seen you in a long time!
I haven’t seen you in ages!
It’s good to see you again!
Where have you been hiding yourself?
I don’t see you much around here anymore.

❇Acronyms🏧
SSNIT ▶ Social Security and National Insurance Trust
GTV▶ Ghana Television

❇American English vs British English
🅰mer 🆚 🅱ri
Center Centre
Cookie Biscuit
Trunk Boot (of a car)

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Your language is your bargaining power, so make it skilled 👊🏽

© Eric Nuamah Korankye (Hamlet)

Happy Founders day✋🏼