In Italian, the equivalent of person is persona, whose plural is persone; there is also another word that could be used instead of persone (gente) but that is not the plural of persona. It cannot be used as simple replacement of persone, as I cannot say ho visto quattro gente for “I saw four people,” … Read more
Is popcorns a used word, for example in “popcorns are ready”? If I cook meat rolls, and I want to announce they are ready, I would say “Meat rolls are ready.” Can I say the same for popcorn? Answer Popcorn is a mass noun, not a count noun. It’s like rain or snow, or straw … Read more
In a book, I encountered this sentence: Kosovo was a province of Yugoslavia before its split. This sentence portrays split as a noun/action. Now, I usually encounter split as: Kosovo was a province of Yugoslavia before it split. This portrays split as a verb. So, which is right, the first one or the second? And … Read more
I am looking for another word for deported person, or a short form of saying it. Answer The word is deportee but you don’t want to use that outside of a legal or political context, it’s very uncommon in casual conversation. Normally we just say “he/she was deported” rather than using a specific noun. AttributionSource … Read more
A friend of mine (a native speaker of Japanese) wrote “passenger’s seat”, which a native speaker of English corrected to “passenger seat”. Onelook.com has entries for the latter but not the former, but I wouldn’t be able to explain the grammar of it. Is a noun being used as an adjective? Answer Nouns frequently modify … Read more
I haven’t been able to find any good articles describing rules (or patterns) specifying use of the words female and woman. Let’s take the following sentences as an example: (assuming we have a man and a woman) The woman pointed the gun at the man The female pointed the gun at the man *the second … Read more
Are there any significant differences between words trip, travel, and journey (nouns)? Are those interchangeable words or are there any specific expressions which uses one of them but not another? Answer These three words can be synonyms, but have slightly different connotations. First, travel is usually a verb… I will travel to Washington DC. …but … Read more
In Italian, letters can be referred to using their noun. For example, when speaking of the letter M, I could say La lettera emme è l’undicesima lettera dell’alfabeto italiano. (that is, “M is the 11th letter of the Italian alphabet”), or simply Emme è l’undicesima lettera dell’alfabeto italiano. What is the equivalent way to refer … Read more
