Thursday, July 1, 2010

Useful Chatspeak

We are exposed to new words and expressions everyday. The creation of them may be influenced by words taken from other languages, publicity, technological reasons or social meanings to name a few. Most of the time people use them to get a social approval (friend,peers,colleagues,etc.) or just looking for simplicity and convenience to say more things in less time. That is the case of a very popular informal language used in internet known as "chatspeak or netspeak" which gives us the possibility to chat online,send messages or even write long emails faster.
If you are not familiar with chatspeak, here are some known terms:

AFK: away from the keyboard
ATM: at the moment
AFAIK: as far as I know
ASAP: as soon as possible
BRB:
be right back
BTA:
but then again...
BTW: by the way...
HTH: hope that helps or happy to help
JIC: just in case
LOL: laughing out loud
LTNS
:
long time no see
NM: never mind
OMG: oh my god
TC: Take care
THX: Thanks!
TYT:
take your time
WTV: watching tv


There are lots of them! For more information, visit:

Also, you can find a helpful internet slang translator to help you JIC you do not understand their meaning in:




CUOL! (See You On Line)

Yara Muñoz

The longer…. the better?

Comparatives and superlatives are one of the “so called” easiest grammatical structures to learn though many upper-intermediate and advanced learners still have problems with them.

These “grammatical structures” are defined in the web as follows:

In grammar, the superlative of an adjective or adverb is the greatest form of adjective or adverb which indicates that something has some feature to a greater degree than anything it is being compared to in a given context.


In grammar, the comparative is the form of an adjective or adverb which denotes the degree or grade by which a person, thing, or other entity has a property or quality greater or less in extent than that of another, and is used in this context with a subordinating conjunction, such as than, as...as, etc.


The first thing you need to know is that there are 6 categories of adjectives, so 6 categories of comparatives and 6 of superlatives. (Relax! Don’t be scared, they are much easier than what you may think.) And one extra category which is entirely dedicated to the words: Good, bad & far. As you can’t certainly say more good or badder. Whether you are comparing or not, you must take in consideration if it is a one syllable, one syllable with “e” ending and so on. And one last thing is that in comparatives, there to forms of comparing things, which are by saying which one is better, stronger, happier than, etc. and on the other hand you can say that something is/isn’t as good, strong, happy as, etc.


For further explanations you may visit:


If you still have doubts you may watch this explanatory video



Now, if you are ready to try your comparatives and superlatives skill, try this:


That’s all for today folks! I hope you liked this post and remember, any comment, any post will be welcomed.

Camilo Palma