natural english
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Breaking the rule is the rule (sometimes)
“Me and him went to the meeting.”“Sounds good.”“Gonna send it over.” You’ve been told these are wrong… yet you hear them constantly. In casual speech, meetings, emails, everywhere. Sometimes breaking the rule is a signal.“Me and him…” isn’t careless: it’s casual.“Sounds good” drops structure, but keeps the meaning fast and natural.“Gonna” isn’t incorrect: it signals…
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Your English already has a personality
…you just don’t know what it is yet. You don’t sound random in English. It might feel like you’re only getting the words out, but if you examine your word choices, there’s a pattern. The way you disagree, the way you give feedback, and the way you turn something down all has a pattern. Let’s…
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English is ambiguous, but you don’t ✨feel✨ it
“I saw her duck.”“Let’s meet next Friday.”“I’m on my way (just left my house).” You probably understood all three instantly. Each one is ambiguous. “Duck” could be a verb or a noun. “Next Friday” depends on where you are in the week. “On my way” might mean five minutes or forty-five. Your brain fills in…
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AI can write jokes. They aren’t funny.
An English language learner was telling a joke: “Every time his phone rang, his wife plugged it into the charger… why?” He paused. “His girlfriend was Low Battery!” No one laughed. The answer was honestly clever. The cheating husband had saved his girlfriend’s name as “low battery.” But it didn’t land. We can understand the…
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“That’s not how I’d say it” isn’t a rule
There’s (unfortunately) a moment where someone hears a non-native speaker and decides, almost instantly, that something is off. They can understand the person, but it doesn’t sound like what they’re used to. A multilingual speaker might say something in a way a native speaker wouldn’t. They might use a slightly different structure, emphasize a different…
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Multilingual speakers don’t have a thinking problem
Teaching ESL, I hear this all the time: “I know what I want to say. I just don’t know how to say it.” This is because multilingual speakers don’t struggle to think. They struggle to translate their thinking into what sounds right to someone else. Multilingual speakers are working with multiple options at once. Different…
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Does meaning start when you have the word?
There’s a moment before you have the word for something… Something feels off, but you can’t explain why, or when you realize there’s a word for an idea, like “sonder,” which is the sudden realization that every person around you has a life as complex as your own. Once you realize there’s a word for…
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Why “do a mistake” sounds wrong
“I did a mistake.” You understand this sentence immediately. Nothing is confusing, but it still sounds off. “Make a mistake” feels natural. “Do a mistake” doesn’t, even though “make” and “do” are similar and both are grammatically possible. The problem isn’t grammar. This is a collocation: words that naturally go together in a language. Not…
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Native speakers break rules constantly
“Who are you talking to?” That sounds completely normal. No one stops mid-conversation to panic about a preposition. Buuuut teeeechnically, you’re not supposed to end a sentence with one. Most people don’t even know that rule. And even the ones who do ignore it constantly. Some rules come from formal grammar teaching, but real English…