Good morning, everyone :) English lesson for today Today I would like to give you some useful spelling rules in English. So let us take a look at the following explanation. When the word ends in a consonant If the accent falls on the last syllable, the consonant is doubled to form the past tense. So we have: * Occur –> occurred * Transfer –> transferred When the word ends in a short vowel + consonant, the final consonant is not usually doubled to form the past tense. Therefore: * Offer –> offered (NOT Offerred) * Budget –> budgeted Short monosyllabic words always double their final consonant. Examples are: * Shop –> shopping * Let –> letting * Cut –> cutting ie and ei The general rule is i before e except after c Examples are: Siege, believe, friends but receive, deceive, ceiling (after c, we use e before I) There are however several exceptions to this rule. Examples are: reign, heir, seize, weird. As you can see, in all of these words, the letter ‘e’ goes before the letter i. Dis and mis Never double the s of these prefixes. In some words, you may notice a second s, but remember that it is the first letter of the next syllable. So we have: * Dismiss (NOT Dissmiss) * Misplace * Misunderstand * Dispel Se and Ce Se and sy are usually verb endings and ce and cy are usually noun endings. So the following words are verbs: license, practise, advise, prophesy. And the following words are nouns: licence, practice, prophecy, advice. The word promise is an exception to this rule. Although it ends in –se, it is a noun. Note that this rule does not hold good when verb and noun are not spelt alike. Us and ous Nouns end in us. Adjectives end in ous. So we have: * Nouns: census, phosphorus, genius * Adjectives: jealous, unanimous, tremendous Thank you :)
Posted on: Fri, 28 Nov 2014 22:18:33 +0000
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