Wearing a kilt isn't just for Halloween

Hello and welcome Cheikh!

What a lovely first posting. It's so nice to learn about you, your country and some of your customs. I'm sure I'm not the only person who hadn't heard of your capital city till I read it in your blog. And I'm sure I'm not alone in really looking forward to learning more about you and your culture too.

Your national dress – Boboo – sounds interesting and just right for a Halloween costume because it's sounds like you're trying to give someone a fright. (In English, we think that frightening ghosts say 'Boo!') :)

I'm sure you know that the Scottish national dress is a kilt. But in case you don't, here's the actor Hamish Clark wearing one:



He's wearing a kilt, which looks like a skirt and is made of tartan. On the front of his kilt, he's got a sporran – that's a Scottish word – a small leather bag where he can keep his money safe!

I'm not long back from the US and I know what you mean about how seriously they take Halloween there. I was there in the middle of October but already there were plenty of decorations on the houses and shops even though the actual holiday wasn't until the last day of the month.



Before we move on to look at some ways of improving your writing, I'd first just like to say how good I think it is, especially for someone who is self-taught. You should be very proud of the standard of your English, Cheikh.

Today I thought we would look at a couple of areas – countable and uncountable nouns and vocabulary.

First, countable and uncountable nouns. There are some nouns in English which we say we can count (chairs, boats, cats) and some that we can't count, but measure instead (music, love, accommodation). Countable nouns can be made plural by adding s (chair – chairs, boat – boats, cat – cats) but uncountable nouns are never made plural with an s. (The equivalent of plurals for uncountables are, for example, some music, a lot of love, plenty of accommodation). Advice and information are two examples from your posting that are uncountable nouns. Can you see how you could improve these two sentences? In the first one you have to look at the noun (advices) and in the second the noun is OK but the word these isn't right:

get some advices
all these information

Second, let's look at some of your vocabulary. These words should be one word, not two:

my self
a lone

And these words aren't quite right:

handling me this opportunity (Handling means moving with your hands. For example, The porter is handling the luggage. The word you need here is handing, which means giving)

I am getting ridiculed into addressing a bunch of people (I'm not quite sure what you mean here. Do you mean forced or not given a choice?)

We speak Arabic-French, our former colony language (Colony is a noun. You need the adjective colonial here.)

radically stick up for their point of view (Radically means acting in a very extreme way. If you mean they believe very strongly in their point of view, you could say Vehemently (or Passionately stick up for their point of view.)

That's all for now. Thanks again for such an interesting first posting. Looking forward to learning more about the Sahara desert.

Nuala

Vocabulary
costume - a set of clothes worn in order to look like someone or something else
to give someone a fright – to scare of frighten someone
ghosts – spirits of dead people who came back to earth to frighten people (or give them advice or warn them about something)
tartan - cloth with a pattern of different coloured straight lines crossing each other at 90 degree angles (see the photo in the blog for an example of tartan. He man is wearing a tartan kilt)
I'm not long back from – I have recently returned from