Handy 990
Language Notes
Not about the app and not about exam tactics — about English itself: why spelling comes in two systems, which rules are really one dictionary's decision in one particular year, and which "typos" are not typos at all. Every piece cites checkable sources.
Published · 2026-09-20
wind and wind, two unrelated words that look exactly alike: one is /wɪnd/, the other /waɪnd/
The four letters w-i-n-d take up five entries and two pronunciations in Merriam-Webster. They are really two unrelated words that happen to share a spelling: one means moving air, the other means to turn or coil. This piece sorts out the common uses of each family (get wind of, second wind, wind up, wind down, winding road) and then deals with their past tense, wound — which is a trap of its own. Every pronunciation comes with audio, including one sentence that even our synthesized voice got wrong.
Read the article →Published · 2026-09-16
What is the 's in store names? Macy's is not Macy, and McDonald's is not McDonald
Many English learners swallow the 's at the end of store names: "I went to Macy," "Let's eat at McDonald." It sounds like a tiny tail, but in English Macy is a person and Macy's is the department store. This short piece covers three things: where the 's in a store name comes from (it means "belonging to"), how to pronounce it (three ways, with audio), and why some old British stores later dropped the apostrophe — but kept the s.
Read the article →Published · 2026-09-16
How to hear the difference between can and can't: English hides "not" in a t nobody pronounces
In many languages, "not" gets a full syllable of its own, and it is hard to miss. In English, the whole negative in can't rides on the final t — and Americans usually don't pronounce it. This piece covers three things: what actually separates can from can't in an American accent (stress, not the t); why British and Australian accents make it much easier (the vowel changes completely); and the exceptions that break the rule. Audio examples in American, British, and Australian accents are included so you can hear each point.
Read the article →Published · 2026-09-12
British vs. American spelling: theatre is not a typo, it just lost to an 1828 dictionary
Several users have recently reported theatre and centre in our questions as misspellings. They are not. They are British spellings, every bit as correct as theater and center — they simply stand on the other side of the Atlantic. This is the first post in a new series, Language Notes: we start with a clean table of the most common -er / -re pairs, then work through -or / -our, -ize / -ise, single vs. double l and the rest, with a detour into how a man named Noah Webster split English in two with a dictionary that barely sold — and which of his proposals were laughed out of the room (tung, wimmen, soop). At the end, an honest answer to "which one does the TOEIC use?" We counted.
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