Thursday, February 4, 2010

Tricktionary

I had been planning to introduce the Tricktionary for about three months. I wanted to call it the Scrabble Zone, but when my beloved wife frowned twice, I knew it was a mistake. So I thought harder, and came up with the Tricktionary. What is the Tricktionary? It`s the place where you can find what I like to call tricky words, words that apparently "behave" the same but in reality don`t.
Take the words ROYAL and LOYAL, two of my favourite words, that really come in handy when you try to teach your Japanese students phonics.
ROYAL can be a noun ( a size of printing paper) and an adjective ( related to a king or queen), while LOYAL (faithful) is an adjective and doesn`t take an S. UNROYAL is a valid word in Scrabble but UNLOYAL* isn`t! Both adjectives are comparable. The comparative form of ROYAL can be spelt with one L, while the comparative form of LOYAL can be spelt with one or two Ls. And let`s not forget ROYALTY , LOYALTY, ROYALLY and LOYALLY, the perfect tongue twisters in my ESL book! That is the difference between ROYAL and LOYAL.
ROYAL+S ROYALER ROYALEST UNROYAL ROYALLY ROYALTY
LOYAL(no-S) LOYALER (LOYALLER) LOYALEST (LOYALLEST)
LOYALLY LOYALTY

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