Confusing Words

When answering another person’s comments, instead of saying just yes or no, we can respond with certain phrases that express our feelings towards the response we give. For example:

When we are fairly sure of our response to what someone else has said, we can use “think”:

“Will the report be finished on time?” “I think so.”
“Won’t Mary be coming with us?” “I don’t think so.”

Some may find these two words confusing, but they’re simple to separate.

Long or length refers to a measurement of something from end to end or from top to bottom or from beginning to end. Length is one of three dimensions

The car is three meters long.
My wife gave me a really long list of things to buy at the supermarket.
I had to wait a long time to get to see the movie.

In romantic relationships, there are different names for the people in them depending on how close they are:

Boyfriend and girlfriend are those whose relationships are still shiny and new. Once people recognize them as “going out”, the two become a couple, and stay that way until they break up.

Then, if the relationship grows closer, but they don’t have a formal ceremony, they become partners, and usually refer to the other person as “my partner” or “my significant other”.

“A lot of” or “lots of” can be used to substitute “much” or “many”. It marks a large, unidentified amount.

She has many/a lot of ‘friends’, but only a few close friends.
I don’t have much/lots of money on me—I’d better go to the bank.

“A lot” or “lots” can also be an adverb, but without the ‘of’!

These two words may seem like they have similar meanings, but they are not actually synonyms.

“To be” is one of the most common words in English. It has two main functions.

“To Stay”, on the other hand, means “to remain in one place” or “to temporarily reside”:

These words are confusing because “sensible” is a false friend.

– Sensitive means that a thing or person notices every little thing; it can also mean a person is emotionally fragile, and starts crying very easily.
– Sensible describes something that is reasonable and logical.

We all know that “¿Cómo está él?” means “How is he?”. Here, we’re asking about his current state or emotion, if he’s well, sick, happy, sad, etc.

But the question “¿Cómo es él?” would also seem to be “How is he?”. Obviously, they both can’t be the same question, and they aren’t—we have two set questions to express those ideas:

These are two very confusing verbs, because they’re both “decir” in Spanish.

One easy trick to know when to use which one is by knowing what follows each verb.

Say is usually followed by the words spoken.
The person they’re spoken to may be mentioned optionally after “to”

In English we can use whoever to mean “it doesn´t matter who”. Let´s have a look at the following examples:

Whoever painted this is a genius!
Whoever calls, tell them I am not available.

Though, even though and although are used to express a contrast.

They can be put at the beginning of a sentence:

Although/Even though/Though Julie had passed all her exams, she couldn´t find a good job.