one quite fine old wooden Japanese writing table

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
1

Check this, please:

1 They’ve just bought one quite fine old wooden Japanese writing table.
2 My room is twice smaller than yours, and yours is twice larger than Olya’s.
3 He went to Berlin by a fast train.

2

There are some very subtle distinctions to be seen there, Federov. The following are all correct. (Your 1st sentence is correct too.)

  1. My room is two times smaller than yours and yours is two times larger than Olya’s.

  2. My room is twice as small as yours and yours is twice as large as Olya’s.
    (although ‘twice’ means ‘two times’ you can only use it with certain forms of speech.)

  3. He went to Berlin by fast train. (This was his mode of transport.)

  4. He went to Berlin on a fast train. (This is how he got to Berlin.)

3

thanks

4

Check some more, please:

At 2 o’clock tomorrow I will be having an English lesson.
I hope it will have stopped raining by five o’clock.
What you will be doing at eight o’clock? I’ll be working on my report.

5

Those are all fine, Fedorov.

6

Hi Fedorov,

I assume you meant ‘will you’ in your third sentence.

Alan

7

It’s a strange thing, but MS Word 2010 highlights the phrase ‘What will you be doing’ in green, which might mean that there is something wrong with it. But it’s OK on ‘What you will be doing’. Maybe there is a difference between English and American variants?

8

-post deleted-

9

Hi,

‘Will you?’ is a question in any variant of English!

Alan

10

Hi Alan,
That’s how machines make people confused. Apparently, I used to rely on them too much. Thanks for the clue.