Immigrate vs emigrate
YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED
By FADZILAH AMIN
By FADZILAH AMIN
CAN you explain the difference between immigrate and emigrate?
2. What is the most appropriate word to use for the Malay word “selit”?
– Vincent
“To emigrate” is to leave your country in order to go and live in another country permanently, while “to immigrate” is to come and live in another country permanently after leaving yours.
So a person who left country A in order to live permanently in country B is considered to have emigrated from country A and immigrated to/into country B.
2. The word “selit” is usually used in the form of “menyelitkan”, which means to slip in something in between other things, e.g. when you slip in some money in between the leaves of a book.
A or an
I attempted this question but answered wrongly. ________ university.
I chose an university, but the answer given is “a university”.
– Kah Kin
We use “an” before a singular noun beginning with a vowel sound, NOT a vowel. “University” begins with the vowel “u”, but is pronounced /yunivesiti/ and “y” is not a vowel. That is why “a university” is the right answer.
In contrast, “hour” is pronounced /our/ and we have to put “an” not “a” before “hour”, because it begins with a vowel sound: the “h” is not pronounced. That is why we say “an hour” and not “a hour”.
Repeating had
I would like to ask you about the past perfect tense in English. As far as I know, past perfect tense is used when we talk about something that had happened back in the past (assuming two actions took place). For example,
1. I told him that I had finished my work.
2. They had left by the time I arrived there.
Could you please enlighten me on using “had had” in past perfect tense in English?
– Daniel
You are right. The past perfect tense is used to distinguish between two actions in the past, or between an action and a situation or time in the past. Your question about “had had” has been asked a few times before, perhaps because of the repetition of the verb “had”.
When the past perfect tense “had had” is used in a sentence, the first “had” is the auxiliary verb that we use in every past perfect tense structure. The second “had” is the past participle of the main verb. So whenever the verb “to have” is used as the main verb in a past perfect tense structure, we use “had had”. Although we seem to be repeating the same verb “had”, each “had” has a different function. Here are some examples of the use of “had had” :
“She had had her lunch when her mother phoned.”
“After the earthquake, the government gave everyone who had had a house some money to help them rebuild it.”
Team Perak
I’m a Sports Officer from the Tunku Abdul Rahman College (TARC) Perak branch campus.
When I lead my branch campus for external competitions or against other TARC campuses I’d register our name as “Team Perak” and also print it on our T-Shirts.
I have seen many examples when the word Team is used in front of a name. For example Team USA in many sporting events, or Team Malaysia as in A1 GP.
I would appreciate it very much if you could enlighten me on the use of the term. Is it only for sporting situations? This is because my students have been laughed at for using “wrong” grammar.
– Hee Chun Keet
I am not an expert on sports terminology, but I have only seen the term “Team” placed before a country’s name and not any other name. These phrases are also mainly seen in websites related to the Olympics and the A1 Grand Prix. Thus there were Team USA, Team GB (Great Britain), Team Jamaica, etc. during the recent Beijing Olympics. The word order “Team + Country” is used in the official websites of several of these teams as can be seen, for example, in the following sites:
Official Team GB Website for Beijing 2008 Olympic Games
The official website of the U.S. Olympic Committee
Team Jamaica at Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony
In the following excerpt from an A1 Team France website, there is also a reference to Team Ireland.
“With the fourth A1 Grand Prix season completed at Brands Hatch and the title sewn up by A1 Team Ireland on Sunday ...”
I am not sure whether we can use the word “Team” before anything other than a country, like your “Team Perak”. I don’t think there are hard-and-fast rules about this – only conventions and usage.
Also, I have no idea how the convention used in the Olympic Games and A1 came about. Someone suggested to me that since the modern Olympic Games were revived by a Frenchman, Pierre de Coubertin, and since the most important language of the Olympics is French (although English is the second official language), it may be that the names of the teams follow the French word order, ie. noun before adjective. Although the names of the teams all consist of “Team + Country” or “noun + proper noun”, the proper noun indicating the country acts as an adjective, as in “Team Great Britain”, which in normal speech, we would refer to as “the Great Britain Team”.
Are there any readers of this page who know more about this and would like to enlighten us?
The right preposition
I have heard people say “Good luck on...”, “Good luck with...”, “Good luck in...”, “Good luck for...”, and etc. Sometimes, the right prepositions depend on the phrases that follow. Sometimes, more than one preposition is correct. Can you please explain?
– S.W. Low
You are right on both counts.
We say “Good luck on...” when we are wishing someone/some people luck in something that will be happening on a certain day, as can be seen in this excerpt:
Good Luck on Polling Day: Good luck to all Liberal Democrat candidates in the local and London elections on Thursday from the team at ALDC [Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors].
For something (like a sports match) that is going to happen the next day, we use “for” as in:
“Good luck for tomorrow!” We can also say “Good luck for the future!” when saying goodbye to a colleague who is leaving, for example.
We use “in” when someone is starting a new job, for example, as can be seen in the following excerpt:
Good luck in your new job!
guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2008/may/12/goodluckinyournewjobfirs1
We can also use “with” instead of “in” and say “Good luck with your new job!”
“With” can also be used as follows:
Good luck with your move to Portree.
bbc.co.uk/scotland/islandblogging/blogs/005634/0000012005.shtml
When wishing someone good luck before his examinations, we can use “with”, “in” and “for”, but NOT “on”:
Good Luck With Your Exams!
Good luck in your exams: Exam time can be a stressful and worrying time, but here are a few revision and exam tips to help you stay calm, stay focussed and do your best.
shu.ac.uk/ad/aces/goodluck/(shu = Sheffield Hallam University)
And “Good luck for the exams!”
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