What’s the proper way to say 1.5 h?

Do you need any help with this? (Roby Ferrari)

I’ve been told off a couple of times by different English native speakers for saying “an hour and a half”. They insisted I should say “one and a half hours”. Were they right?

After being told off for, apparently, not saying 1.5 h properly, I carried out some research and here’s the result. Were you to search the Internet you’d find three different options we’re going to study:

a) an/one hour and a half
b) one and a half hour
c) one and a half hours

Let’s start with b and c. They differ in the number of the word hour, which is singular in b and plural in c. Since the singular is used to refer to just to one person or thing, and 1.5 is more than 1, the plural needs to be used. Therefore, b is not correct and c is.

Apparently, this is not that obvious and the ongoing debate on whether it is hour or hours has led some native speakers to think that one and a half hours is the only correct way to say it. Poor souls, they couldn’t be more wrong. There’s nothing ungrammatical about an/one hour and a half. Both versions a and c are included as examples in the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. Moreover, option a is almost sixfold more popular than option c in the .uk domain according to Google.

To sum up, the proper ways to say 1.5 h are:

an/one hour and a half
one and a half hours

Or you can always keep it simple and go for 90 minutes.

Check — and use — Tim’s English lesson plans

Are you an English teacher in need for ideas? Or do you just enjoy trying new ways to improve your English — even as a native speaker? Tim’s got the answer to your prayers.

Tim is a British English teacher (meaning that he is British and teaches English, not that he is just someone who teaches British English) who writes a blog with free English lesson plans. Isn’t it great?

If you can’t name this, you do need to check his blog.

In his blog, conversation, grammar, pronunciation, reading, vocabulary and writing lesson plans alternate with official exams preparation, games, recommended websites and other uncategorized stuff.

Being Tim’s [favourite] student in the in-company English programme, I can assure you that his lesson plans work and he is a most devoted teacher, as well as cute; not that this matters, though — to you who don’t see him on a regular basis.

‘El inglés jurídico’ – a book about the English legal language

ALCARAZ, Enrique. El inglés jurídico. Barcelona: Editorial Ariel, 2002.

El ingles jurídico is a book about the English legal language aimed at Spanish translators and law students interested in the English legal system and its equivalences — if any — with the Spanish system. Outstanding as a book might be, it’s no good when it’s outstandingly badly written. In my struggle to understand Alcaraz’s educational strategies I came to these conclusions:

Boring legal content inside.

Giving the translated term (término) next to the original in the text is a simple and effective way to teach it. I take his point on this, since glossaries (glosarios) at the end of the text make the reader stop constantly to check them. They are, nevertheless, better than overusing (abusar) in-text translations (traducciones), which (las cuales) mutilate (mutilan) the text forcing the reader (lector) to go through whole paragraphs several times so as to eliminate interferences and understand the text.

Footnotes¹ are also worth mentioning. Translation footnotes² are useful; and so are explanatory footnotes³, sometimes. However, they occasionally — meaning quite often — take up more space than the main text or refer to footnotes that refer back to the first one.

On the other side, Alcaraz must be congratulated for the well organised structure of the book, which makes the reading much easier. Regarding to content — what’s important in the end —, there’s little I can say. It’s not that I haven’t read the book [I had to read it for the legal translation subject at university]; I just lack legal knowledge background. The chapter on translation is, unfortunately, too short and the examples are either repetitive or poor.

Despite not being my favourite book and costing as much as the whole The Lord of the Rings trilogy, it comes handy as a sort of a bilingual legal dictionary. The funniest thing of the book is to find Charles Dickens’ name translated as Carlos Dickens. Why did Alcaraz do that? Or why didn’t he try and translate his surname too? Was it modesty, maybe?

¹footnote: nota al pie
²See footnote 1.
³Footnotes that explain things, maybe using equally complex words and concepts, but they explain things.

Christmas-in-law

Do you remember that the last post ended with a clue of what I was doing for Christmas? The time has come to reveal the truth.

Black Country dialect.

If yowm saf enuff ter cum dahn ‘ere agooing wum, yowr tay ull be spile’t! Maybe you’ve already recognised this as the Black Country dialect from the West Midlands in England. If you haven’t, the translation into standard English would be: If you’re soft enough to come down here when going home, your tea will be spoiled!

I’m obviously visiting my in-laws. I’d call them out-laws since I’m not married — yet? —, but they don’t do illegal business as far as I know. Anyway, I’m having my first genuinely English Christmas ever. I must admit and celebrate that English Christmas food has nothing to do with the reputation of their everyday gastronomy. I should also add that I won a game of Scrabble against two well-educated native people. Arrogant as it sounds, I don’t intend to show off; I’m just promoting myself as a language professional.

There’s only one thing that bothers me about this whole English holiday. I’m Catalan, therefore my biological clock runs one hour faster than the English clock. Should I celebrate the new year at 11 pm? It’ll be weird to pretend that nothing happens knowing that all my people are already in 2012. But then, I’ve always enjoyed the weird things of life.