01. Vocabulary
02. Vocabulary
03. Vocabulary
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01. Vocabulary
02. Vocabulary
Puedes usar la tarjetas en el ordenador o imprimirlas y plastificarlas.
Para Imprimir la lámina, se recomienda, guardarla primero en el PC.
01. Trace.
Ficha en Inglés, para aprender el colegio, Ideal para facilitar el aprendizaje de este idioma, adquirir vocabulario, practicar la pronunciación, etc. Especialmente en Educación Infantil y Primaria.
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En el día de hoy vamos a hablar de una de esas palabras cortas del inglés que tienen varios significados, hablaremos de la palabra DOPE.
DOPE es un término informal que se que has escuchado mucho en películas,canciones y conversaciones informales, y si te preguntas qué significan y en qué contexto se usan este episodio es para ti!
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“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious. “
Albert Einstein
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Ya entrado en el tema, un significado común de la palabra DOPE que más escucho en el inglés informal es excelente o genial algo así como “cool” haciendo referencia a prendas de vestir, música o artículos materiales en inglés.
Ejemplo: bro, this song is dope! Turn it up!
O si quieres hablar de los zapatos de un amigo… Dices…
Dope shoes, bro! Where’d you get ’em?
Thomas: Otro significado de DOPE que es bueno que sepas y que tambien es comun escuchar entre los nativos es Tonto, Se dice que alguien es “a dope” como sustantivo para decir que es un tonto o un imbécil.
Her cousin is such a dope.
Starlin: Y en esa misma línea tenemos el término dopey, fijate que solo le pongo la Y al final y esto cambia la palabra a un adjetivo que significa, atontado, aletargado.
I’m feeling a bit dopey today. i Didn’t sleep well last night.
Thomas: Excelente, y otro significado de la palabra DOPE es Drogas. Dope se usa para referirse tanto a la marijuana como a la heroína.
Ejemplo: My friend John went to jail for selling dope.
Starlin: Dope también se usa para referirse al que consume drogas, le agregamos la palabra fiend, DOPE FIEND, y tenemos drogadicto.
A couple of dope fiends live under that bridge.
Thomas: Y ya POR ÚLTIMO, Cuando los deportistas se drogan para rendir mejor en la competición, se llama doping, O SEA dopaje
Ejemplo: Alex rodriguez admitted to doping, after years of denying it
Al unirte a Patreon nos apoyas a seguir creando contenido para todo el que quiera aprender inglés y a la vez obtienes acceso a nuestro audio curso de inglés premium y personalizado para aprender ingles a tu ritmo!
Desde los inicios de los tiempos los seres humanos hemos necesitado la comunidad para fortalecernos y crecer juntos y eso no ha cambiado, el ser humano es un ser social y la socialización en torno a un tema de interés común te ayudara a aprender mas rápido, es por esto que te recomiendo que busques una comunidad con tus mismos intereses para que puedas practicar tu inglés, socializar, aprender y compartir lo que sabes, eso de verdad que ayuda mucho.
En EnglishwayRD creemos que la comunidad es importante para el aprendizaje y por eso tenemos nuestro club de inglés en Whatsapp. Únete y comparte y aprende en comunidad.
Starlin santos
Co-fundador de englishwayrd, host del podcast englishwayrd. Profesor de ingles con mas de 5 años de experiencia en la enseñanza del idioma inglés. TEFL certified.
Thomas martinez
Co-fundador de englishwayrd, host del podcast englishwayrd. Profesor de inglés certificado con 4 años de experiencia en la enseñanza del idioma ingles y mas de 1o años en el aprendizaje de inglés. TEFL certified.
Saber cómo expresar una opinión en inglés es muy útil en la vida cotidiana. A todos se nos pide con frecuencia que demos nuestra opinión en las conversaciones. Ya sea sobre la última serie que viste, el libro que leíste o cualquier otro tema de la vida diaria, podemos expresarnos -y lo hacemos- sobre cualquier cosa.
Por suerte es bastante sencillo, sólo hay que conocer algunas frases clave para empezar una frase de opinión.
Con estas tres expresiones, puedes empezar a expresar tu opinión en la mayoría de las conversaciones:
I think that es uno de los más sencillos. I think that it’s true. I think that it’s not true. (Creo que es cierto.Creo que no es cierto).
I agree. (Estoy de acuerdo) Recuerda: No se utiliza así: I am agree.
I disagree. No estoy de acuerdo.
*** "According to" se corresponde con "Según". Se utiliza para citar fuentes. Por ejemplo, "According to the lawyer", "según este article", etc.
En inglés, al igual que en español, los sustantivos pueden utilizarse en singular o en plural. El plural de los sustantivos ingleses se forma añadiendo la terminación -s. Pero ten cuidado. Hay algunas excepciones.
La mayoría forman el plural añadiendo s:
Friend - friends
Book - books
Girl - girls
El plural de los sustantivos terminados en s, ss, x, sh, ch, se forma añadiendo es:
Box - boxes
Watch - watches
Bus - busses
El plural de los sustantivos terminados en y, cuando esta va precedida de consonante, se sustituye la y por i y se añade es:
Baby - babies
Pero si la y sigue a una vocal, sólo se añade s:
Boy - boys
Cuando los sustantivos acaban en o, se añade es, salvo algunas excepciones:
Tomato - tomatoes
Potato - potatoes
Radio - radios
Piano - pianos
Cuando los sustantivos terminan en f o fe pierden esta terminación y se le añade ves:
Shelf - shelves
Wife - wives
En el caso de roof - roofs
Algunos sustantivos tienen plurales irregulares, por lo que te recomendamos que los aprendas de memoria. Aquí están los más comunes:
Woman - women
Foot - feet
Child - children
man - men
mouse - mice
person - people
Algunos sustantivos tienen la misma forma en el plural que en el singular. Este es el caso, por ejemplo, de :(crossroads, headquarters, means, series, species).
A species – two species
A sheep – two sheep
Recursos Educativos en Inglés - Stories in English
Sylvia Seltoun ate her breakfast in the morning-room at Yessney with a pleasant sense of ultimate victory, such as a fervent Ironside might have permitted himself on the morrow of Worcester fight. She was scarcely pugnacious by temperament, but belonged to that more successful class of fighters who are pugnacious by circumstance. Fate had willed that her life should be occupied with a series of small struggles, usually with the odds slightly against her, and usually she had just managed to come through winning. And now she felt that she had brought her hardest and certainly her most important struggle to a successful issue. To have married Mortimer Seltoun, "Dead Mortimer" as his more intimate enemies called him, in the teeth of the cold hostility of his family, and in spite of his unaffected indifference to women, was indeed an achievement that had needed some determination and adroitness to carry through; yesterday she had brought her victory to its concluding stage by wrenching her husband away from Town and its group of satellite watering-places and "settling him down," in the vocabulary of her kind, in this remote wood-girt manor farm which was his country house.
"You will never get Mortimer to go," his mother had said carpingly, "but if he once goes he'll stay; Yessney throws almost as much a spell over him as Town does. One can understand what holds him to Town, but Yessney--" and the dowager had shrugged her shoulders.
There was a sombre almost savage wildness about Yessney that was certainly not likely to appeal to town-bred tastes, and Sylvia, notwithstanding her name, was accustomed to nothing much more sylvan than "leafy Kensington." She looked on the country as something excellent and wholesome in its way, which was apt to become troublesome if you encouraged it overmuch. Distrust of townlife had been a new thing with her, born of her marriage with Mortimer, and she had watched with satisfaction the gradual fading of what she called "the Jermyn-Street-look" in his eyes as the woods and heather of Yessney had closed in on them yesternight. Her will-power and strategy had prevailed; Mortimer would stay. Outside the morning-room windows was a triangular slope of turf, which the indulgent might call a lawn, and beyond its low hedge of neglected fuschia bushes a steeper slope of heather and bracken dropped down into cavernous combes overgrown with oak and yew. In its wild open savagery there seemed a stealthy linking of the joy of life with the terror of unseen things. Sylvia smiled complacently as she gazed with a School-of-Art appreciation at the landscape, and then of a sudden she almost shuddered.
"It is very wild," she said to Mortimer, who had joined her; "one could almost think that in such a place the worship of Pan had never quite died out."
"The worship of Pan never has died out," said Mortimer. "Other newer gods have drawn aside his votaries from time to time, but he is the Nature-God to whom all must come back at last. He has been called the Father of all the Gods, but most of his children have been stillborn."
Sylvia was religious in an honest, vaguely devotional kind of way, and did not like to hear her beliefs spoken of as mere aftergrowths, but it was at least something new and hopeful to hear Dead Mortimer speak with such energy and conviction on any subject.
"You don't really believe in Pan?" she asked incredulously.
"I've been a fool in most things," said Mortimer quietly, "but I'm not such a fool as not to believe in Pan when I'm down here. And if you're wise you won't disbelieve in him too boastfully while you're in his country."
It was not till a week later, when Sylvia had exhausted the attractions of the woodland walks round Yessney, that she ventured on a tour of inspection of the farm buildings. A farmyard suggested in her mind a scene of cheerful bustle, with churns and flails and smiling dairymaids, and teams of horses drinking knee-deep in duck-crowded ponds. As she wandered among the gaunt grey buildings of Yessney manor farm her first impression was one of crushing stillness and desolation, as though she had happened on some lone deserted homestead long given over to owls and cobwebs; then came a sense of furtive watchful hostility, the same shadow of unseen things that seemed to lurk in the wooded combes and coppices. From behind heavy doors and shuttered windows came the restless stamp of hoof or rasp of chain halter, and at times a muffled bellow from some stalled beast. From a distant comer a shaggy dog watched her with intent unfriendly eyes; as she drew near it slipped quietly into its kennel, and slipped out again as noiselessly when she had passed by. A few hens, questing for food under a rick, stole away under a gate at her approach. Sylvia felt that if she had come across any human beings in this wilderness of barn and byre they would have fled wraith-like from her gaze. At last, turning a corner quickly, she came upon a living thing that did not fly from her. Astretch in a pool of mud was an enormous sow, gigantic beyond the town-woman's wildest computation of swine-flesh, and speedily alert to resent and if necessary repel the unwonted intrusion. It was Sylvia's turn to make an unobtrusive retreat. As she threaded her way past rickyards and cowsheds and long blank walls, she started suddenly at a strange sound - the echo of a boy's laughter, golden and equivocal. Jan, the only boy employed on the farm, a tow-headed, wizen-faced yokel, was visibly at work on a potato clearing half-way up the nearest hill-side, and Mortimer, when questioned, knew of no other probable or possible begetter of the hidden mockery that had ambushed Sylvia's retreat. The memory of that untraceable echo was added to her other impressions of a furtive sinister "something" that hung around Yessney.
Of Mortimer she saw very little; farm and woods and trout- streams seemed to swallow him up from dawn till dusk. Once, following the direction she had seen him take in the morning, she came to an open space in a nut copse, further shut in by huge yew trees, in the centre of which stood a stone pedestal surmounted by a small bronze figure of a youthful Pan. It was a beautiful piece of workmanship, but her attention was chiefly held by the fact that a newly cut bunch of grapes had been placed as an offering at its feet. Grapes were none too plentiful at the manor house, and Sylvia snatched the bunch angrily from the pedestal. Contemptuous annoyance dominated her thoughts as she strolled slowly homeward, and then gave way to a sharp feeling of something that was very near fright; across a thick tangle of undergrowth a boy's face was scowling at her, brown and beautiful, with unutterably evil eyes. It was a lonely pathway, all pathways round Yessney were lonely for the matter of that, and she sped forward without waiting to give a closer scrutiny to this sudden apparition. It was not till she had reached the house that she discovered that she had dropped the bunch of grapes in her flight.
"I saw a youth in the wood today," she told Mortimer that evening, "brown-faced and rather handsome, but a scoundrel to look at. A gipsy lad, I suppose."
"A reasonable theory," said Mortimer, "only there aren't any gipsies in these parts at present."
"Then who was he?" asked Sylvia, and as Mortimer appeared to have no theory of his own she passed on to recount her finding of the votive offering.
"I suppose it was your doing," she observed; "it's a harmless piece of lunacy, but people would think you dreadfully silly if they knew of it."
"Did you meddle with it in any way?" asked Mortimer.
"I - I threw the grapes away. It seemed so silly," said Sylvia, watching Mortimer's impassive face for a sign of annoyance.
"I don't think you were wise to do that," he said reflectively. "I've heard it said that the Wood Gods are rather horrible to those who molest them."
"Horrible perhaps to those that believe in them, but you see I don't," retorted Sylvia.
"All the same," said Mortimer in his even, dispassionate tone, "I should avoid the woods and orchards if I were you, and give a wide berth to the horned beasts on the farm."
It was all nonsense, of course, but in that lonely wood-girt spot nonsense seemed able to rear a bastard brood of uneasiness.
"Mortimer," said Sylvia suddenly, "I think we will go back to Town some time soon."
Her victory had not been so complete as she had supposed; it had carried her on to ground that she was already anxious to quit.
"I don't think you will ever go back to Town," said Mortimer. He seemed to be paraphrasing his mother's prediction as to himself.
Sylvia noted with dissatisfaction and some self-contempt that the course of her next afternoon's ramble took her instinctively clear of the network of woods. As to the horned cattle, Mortimer's warning was scarcely needed, for she had always regarded them as of doubtful neutrality at the best: her imagination
unsexed the most matronly dairy cows and turned them into bulls liable to "see red" at any moment. The ram who fed in the narrow paddock below the orchards she had adjudged, after ample and cautious probation, to be of docile temper; today, however, she decided to leave his docility untested, for the usually tranquil beast was roaming with every sign of restlessness from corner to corner of his meadow. A low, fitful piping, as of some reedy flute, was coming from the depth of a neighbouring copse, and there seemed to be some subtle connection between the animal's restless pacing and the wild music from the wood. Sylvia turned her steps in an upward direction and climbed the heather-clad slopes that stretched in rolling shoulders high above Yessney. She had left the piping notes behind her, but across the wooded combes at her feet the wind brought her another kind of music, the straining bay of hounds in full chase. Yessney was just on the outskirts of the Devon-and-Somerset country, and the hunted deer sometimes came that way. Sylvia could presently see a dark body, breasting hill after hill, and sinking again and again out of sight as he crossed the combes, while behind him steadily swelled that relentless chorus, and she grew tense with the excited sympathy that one feels for any hunted thing in whose capture one is not directly interested. And at last he broke through the outermost line of oak scrub and fern and stood panting in the open, a fat September stag carrying a well-furnished head. His obvious course was to drop down to the brown pools of Undercombe, and thence make his way towards the red deer's favoured sanctuary, the sea. To Sylvia's surprise, however, he turned his head to the upland slope and came lumbering resolutely onward over the heather. "It will be dreadful," she thought, "the hounds will pull him down under my very eyes." But the music of the pack seemed to have died away for a moment, and in its place she heard again that wild piping, which rose now on this side, now on that, as though urging the failing stag to a final effort. Sylvia stood well aside from his path, half hidden in a thick growth of whortle bushes, and watched him swing stiffly upward, his flanks dark with sweat, the coarse hair on his neck showing light by contrast. The pipe music shrilled suddenly around her, seeming to come from the bushes at her very feet, and at the same moment the great beast slewed round and bore directly down upon her. In an instant her pity for the hunted animal was changed to wild terror at her own danger; the thick heather roots mocked her scrambling efforts at flight, and she looked frantically downward for a glimpse of oncoming hounds. The huge antler spikes were within a few yards of her, and in a flash of numbing fear she remembered Mortimer's warning, to beware of horned beasts on the farm. And then with a quick throb of joy she saw that she was not alone; a human figure stood a few paces aside, knee-deep in the whortle bushes.
"Drive it off!" she shrieked. But the figure made no answering movement.
The antlers drove straight at her breast, the acrid smell of the hunted animal was in her nostrils, but her eyes were filled with the horror of something she saw other than her oncoming death. And in her ears rang the echo of a boy's laughter, golden and equivocal.
Recursos Educativos en Inglés - Stories in English
It was during the Retreat of the Eighty Thousand, and the authority of the Censorship is sufficient excuse for not being more explicit. But it was on the most awful day of that awful time, on the day when ruin and disaster came so near that their shadow fell over London far away; and, without any certain news, the hearts of men failed within them and grew faint; as if the agony of the army in the battlefield had entered into their souls.
On this dreadful day, then, when three hundred thousand men in arms with all their artillery swelled like a flood against the little English company, there was one point above all other points in our battle line that was for a time in awful danger, not merely of defeat, but of utter annihilation. With the permission of the Censorship and of the military expert, this corner may, perhaps, be described as a salient, and if this angle were crushed and broken, then the English force as a whole would be shattered, the Allied left would be turned, and Sedan would inevitably follow.
All the morning the German guns had thundered and shrieked against this corner, and against the thousand or so of men who held it. The men joked at the shells, and found funny names for them, and had bets about them, and greeted them with scraps of music-hall songs. But the shells came on and burst, and tore good Englishmen limb from limb, and tore brother from brother, and as the heat of the day increased so did the fury of that terrific cannonade. There was no help, it seemed. The English artillery was good, but there was not nearly enough of it; it was being steadily battered into scrap iron.
There comes a moment in a storm at sea when people say to one another, "It is at its worst; it can blow no harder," and then there is a blast ten times more fierce than any before it. So it was in these British trenches.
There were no stouter hearts in the whole world than the hearts of these men; but even they were appalled as this seven-times-heated hell of the German cannonade fell upon them and overwhelmed them and destroyed them. And at this very moment they saw from their trenches that a tremendous host was moving against their lines. Five hundred of the thousand remained, and as far as they could see the German infantry was pressing on against them, column upon column, a gray world of men, ten thousand of them, as it appeared afterwards.
There was no hope at all. They shook hands, some of them. One man improvised a new version of the battle-song, "Good-by, good-by to Tipperary," ending with "And we shan't get there." And they all went on firing steadily. The officer pointed out that such an opportunity for high-class fancy shooting might never occur again; the Tipperary humorist asked, "What price Sidney Street?" And the few machine guns did their best. But everybody knew it was of no use. The dead gray bodies lay in companies and battalions, as others came on and on and on, and they swarmed and stirred, and advanced from beyond and beyond.
"World without end. Amen," said one of the British soldiers with some irrelevance as he took aim and fired. And then he remembered—he says he cannot think why or wherefore—a queer vegetarian restaurant in London where he had once or twice eaten eccentric dishes of cutlets made of lentils and nuts that pretended to be steak. On all the plates in this restaurant there was printed a figure of St. George in blue, with the motto, "Adsit Anglis Sanctus Georgius"—"May St. George be a present help to the English." This soldier happened to know Latin and other useless things, and now, as he fired at his man in the gray advancing mass—three hundred yards away—he uttered the pious vegetarian motto. He went on firing to the end, and at last Bill on his right had to clout him cheerfully over the head to make him stop, pointing out as he did so that the King's ammunition cost money and was not lightly to be wasted in drilling funny patterns into dead Germans.
For as the Latin scholar uttered his invocation he felt something between a shudder and an electric shock pass through his body. The roar of the battle died down in his ears to a gentle murmur; instead of it, he says, he heard a great voice and a shout louder than a thunder-peal crying, "Array, array, array!"
His heart grew hot as a burning coal, it grew cold as ice within him, as it seemed to him that a tumult of voices answered to his summons. He heard, or seemed to hear, thousands shouting: "St. George! St. George!"
"Ha! Messire, ha! sweet Saint, grant us good deliverance!"
"St. George for merry England!"
"Harow! Harow! Monseigneur St. George, succor us!"
"Ha! St. George! Ha! St. George! a long bow and a strong bow."
"Heaven's Knight, aid us!"
And as the soldier heard these voices he saw before him, beyond the trench, a long line of shapes, with a shining about them. They were like men who drew the bow, and with another shout, their cloud of arrows flew singing and tingling through the air towards the German hosts.
The other men in the trench were firing all the while. They had no hope; but they aimed just as if they had been shooting at Bisley.
Suddenly one of them lifted up his voice in the plainest English.
"Gawd help us!" he bellowed to the man next to him, "but we're blooming marvels! Look at those gray ... gentlemen, look at them! D'ye see them? They're not going down in dozens nor in 'undreds; it's thousands, it is. Look! look! there's a regiment gone while I'm talking to ye."
"Shut it!" the other soldier bellowed, taking aim, "what are ye gassing about?"
But he gulped with astonishment even as he spoke, for, indeed, the gray men were falling by the thousands. The English could hear the guttural scream of the German officers, the crackle of their revolvers as they shot the reluctant; and still line after line crashed to the earth.
All the while the Latin-bred soldier heard the cry:
"Harow! Harow! Monseigneur, dear Saint, quick to our aid! St. George help us!"
"High Chevalier, defend us!"
The singing arrows fled so swift and thick that they darkened the air, the heathen horde melted from before them.
"More machine guns!" Bill yelled to Tom.
"Don't hear them," Tom yelled back.
"But, thank God, anyway; they've got it in the neck."
In fact, there were ten thousand dead German soldiers left before that salient of the English army, and consequently there was no Sedan. In Germany, a country ruled by scientific principles, the Great General Staff decided that the contemptible English must have employed shells containing an unknown gas of a poisonous nature, as no wounds were discernible on the bodies of the dead German soldiers. But the man who knew what nuts tasted like when they called themselves steak knew also that St. George had brought his Agincourt Bowmen to help the English.
A todos nos acomoda más un método antes que otro, eso es verdad, pero lo que es cierto es que hay pasos a seguir que
nos facilitarán aprender Inglés ¡desde cero!
Por eso hoy aquí te compartimos 5 Pasos para aprender inglés desde cero:
1.- Comienza Escuchando.
El primer paso es escuchar. Leer y escribir debe llegar más adelante, cuando tu oído esté más entrenado para comprender
acentos, pronunciación, y vocabulario. Muchas personas no han podido hacer esto porque tradicionalmente se ha
enseñado primero la gramática, a leer y a escribir; aprende primero a comunicarte de forma oral y lo demás vendrá más
fácil.
2.- Ponte Objetivos Medibles.
Decir: Aprender Inglés rápido no es un objetivo que puedas medir…¿qué tanto es rápido? ¿En cuánto tiempo? Mejor ponte
objetivos como: Aprender 10 palabras al día, aprender 5 frases a la semana, leer 10 páginas y comprenderlas en un mes,
etc.
3.- Olvida lo que sabes.
La gramática en Inglés es completamente diferente a la española, pero ¡no te espantes! Es mucho más fácil. Olvida lo que
sabes de tu lengua madre y comienza a pensar diferente.
4.- Busca con quien conversar.
La manera más fácil de aprender es realmente sumergirte en ese idioma, y nunca lo lograrás si solamente hablas con tus
amigos y familiares que hablan tú mismo idioma. Busca amigos con quién tomar un café y conversar en Inglés, o ¡únete a
un Club de Conversación!
5.- ¡Diviértete!
Para aprender inglés de forma divertida debes buscar formas que se ajusten a tu forma de aprender y que lo puedas hacer
de forma automática como escuchar una canción en inglés, ¡podcast o leer un anime!
Al unirte a Patreon nos apoyas a seguir creando contenido para todo el que quiera aprender inglés y a la vez obtienes acceso a nuestro audio curso de inglés premium y personalizado para aprender ingles a tu ritmo!
I live in Spain. (= Vivo en España.)
Where are you going? (= ¿A dónde vas?)
I’m so tired! (= ¡Estoy tan cansada!)
I met my friend, we went to the museum together, and then she went home.
Me encontré con mi amiga, fuimos juntos al museo, y luego ella se fue a casa.
For lunch I had chicken, french fries, a piece of bread and cheese.
Para el almuerzo comí pollo, papas fritas, un pedazo de pan y queso.
I’m French = soy francés.
I love the Irish = Amo a los irlandeses.
The Israeli and Palestinian people= los pueblos israelí y palestino
El punto final se utiliza para marcar el final de una frase declarativa, simplemente.
Como el punto final, termina una frase, con un toque de sorpresa o una emoción abrupta.
Es el signo de puntuación que se utiliza para terminar una frase en forma de pregunta directa.
Observa que las preguntas indirectas no llaman al signo de interrogación, sino el punto final.
La coma, que se coloca dentro de una frase y nunca al final.
La coma se utiliza para separar elementos de la oración, por ejemplo, en una enumeración (con sustantivos, adjetivos, verbos...).
La coma inglesa también se coloca después de ciertos adverbios y conectores lógicos cuando aparecen al principio de una frase (still, in fact, moreover, however, therefore... aún, de hecho, por lo tanto...).
Otros adverbios (no necesariamente colocados al principio de una frase) pueden ir precedidos o seguidos de una coma, aunque no sea obligatorio (too, then, yet, so, instead… también, entonces, sin embargo, por lo tanto, en su lugar...).
También hay que tener en cuenta que la coma puede ser utilizada en las fechas.
Tal vez te has encontrado con este término, sin necesariamente entenderlo bien. Vamos a entrar en más detalles. La coma de Oxford, también llamada coma en serie o coma de Harvard por los americanos consiste en colocar una coma después del último elemento de una enumeración y antes de la conjunción coordinada (and, or ou nor) - (y, o o ni).
Esta coma adicional se recomienda en frases que pueden contener ambigüedad.
Un ejemplo de esto sería:
Comparemos con la misma frase, sin la coma de Oxford:
Estas dos frases pueden ser interpretadas de forma diferente, debido a la coma.
Tomemos el primer caso de nuevo:
Aquí el orador dice que conoció a un grupo de chicas y a Sarah y Jessica.
Ahora veamos el segundo caso:
Esta frase puede ser entendida como la anterior (las chicas Y Sarah Y Jessica), pero no únicamente.
De esta manera, también puede entenderse que el orador ha conocido a las chicas, que son Sarah y Jessica. El elemento las chicas es un grupo del que Sarah y Jessica son miembros. La coma de Oxford, por lo tanto, hace que la frase sea más precisa en la mente del lector y elimina cualquier riesgo de confusión.
En algunas listas más simples, por otra parte, el uso de la coma de Oxford no está necesariamente justificado.
Es posible añadir una coma antes de y (I need bread, butter, and milk.), pero en cualquier caso se entiende que el hablante necesita tres alimentos, sin ninguna ambigüedad posible.
Así que asegúrate de usar la coma de Oxford en las frases que puedan ser interpretadas de varias maneras, para dejar claro su punto.
Los dos puntos tienen varios usos:
We need politicians who are: honest, energetic and relatable. Necesitamos políticos que sean: honestos, enérgicos y afines.
I had an awful day: I lost my car key and had to walk in the rain. Tuve un día horrible: Perdí las llaves del coche y tuve que caminar bajo la lluvia.
El punto y coma tiene dos usos principales.
En primer lugar, permite yuxtaponer dos propuestas independientes, sin necesidad de una conjunción coordinada comme and, but ou or).
El punto y coma también puede ser usado en listas complejas para completar las comas.
Ten cuidado, el guión no tiene nada que ver con el guión, representado por un -.
Hay varios tipos de guiones en inglés, aquí están los principales:
El guión (largo o corto) puede utilizarse para aislar un elemento del resto de la frase.
El guión largo tiene dos usos más. Primero, puede usarse para marcar una interrupción en la oración.
Por último, puede usarse para indicar quién es el autor de una cita.
For example:
Como su nombre lo indica, se utilizan para introducir una cita en la frase.
También se pueden usar para marcar una distancia, un matiz de ironía en relación con la declaración.
Cómo decir la fecha en inglés - How to say the date in English
Construir frases simples - To build a simple sentence
Nombres contables e incontables en inglés
Presente continuo - Forma Interrogativa
Cómo Preguntar y decir el precio en inglés
Suelen asustar a los estudiantes de inglés: aquí está la lista de verbos irregulares en inglés.
Algunos verbos terminan con ED en el pretérito y el participio pasado. Por ejemplo, el verbo To dance tiene la forma pretérita danced (por ejemplo, I danced) y la forma de participio pasado danced (por ejemplo, I have danced).
Esto funciona para todos los verbos REGULARES. Sin embargo, algunos verbos (y hay bastantes) son IRREGULARES en inglés: sus pretéritos y participios pasados no terminan en ED.
Esta es una lista alfabética de los principales verbos irregulares en inglés.
| Verbo en español | Infinitive | Simple Past |
Past Participle |
| surgir | arise | arose | arisen |
| ser | be | was / were | been |
| golpear | beat | beat | beaten |
| convertirse | become | became | become |
| comenzar | begin | began | begun |
| apostar | bet | bet/betted | bet/betted |
| morder | bite | bit | bitten |
| sangrar | bleed | bled | bled |
| soplar | blow | blew | blown |
| romper | break | broke | broken |
| traer | bring | brought | brought |
| construir | build | built | built |
| comprar | buy | bought | bought |
| atrapar | catch | caught | caught |
| elegir | choose | chose | chosen |
| venir | come | came | come |
| costar | cost | cost | cost |
| arrastrarse | creep | crept | crept |
| cortar | cut | cut | cut |
| dar, repartir | deal | dealt | dealt |
| hacer | do | did | done |
| dibujar | draw | drew | drawn |
| soñar | dream | dreamt/dreamed | dreamt/dreamed |
| beber | drink | drank | drunk |
| conducir | drive | drove | driven |
| comer | eat | ate | eaten |
| caer | fall | fell | fallen |
| alimentar | feed | fed | fed |
| sentir | feel | felt | felt |
| pelear | fight | fought | fought |
| encontrar | find | found | found |
| huir | flee | fled | fled |
| volar | fly | flew | flown |
| olvidar | forget | forgot | forgotten |
| perdonar | forgive | forgave | forgiven |
| abandonar | forsake | forsook | forsaken |
| congelar | freeze | froze | frozen |
| tener, obtener | get | got | got |
| dar | give | gave | given |
| ir | go | went | gone |
| moler | grind | ground | ground |
| crecer | grow | grew | grown |
| colgar | hang | hung | hung |
| tener | have | had | had |
| oír | hear | heard | heard |
| esconderse | hide | hid | hidden |
| golpear | hit | hit | hit |
| tener, mantener | hold | held | held |
| herir, doler | hurt | hurt | hurt |
| guardar | keep | kept | kept |
| arrodillarse | kneel | knelt | knelt |
| saber | know | knew | known |
| encabezar | lead | led | led |
| aprender | learn | learnt/learned | learnt/learned |
| dejar | leave | left | left |
| prestar | lend | lent | lent |
| dejar | let | let | let |
| yacer | lie | lay | lain |
| perder | lose | lost | lost |
| hacer | make | made | made |
| significar | mean | meant | meant |
| conocer, encontrar | meet | met | met |
| pagar | pay | paid | paid |
| poner | put | put | put |
| abandonar | quit | quit/quitted | quit/quitted |
| leer | read | read | read |
| montar, ir | ride | rode | ridden |
| llamar por teléfono | ring | rang | rung |
| elevar | rise | rose | risen |
| correr | run | ran | run |
| decir | say | said | said |
| ver | see | saw | seen |
| vender | sell | sold | sold |
| enviar | send | sent | sent |
| fijar | set | set | set |
| coser | sew | sewed | sewn/sewed |
| sacudir | shake | shook | shaken |
| brillar | shine | shone | shone |
| disparar | shoot | shot | shot |
| mostrar | show | showed | shown/showed |
| encoger | shrink | shrank/shrunk | shrunk |
| cerrar | shut | shut | shut |
| cantar | sing | sang | sung |
| hundir | sink | sank | sunk |
| sentarse | sit | sat | sat |
| dormir | sleep | slept | slept |
| deslizar | slide | slid | slid |
| sembrar | sow | sowed | sown/sowed |
| hablar | speak | spoke | spoken |
| deletrear | spell | spelt/spelled | spelt/spelled |
| gastar | spend | spent | spent |
| derramar | spill | spilt/spilled | spilt/spilled |
| partir | split | split | split |
| estropear | spoil | spoilt/spoiled | spoilt/spoiled |
| extenderse | spread | spread | spread |
| estar de pie | stand | stood | stood |
| robar | steal | stole | stolen |
| picar | sting | stung | stung |
| apestar | stink | stank/stunk | stunk |
| golpear | strike | struck | struck |
| jurar | swear | swore | sworn |
| barrer | sweep | swept | swept |
| nadar | swim | swam | swum |
| tomar | take | took | taken |
| enseñar | teach | taught | taught |
| romper | tear | tore | torn |
| decir | tell | told | told |
| pensar | think | thought | thought |
| lanzar | throw | threw | thrown |
| pisar | tread | trode | trodden/trod |
| entender | understand | understood | understood |
| despertarse | wake | woke | woken |
| llevar puesto | wear | wore | worn |
| tejer | weave | wove | woven |
| llorar | weep | wept | wept |
| ganar | win | won | won |
| retorcer | wring | wrung | wrung |
| escribir | write | wrote | written |
Hay muchos más verbos irregulares en inglés, esta lista es incompleta y representa sólo los más comunes.
Recursos Educativos en Inglés - Stories in English
Of two men who were talking one was a physician.
'I sent for you, Doctor,' said the other, 'but I don't think you can do me any good. Maybe you can recommend a specialist in psychopathy. I fancy I'm a bit loony.'
'You look all right,' the physician said.
'You shall judge -- I have hallucinations. I wake every night and see in my room, intently watching me, a big black Newfoundland dog with a white forefoot.'
'You say you wake; are you sure about that? "Hallucinations" are sometimes only dreams.'
'Oh, I wake all right. Sometimes I lie still a long time, looking at the dog as earnestly as the dog looks at me -- I always leave the light going. When I can't endure it any longer I sit up in bed -- and nothing is there!
''M, 'm -- what is the beast's expression?'
'It seems to me sinister. Of course I know that, except in art, an animal's face in repose has always the same expression. But this is not a real animal. Newfoundland dogs are pretty mild looking, you know; what's the matter with this one?"
'Really, my diagnosis would have no value: I am not going to treat the dog.'
The physician laughed at his own pleasantry, but narrowly watched his patient from the corner of his eye. Presently he said: 'Fleming, your description of the beast fits the dog of the late Atwell Barton.'
Fleming half rose from his chair, sat again and made a visible attempt at indifference. 'I remember Barton,' he said; 'I believe he was -- it was reported that -- wasn't there something suspicious in his death?'
Looking squarely now into the eyes of his patient, the physician said: 'Three years ago the body of your old enemy, Atwell Barton, was found in the woods near his house and yours. He had been stabbed to death. There have been no arrests; there was no clue. Some of us had "theories." I had one. Have you?"
'I? Why, bless your soul, what could I know about it? You remember that I left for Europe almost immediately afterward -- a considerable time afterward. In the few weeks since my return you could not expect me to construct a "theory." In fact, I have not given the matter a thought. What about his dog?"
'It was first to find the body. It died of starvation on his grave.'
We do not know the inexorable law underlying coincidences. Staley Fleming did not, or he would perhaps not have sprung to his feet as the night wind brought in through the open window the long wailing howl of a distant dog. He strode several times across the room in the steadfast gaze of the physician; then, abruptly confronting him, almost shouted: 'What has all this to do with my trouble, Dr. Halderman? You forget why you were sent for.' Rising, the physician laid his hand upon his patient's arm and said, gently: 'Pardon me. I cannot diagnose your disorder offhand -- to-morrow, perhaps. Please go to bed, leaving your door unlocked; I will pass the night here with your books. Can you call me without rising?"
'Yes, there is an electric bell.'
'Good. If anything disturbs you push the button without sitting up. Good night.'
Comfortably installed in an arm-chair the man of medicine stared into the glowing coals and thought deeply and long, but apparently to little purpose, for he frequently rose and opening a door leading to the staircase, listened intently; then resumed his seat. Presently, however, he fell asleep, and when he woke it was past midnight. He stirred the failing fire, lifted a book from the table at his side and looked at the title. It was Denneker's Meditations. He opened it at random and began to read:
'Forasmuch as it is ordained of God that all flesh hath spirit and thereby taketh on spiritual powers, so, also, the spirit hath powers of the flesh, even when it is gone out of the flesh and liveth as a thing apart, as many a violence performed by wraith and lemure sheweth. And there be who say that man is not single in this, but the beasts have the like evil inducement, and -- '
The reading was interrupted by a shaking of the house, as by the fall of a heavy object. The reader flung down the book, rushed from the room and mounted the stairs to Fleming's bed-chamber. He tried the door, but contrary to his instructions it was locked. He set his shoulder against it with such force that it gave way. On the floor near the disordered bed, in his night-clothes, lay Fleming, gasping away his life.
The physician raised the dying man's head from the floor and observed a wound in the throat. 'I should have thought of this,' he said, believing it suicide.
When the man was dead an examination disclosed the unmistakable marks of an animal's fangs deeply sunken into the jugular vein.
But there was no animal.
It was a dark, rainy night at eight o’clock on the thirty-first of October. Andy and his friend Paul were walking home together as usual. But this night was different. It was Halloween. As they were walking along a large, black cat jumped out in front of them and ran off into the night. They looked up into the sky and saw a light shining. It glowed red, then blue then green and gold. “What was it?” they wondered.
The air felt still and cold. It had stopped raining and everything was creepy. It felt like something was going to happen. Andy and Paul went past a very old house. It was a huge old house which was deserted. The house lay in a big, shadowy garden, surrounded by trees. As they were going past the house they heard a strange noise. It was a long, low howling noise. "Maybe it's a dog," said Paul, trying not to be scared. "It must be in trouble. Let's go and see," said Andy. They passed through the old rusty gates and crept along the path towards the door of the house. It was so dark that they could hardly see. The wind whistled through the trees. Again they heard the low howling sound, coming from the house. Oooooh! Oooooh! "I don't think it's a dog," said Andy. "You're just a scaredy cat!" said Paul. "Come on, let's go inside." They went up the stairs and pushed open the front door. It creaked loudly and fell open with a bang. The air felt cool and clammy and creepy. Paul walked into the hallway. An enormous spider's web hit him in the face and he screamed. "Aaagh!" "It's only a spider's web," said Andy. They went into a large room on the ground floor. On the wall over the fireplace hung a huge mirror. They looked into the mirror and saw lights dancing inside it. Then suddenly a huge ghostly head came out of the mirror and tried to grab them! 'Aaagh!' they both screamed and turned and ran to the front door - but it was shut! What was happening to them? Then they heard the howling noise again. It was coming from upstairs. They had no choice. They tiptoed silently up the stairs. They listened again. The noise was coming from a room at the end of the corridor. They moved slowly towards the door. They felt really afraid. What would they see? What horrible thing would they find behind the door? They went into the room. They couldn't believe their eyes. They saw the most amazing collection of witches and monsters and ghosts - and they were all having a party! The witches were disco dancing, the wizards were drinking their special brew and jumping around, the monsters were eating exploding lollipops and other exciting sweets. There were bats wing cocktails, worm-flavoured crisps and pumpkin surprise pizzas. In fact there was everything for a Halloween party. They found out that the howling noise was a ghost called Grimly, who was providing the singing entertainment for the evening. Paul and Andy drank several bats wing cocktails and then Paul danced with the ugliest witch at the party - she had a green head and no teeth. Andy danced with a spectacular purple headed monster who taught him a new dance called the 'Monster Boogie'. Everyone had a wonderful time and danced until dawn. When the sun came up they all went off to their ghostly homes agreeing that it was the best Halloween party ever. "See you next year," they shouted to Paul and Andy, "and Happy Halloween!"
Thanks so much to Dennis for sending in this story.
Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to.
Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.
The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot -- say Saint Paul's Churchyard for instance -- literally to astonish his son's weak mind.
Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names. It was all the same to him.
Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge. a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.
External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often came down handsomely, and Scrooge never did.
Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, 'My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?' No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o'clock no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind men's dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, 'No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!'
But what did Scrooge care? It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call 'nuts' to Scrooge.
Once upon a time -- of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve -- old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside, go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already -- it had not been light all day -- and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought that Nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.
The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn't replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of a strong imagination, he failed.
'A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!' cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge's nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.
'Bah!' said Scrooge, 'Humbug!'
He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge's, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.
'Christmas a humbug, uncle!' said Scrooge's nephew. 'You don't mean that, I am sure?'
'I do,' said Scrooge. 'Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough.'
'Come, then,' returned the nephew gaily. 'What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You're rich enough.'
Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said, 'Bah!' again; and followed it up with 'Humbug!'
'Don't be cross, uncle.' said the nephew.
'What else can I be,' returned the uncle, 'when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas. What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in them through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could work my will,' said Scrooge indignantly,'every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!'
'Uncle!' pleaded the nephew.
'Nephew!' returned the uncle, sternly, 'keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.'
'Keep it!' repeated Scrooge's nephew. 'But you don't keep it.'
'Let me leave it alone, then,' said Scrooge. 'Much good may it do you! Much good it has ever done you!'
'There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,' returned the nephew. 'Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round -apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that- as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!'
The clerk in the tank involuntarily applauded. Becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety, he poked the fire, and extinguished the last frail spark for ever.
'Let me hear another sound from you,' said Scrooge, 'and you'll keep your Christmas by losing your situation! You're quite a powerful speaker, sir,' he added, turning to his nephew. 'I wonder you don't go into Parliament.'
'Don't be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us tomorrow.'
Scrooge said that he would see him-yes, indeed he did. He went the whole length of the expression, and said that he would see him in that extremity first.
'But why?' cried Scrooge's nephew. 'Why?'
'Why did you get married?' said Scrooge.
'Because I fell in love.'
'Because you fell in love!' growled Scrooge, as if that were the only one thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas. 'Good afternoon!'
'Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why give it as a reason for not coming now?'
'Good afternoon,' said Scrooge.
'I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends?'
Good afternoon,' said Scrooge.
'I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have never had any quarrel, to which I have been a party. But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas humour to the last. So A Merry Christmas, uncle!'
'Good afternoon.' said Scrooge.
'And A Happy New Year!'
'Good afternoon!' said Scrooge.
His nephew left the room without an angry word, notwithstanding. He stopped at the outer door to bestow the greeting of the season on the clerk, who, cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge; for he returned them cordially.
'There's another fellow,' muttered Scrooge; who overheard him: 'my clerk, with fifteen shillings a week, and a wife and family, talking about a merry Christmas. I'll retire to Bedlam.'
The clerk, in letting Scrooge's nephew out, had let two other people in. They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood, with their hats off, in Scrooge's office. They had books and papers in their hands, and bowed to him.
'Scrooge and Marley's, I believe,' said one of the gentlemen, referring to his list. 'Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr Scrooge, or Mr Marley?'
'Mr Marley has been dead these seven years,' Scrooge replied. 'He died seven years ago, this very night.'
'We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving partner,' said the gentleman, presenting his credentials.
It certainly was, for they had been two kindred spirits. At the ominous word liberality, Scrooge frowned, and shook his head, and handed the credentials back.
'At this festive season of the year, Mr Scrooge,' said the gentleman, taking up a pen, 'it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.'
'Are there no prisons?' asked Scrooge.
'Plenty of prisons,' said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
'And the Union workhouses.' demanded Scrooge. 'Are they still in operation?'
'They are. Still,' returned the gentleman,' I wish I could say they were not.'
'The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?' said Scrooge.
'Both very busy, sir.'
'Oh. I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,' said Scrooge. 'I'm very glad to hear it.'
'Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,' returned the gentleman, 'a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?' 'Nothing!' Scrooge replied.
'You wish to be anonymous?'
'I wish to be left alone,' said Scrooge. 'Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned-they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there.'
'Many can't go there; and many would rather die.'
'If they would rather die,' said Scrooge, 'they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides-excuse me-I don't know that.'
'But you might know it,' observed the gentleman.
'It's not my business,' Scrooge returned. 'It's enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!'
Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge resumed his labours with an improved opinion of himself, and in a more facetious temper than was usual with him.
Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that people ran about with flaring links, proffering their services to go before horses in carriages, and conduct them on their way. The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slily down at Scrooge out of a gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there. The cold became intense. In the main street, at the corner of the court, some labourers were repairing the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great fire in a brazier, round which a party of ragged men and boys were gathered: warming their hands and winking their eyes before the blaze in rapture. The water-plug being left in solitude, its overflowing sullenly congealed, and turned to misanthropic ice. The brightness of the shops where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp heat of the windows, made pale faces ruddy as they passed. Poulterers' and grocers' trades became a splendid joke: a glorious pageant, with which it was next to impossible to believe that such dull principles as bargain and sale had anything to do. The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of the might Mansion House, gave orders to his fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor's household should; and even the little tailor, whom he had fined five shillings on the previous Monday for being drunk and bloodthirsty in the streets, stirred up tomorrow's pudding in his garret, while his lean wife and the baby sallied out to buy the beef.
Foggier yet, and colder. Piercing, searching, biting cold. If the good Saint Dunstan had but nipped the Evel Spirit's nose with a touch of such weather as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose. The owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge's keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol: but at the first sound of.
'God bless you, merry gentleman. May nothing you dismay!'
Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action, that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more congenial frost.
At length the hour of shutting up the counting-house arrived. With an ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant clerk in the Tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out, and put on his hat.
'You'll want all day tomorrow, I suppose?' said Scrooge.
'If quite convenient, sir.'
'It's not convenient,' said Scrooge, 'and it's not fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, you'd think yourself ill-used, I'll be bound?' The clerk smiled faintly.
'And yet,' said Scrooge, 'you don't think me ill-used, when I pay a day's wages for no work.'
The clerk observed that it was only once a year.
'A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December!' said Scrooge, buttoning his great-coat to the chin. 'But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning.'
The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge walked out with a growl. The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted no great-coat), went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas Eve, and then ran home to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt, to play at blindman's buff.
Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and having read all the newspapers, and beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker's-book, went home to bed. He lived in chambers which had once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide.and.seek with other houses, and forgotten the way out again. It was old enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices. The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands. The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold.
Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact, that Scrooge had seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence in that place; also that Scrooge had as little of what is called fancy about him as any man in the city of London, even including-which is a bold word- the corporation, aldermen, and livery. Let it also be borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on Marley, since his last mention of his seven-year's dead partner that afternoon. And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change-not a knocker, but Marley's face.
Marley's face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look: with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That, and its livid colour, made it horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather than a part of its own expression.
As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again.
To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy, would be untrue. But he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished, turned it sturdily, walked in, and lighted his candle.
He did pause, with a moment's irresolution, before he shut the door; and he did look cautiously behind it first, as if he half expected to be terrified with the sight of Marley's pigtail sticking out into the hall. But there was nothing on the back of the door, except the screws and nuts that held the knocker on, so he said'Pooh, pooh.' and closed it with a bang.
The sound resounded through the house like thunder. Every room above, and every cask in the wine-merchant's cellars below, appeared to have a separate peal of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door, and walked across the hall, and up the stairs; slowly too: trimming his candle as he went.
You may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-six up a good old flight of stairs, or through a bad young Act of Parliament; but I mean to say you might have got a hearse up that staircase, and taken it broadwise, with the splinter-bar towards the wall and the door towards the balustrades: and done it easy. There was plenty of width for that, and room to spare; which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on before him in the gloom. Half-a-dozen gas-lamps out of the street wouldn't have lighted the entry too well, so you may suppose that it was pretty dark with Scrooge's dip.
Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that. Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. But before he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms to see that all was right. He had just enough recollection of the face to desire to do that.
Sitting-room, bed-room, lumber-room. All as they should be. Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa; a small fire in the grate; spoon and basin ready; and the little saucepan of gruel (Scrooge has a cold in his head) upon the hob. Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet'; nobody in his dressing-gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall. Lumber-room as usual. Old fire-guard, old shoes, two fish-baskets, washing-stand on three legs, and a poker.
Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself in; double-locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured against surprise, he took off his cravat; put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and his nightcap; and sat down before the fire to take his gruel.
It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter night. He was obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it, before he could extract the least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel. The fireplace was an old one, built by some Dutch merchant long ago, and paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaoh's daughters, Queens of Sheba, Angelic messengers descending through the air on clouds like feather-beds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats, hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts; and yet that face of Marley, seven years dead, came like the ancient Prophet's rod, and swallowed up the whole. If each smooth tile had been a blank at first, with power to shape some picture on its surface from the disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a copy of old Marley's head on every one.
'Humbug!' said Scrooge; and walked across the room.
After several turns, he sat down again. As he threw his head back in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that hung in the room, and communicated for some purpose now forgotten with a chamber in the highest story of the building. It was with great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he looked, he saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly in the outset that it scarcely made a sound; but soon it rang out loudly, and so did every bell in the house.
This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an hour. The bells ceased as they had begun, together. They were succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below; as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine-merchant's cellar. Scrooge then remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as dragging chains.
The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight towards his door.
'It's humbug still!' said Scrooge. 'I won't believe it.'
His colour changed though, when, without a pause, it came on through the heavy door, and passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, 'I know him; Marley's Ghost!' and fell again.
The same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel. His body was transparent; so that Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind.
Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had never believed it until now.
No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked the phantom through and through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes; and marked the very texture of the folded kerchief bound about its head and chin, which wrapper he had not observed before; he was still incredulous, and fought against his senses.
'How now.' said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. 'What do you want with me?'
'Much.'-Marley's voice, no doubt about it.
'Who are you?'
'Ask me who I was.'
'Who were you then?' said Scrooge, raising his voice. 'You're particular, for a shade.' He was going to say 'to a shade,' but substituted this, as more appropriate.
'In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.'
'Can you-can you sit down?' asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him.
'I can.'
'Do it, then.' Scrooge asked the question, because he didn't know whether a ghost so transparent might find himself in a condition to take a chair; and felt that in the event of its being impossible, it might involve the necessity of an embarrassing explanation. But the ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it.
'You don't believe in me,' observed the Ghost.
'I don't,' said Scrooge.
'What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?'
'I don't know,' said Scrooge.
'Why do you doubt your senses?'
'Because,' said Scrooge, 'a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!'
Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror; for the spectre's voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones.
To sit, staring at those fixed glazed eyes, in silence for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him. There was something very awful, too, in the spectre's being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, and skirts, and tassels, were still agitated as by the hot vapour from an oven.
'You see this toothpick.' said Scrooge, returning quickly to the charge, for the reason just assigned; and wishing, though it were only for a second, to divert the vision's stony gaze from himself.
'I do,' replied the Ghost.
'You are not looking at it,' said Scrooge. 'But I see it,' said the Ghost, 'notwithstanding.'
'Well.' returned Scrooge, 'I have but to swallow this, and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own creation. Humbug, I tell you. humbug!'
At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise, that Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to save himself from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was his horror, when the phantom taking off the bandage round its head, as if it were too warm to wear in-doors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast.
Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before his face.
'Mercy!' he said. 'Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?' 'Man of the worldly mind!' replied the Ghost, 'do you believe in me or not?'
'I do,' said Scrooge. 'I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?'
'It is required of every man,' the Ghost returned, 'that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world-oh, woe is me!-and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness.'
Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain and wrung its shadowy hands.
'You are fettered,' said Scrooge, trembling. 'Tell me why?'
'I wear the chain I forged in life,' replied the Ghost. 'I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is irs pattern strange to you?'
Scrooge trembled more and more.
'Or would you know,' pursued the Ghost, 'the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!'
