Collocations: do, play or go with sports and other activities.

In British English, you can "do sport". In American English you can "play sports".

A typical mistake Spanish speakers make is using the verb practise for sports:

*I love practising sport. This should be: I love sport.

*I usually practise sport every evening. This should be: I usually do sport every evening.

However, in American English you can use the verb practise or practice (as it is spelt there) to mean "to train": The team is practicing for tomorrow's competition.

When other words related to sports are used, we may use other verbs:
"What sports do you do?"
"I play tennis".
Observe these pictures:

 There are three verbs that collocate with sports and other free time activities: go, do and play, but they are not interchangeable:

• Go is used with activities and sports that end in -ing. The verb go here implies that we go somewhere to practice this sport: go swimming.
• Do is used with recreational activities and with individual, non-team sports or sports in which a ball is not used, like martial arts, for example: do a crossword puzzle, do athletics, do karate.
• Play is generally used with team sports and those sports that need a ball or similar object (puck, disc, shuttlecock...). Also, those activities in which two people or teams compete against each other: play football, play poker, play chess.

In this table there is a list of sports and activities that collocate with these verbs:

Go	Do	Play
riding	aerobics	badminton
jogging	gymnastics	table-tennis
hitch-hiking	taekwondo	football
fishing	judo	basketball
sailing	karate	chess
windsurfing	kung-fu	cricket
skiing	ballet	board games
snowboarding	exercise	snooker
swimming	yoga	hockey
dancing	athletics	baseball
skating	archery	rugby
cycling	a crossword puzzle	volleyball
running	tai chi	squash

Some exceptions to the rules:

• You use do with three activities that end in -ing: do boxing, do body-building and do weight-lifting because they don't imply moving along as the other activities ending in -ing.
• Golf: if there is an idea of competition, you use the verb play. However, you can say go golfing if you do it for pleasure: Tiger Woods plays golf. We'll go golfing at the weekend. 

The names of the months.

Sometimes I hear people complain about the uselessness of learning Latin. "It's a dead language", they say, "Nobody speaks it any more"... While it's true that it has stopped being the lingua franca, that is, the language in which people from different parts of the world were able to communicate, it's a matter of fact that the Western World is hugely indebted to the culture and language of the Romans, for so much of our own culture derives from it.

The calendar is a feature that reminds us of how indebted we are to the Romans. To begin with, the very word calendar comes from Kalenda, which was the first day of the month in Latin.
The old Roman calendar used to have ten months and the priests had to add some days at the end so that it kept with the solar year. Later, King Numa changed it to a 12 month year, adding January and February, which became the last months of the year.
Let's have a look at the names of the months in Latin:

•  March. The Romans started the year with the month of Martius, devoted to Mars, the God of war. It was in this month when soldiers started their training.
• April. Aprilis was devoted to the goddess Venus, and although it is uncertain where the name comes from, the Romans thought it came from aprire, which means to open.
• May (Maius) derives its name from the goddess Maia, to whom a sow (female pig) was sacrificed on the first day of the month. Maia, mother of Mercury, was an earth goddess who promoted growth.
• June. The month of Junius is devoted to Juno, Jupiter's wife and mother of several gods and goddesses.
• July was originally called Quintilis, because it was the fifth month. (Remember that the year started in March). However, following Julius Caesar's death, it was called after him. 
• August was originally Sextillis, that is the sixth month. Later, they changed its name for that of Octavius Augustus, the first Roman Emperor.
• September is called so because it was originally the seventh month. Septem means "seven".
• October used to be the eighth month. Octo is eight.
• November comes from nove, or ninth month.
• December was the tenth month, as decem means "ten".
• January was named in honour of the god Janus, the deity related to beginnings and ends. He has two faces, one looking to the past, the other to the future.
• February was the month of the purification rituals caled Februa, which used to be carried out in the middle of this month.

Lucky you!!

Love Story Animated Short Film "Jinxy Jenkins, Lucky Lou" 

A lovely video...

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