Pandemonic Scribbles!

Statutory Warning : All the silly posts over here are likely to create sparks of pandemonium in the li'l brain of the reader so Watch Out!

Saturday, 20 March 2010

vocab for the week 40

Is it okay to say ‘complete novice’?

First, let’s deal with the pronunciation of ‘novice’. The ‘o’ is like the ‘o’ in ‘hot’, ‘pot’, and ‘got’, and the ‘i’ is like ‘i’ the ‘it’, ‘bit’, and ‘kit’. The final ‘ce’ sounds like the ‘s’ in ‘sit’, ‘sip’, and ‘sun’. The word is pronounced ‘NO-vis’ with the stress on the first syllable. When you say that someone is a novice, you mean that the person is a beginner; he has no real experience. It is common to hear native speakers of English referring to someone as being a ‘complete novice’. Careful users of the language frown upon this.
*When it comes to tennis, Vijaya is a complete novice.

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