When I was a student, I was told cities have more than 100,000 inhabitants.
In Britain, however, cities are also towns with city status [královská města] and with a cathedral or university or both; in the USA, cities can be small towns with a minimum population of 2,500 people.
So, what about Brno? Or Hradec Králové? Are they cities or towns?

(If you speak Czech, check out the explanation published by the BBC - the text also explains the difference between university and college [technická VŠ, akademie nebo kolej].)

To learn more about one of the cities and to practise your listening skills, enjoy the following documentary:

Finally, a question for you: would you like to read more posts about concrete vocabulary/grammar problems like this one?

• If you are interested in biology, physics and nature, try the podcasts published by the Nature journal – you can download the full episodes in MP3s, listen to them online or subscribe to the podcast RSS feed. A new show is available every week.
  For some articles, Nature also presents streaming videos – all of them can be found on the Nature YouTube channel, as well. Check out the following video about the Black Death:
• If you like not only science, but also history, culture, philosophy or religion, the BBC programme In Our Time might be the right one for you. Again, you can download the whole episodes to your MP3 player from the archives, listen online or subscribe to the RSS feed.
  Although I’m not keen on mathematics, I did enjoy the last episode about game theory, Game Theory (MP3).
  
  
• The third and final tip is for the geeks and nerds among you: three brothers from the USA, Same3Guys, produce IT Pro Show about IT news and trends and Words from Nerds about tech news and gadgets.

Have you recognized the English translation of May (Máj) by Karel Hynek Mácha?
Although 1 May or May Day is now known as International Worker’s Day, in many cultures is it also a spring festival. And spring means… love!

So, let me ask you a few personal questions:
Have you ever had a blind date?
Have you ever fallen for someone head over heels?
Have you already tied the knot/got hitched?
Who did you have a crush on at school?
Are you going to say those three little words to your Miss or Mr Right tomorrow?

To illustrate the idioms in the above paragraph, I will use the following infographic:

[Infographic provided by Grammar.net]

Finally, the last question: what is your favourite love song?
I might sing this one tomorrow (if I find the right guitar chords):

Jay Walker, an  inventor, entrepreneur and chairman of Walker Digital and curator of TEDMED, explains this in his TED talk, and, being an optimist American, he thinks “English represents hope for a better future”:

But there are more reasons to learn English:

(Who ever said the Germans have no sense of humour?)

Now, what are your reasons to learn and/or improve your English?

- English Idioms, Sayings and Slang – Wayne Manguson’s website where you can look for idioms by section or specific words and find out what they mean and how to use them in a sentence,

- Idioms @ The Free Dictrionary.com – an index of thousands of idioms with full-sentence examples,

- Eye on Idioms – a modest but interesting series of 7 idiom exercises created by ReadWriteThink,

- Rolls of the Tongue – a great Tumblr blog with new cartoons every week, and

- Idioms in English @ Flickr– graphical illustrations of English idioms for fans of photography

The Flickr group will also help me illustrate my plan:
I’ve decided to rock the boat…

…and take a short break from the Idiom Thursdays.
It doesn’t mean that I’ll stop writing about them or that I’ll write a post only once in a blue moon…

Move to Trash

…but that I’ll write also about other (geekier) stuff.
Stay tuned! 

Did you understand every little word?

The video was produced by the agency RKCR/Y&R to celebrate the latest BBC project of Sir David Attenborough, Frozen Planet.
The film-maker reads the lyrics of the song which was first recorded by Louis Armstrong in the late 1960s:

FIY: The song has been popular with English teachers and tutors all over the world and has been used in several English language course books

↬ Open Culture

“Defragging” is a short version of “defragmenting“ and since it has always been a time-consuming task when basically no work is done, today someone in an office can say “I was defragging all morning” meaning I was just pretending to work.

Don’t you get what I’m saying? Read my blog!
This phrase is useful if you want to end a long and boring conversation about how to do or repair something.

↬ (hat tip) computer sight

Finally let’s have a look what geeks can look like:

(lyrics and guitar tabs)

↬ brainpickings.org

Then I remembered this blog is called English 4 Geeks, and what is geekier than virtual Easter eggs in apps, computer programmes, video games or books, right?
I don’t want to walk on eggshells trying to explain what they are – you probably know that better than me – or put all my eggs in one basket and write only about them, so what follows is a virtual Easter omelette made from three eggs

1) The first one is my favourite “Easter egg” scene with Doctor Who:

(To get the context, see the whole scene.)

2) The second one is the binary egg for more creative geeks who’d like to get inspired and decorate some real geeky eggs:

3) And finally, the third “Easter egg” is for those who really like and celebrate Easter - Holy Thursday by my favourite poet, William Blake:

Happy Easter Holidays, guys