10 English Lessons From Sitcoms

For those of us whose first language was Friends quotes.

1. Imagine an apostrophe as a sassy Ross Geller head tilt.

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2. What's the difference between a homonym and a synonym? 30 Rock will teach us.

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Homonyms are words that are pronounced or spelled the same but have different meanings. Like "Vin Diesel" and "Win, Diesel" if the second person has a German accent.

3. Whereas a synonym is...

4. 30 Rock also corrects your answer to "How are you doing?"

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5. For paragraph writing, we turn to Dr. Sheldon Cooper.

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"The two of you need to get your women in line! Last night I was strong armed into an evening of harp music and spooning with an emotional Amy Farrah Fowler. This on a night that I had originally designated for solving the space time geometry in higher spin gravity and building my lego death star … and why? Because your gal pals Penny and Bernadette went out shopping for some wedding nonsense without Amy, an action they took with no thought or regard as to how it would affect me, the future of string theory, or my lego fun time!"

"What do you want us to do about it?"

"You clearly weren’t listening to my topic sentence: get your women in line!"

6. Sheldon also teaches us an important comma rule.

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Use commas before or surrounding the name/title of the person being directly addressed. Hi, Mom.

7. This conversation in The Office best explains the whomever/whoever debate.

However, you should err on the side of caution and use "whoever" if you don't want to sound like a season four boss Ryan d-bag.

8. How I Met Your Mother explains contractions with contractions.

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"That was not cool, Ted." "Contraction!" "That... wasn't cool, Ted?"

9. When you use "literally," think about Chris Traeger's sincerity.

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Chris is literally the best example of using literally only when you mean it.

10. And for pronunciation, we look to the undisputed expert, Ricky Ricardo.

You're right, Ricky. English is a crazy language.