Birth, marriage, divorce and death

    Recently, I was doing some work with my students on biography. I found that many students were writing inaccurate sentences like: I born in 1980, he was died in 1990. In this week's lesson, we look at some of the phrases we use to talk about different stages in a person's life.

    EARLY YEARS

    Look at the following example@sentences:

    • He was born in Manchester in 1965.
    • He was born in Manchester but he grew up in Sheffield.
    • He was born in Manchester but he was brought up in Sheffield.
    • He was born in Manchester but he was raised in Sheffield.

    Points to Notice:

    1. Born is usually used with was or were.
    2. He grew up, he was brought up and he was raised are very similar in meaning. Brought up and raised are the passive forms of bring up and raise:
      • His grandmother brought him up - He was brought up by his grandmother.
      • His grandmother raised him - He was raised by his grandmother.
    3. Sometimes, was born and was brought up / was raised are used together, like this:
      • He was born and brought up in Manchester.

    MARRIAGE (marry vs. get married

    1. Here are some examples of the verb marry:

      • John married Mary in 1990.
      • Bill has just asked Jenny to marry him.
      • She said she wants to marry me.

      In the three examples above, the basic structure is: Person X marries Person Y (Subject + Verb + Object).

    2. The expression get married is used in structures like:

      • John and Mary got married in 1990.
      • Bill and Jenny have decided to get married.
      • My son got married last week.
      • When are you going to get married?

      In these examples, the basic structure is Person X gets married (Subject + Verb phrase).

    3. Married can also be used with be as in:

      • I've been married for 15 years.
      • Don't flirt with Jane - she's married

    DIVORCE

      The structure of divorce and get divorced are similar to marry and get married:

      • John divorced his wife 6 years ago.
      • John and Jane got divorced 6 years ago.
      • John and Jane are divorced.
      • They've been divorced for 6 years.

      Notice the difference:

      • John asked Jane to marry him.
      • John asked Jane for a divorce.

    DEATH

    Sometimes, learners are confused about when to use die and when to use dead. Die is a verb which refers to the moment when life ends. Dead is an adjective which means no longer alive:

    • Elvis Presley died in 1977.
    • This man will die if we don't get him to a hospital quickly.

    • Elvis Presley is dead.
    • He's been dead for more than 25 years.

    One other important expression is be dying. We use this for talking about people who aren't dead yet, but are expected to die soon:

    1. I've heard that Jane's father is very ill.
    2. Yes. In fact, we think he's dying.

    We can also use be dying to describe a continuing crisis:

    • Millions of people in Africa are dying of AIDS.

    Exercise
    If you want to practise the expressions in this lesson, try to write a short biography of a famous person. As an example, I have written a short biography of John Lennon. Click here if you want to see it.

    We hope you've enjoyed this week's lesson, please click here if you want to try some of my other one-point lessons.

    © Robert E. Jones, 2003