What voice do you read in? Whenever I read, it’s just my own voice I hear in my head, like when I’m thinking to myself. And that works fine. Most of the time, anyway, but then sometimes I’ll read something which makes this seemingly normal practice feel a bit odd. Continue reading
What do you call the people you work with?
Nothing nasty I hope. Based on what I hear a lot lately, there’s a good chance you call them work colleagues. But here’s the thing:
Why not just call them colleagues? Continue reading
The verb sentire in Italian is an interesting one. I’ve come across it a few times recently on Duolingo, meaning to hear. I could see how it was related to English words associated with feelings like (to) sense, sensitive, sentiment(al) etc., but found it curious that in Italian it seemed to be used only to refer to one sense. Seemed to anyway… Continue reading
I had crème brûlée for dessert this evening.
I’m not normally so decadent, but it was a special occasion, so why not have some fine French food? Continue reading
Obviously I was joking yesterday when I said I’d write about the origins of the name Hello Kitty. But immediately I did think that I knew something interesting about the word kitten. Let me illustrate. Continue reading
Somewhere online today, I saw an ad or article about Hello Kitty Converse shoes. It probably wasn’t a targetted ad, or else whatever cookies are tracking me don’t know me at all. Curiously, for some reason, when I saw the word Converse, I pronounced it with an emphasis on the second syllable, like it was the verb to converse. Seeing the full title and accompanying picture of course made me realise that the word was Converse, the proper noun referring to the brand name, and not the verb. This was another interesting example of the difference in word stress between nouns and verbs. And of course at this stage, I’d got to thinking: why is the shoemaker named Converse, and how is that related to the verb to converse? Continue reading
I usually listen to music while I write, and sometimes while I’m thinking about what to write (usually I know long beforehand what I want to write, but sometimes I like to sit and let the ideas come. I think the music helps, and sometimes it gives me very specific ideas. Like this evening, for example. I was listening to the album Songs of Leonard Cohen (on vinyl, for extra hipster cred), and specifically the song “So Long, Marianne,” which of course made me think: why do we (well, Americans mainly) use so long to say goodbye? Continue reading
English-Language Thoughts 