TEFL

Fido

Niall O'Donnell 1 Comment

Yesterday, for some reason, I was thinking about when I read the comic book Tintin au Tibet to practise my French. My mind then wandered to the fact that Tintin’s dog’s name is Milou in the original French (Snowy in English). I clearly had nothing better to be doing, because I then dwelled upon the fact that superficially, Milou has no obvious meaning*, unlike Snowy. Just, I thought, like English-language dogs’ names like Fido.

But then I thought: maybe Fido does mean something… Continue reading →

Let the Negotations Begin

Niall O'Donnell 3 Comments

I discovered an interesting bit of etymology recently. I was reading SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard. In a chapter about work and business, she mentioned a Latin word  – otium. Continue reading →

Ph or F?

Niall O'Donnell 17 Comments

Have you ever wondered why both F and Ph can have the same sound in English?

Phone, philosophy, Philadelphia: force, far, fair etc. Continue reading →

2020 Vision

Niall O'Donnell 1 Comment

Happy New Year!

The time does fly, doesn’t it? Continue reading →

Crummy!

Niall O'Donnell 3 Comments

I was reading Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles the other day when at one point, a character described the eponymous heroine as “a crummy girl.” As with many of Hardy’s novels, which are full of 19th-century English West-Country dialect, there was an explanatory note. I was going to pass over it, as there are many such notes, and I don’t want to interrupt my reading flow by stopping for each one. Plus, the meaning was pretty clear from the context: it obviously meant attractive.

Continue reading →

Watch this Space

Niall O'Donnell 2 Comments

I’ve been thinking about my watch a lot lately. Well, maybe not a lot, exactly, but more than normal.

You see, my watch has recently started losing some of its batons. Continue reading →

Venetian Blinds

Niall O'Donnell 7 Comments

I was reading an Italian short story the other day (in an edition with English translations on the right-hand page) when I saw an interesting word: la persiana. Continue reading →