English language

Social Media Links

Niall O'Donnell 2 Comments

If you’re happy to just read my posts on this website, then please feel free to ignore this. That’s probably what I’d do. I’ve created pages for my blog on social media for two main reasons: to stop friends being bombarded with blog stuff on my personal profiles, and because apparently you’re supposed to do this to get more people to visit and so on. As you can perhaps tell, I find it hard to put much effort into this, though I’m still needy and insecure enough to want as many readers as possible.

If you’re a heavy social-media user, you might want to connect with this blog via such media, and you can do so via these links (which can also be found on the About page and via the little widgets on the website itself): Continue reading →

A Certain Vintage

Niall O'Donnell 8 Comments

Are you into vintage clothes, or perhaps accessories? Maybe, if you can afford it, you have a vintage-car collection. The meaning of the word vintage is fairly straightforward. It basically means old, or old–fashioned, but also stylish and of good quality. It’s also an interesting, and straightforward, word in an etymological sense.

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Tickling your Funny Bone

Niall O'Donnell 12 Comments

Writing about the four humours yesterday, something struck me: the word humorous isn’t really very humorous.

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A Good Sense of Humour 

Niall O'Donnell 16 Comments

Are you in good humour at the moment? You are? Good! If I’d asked you that question a few hundred years ago though, it would’ve had a somewhat different meaning.

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Is Donald Trump the Humblest or the Most Humble Person in the World?

Niall O'Donnell 23 Comments

There may be one advantage to Donald Trump being President of the United States (only one!), though it’s quite a selfish one: he certainly gives me a lot of food for thought. Sometimes I really don’t want to write about him, or even think about him, or exist in the same universe as him, but he can be hard to ignore, particularly when he demonstrates his unusually dysfunctional relationship with the English language.

Last week he gave us another addition to the evergrowing list of did-he-actually-just-say-that? moments:

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Some Thoughts on Subtitles

Niall O'Donnell 6 Comments

I’ve mentioned before how I prefer, while living in Belgium, to watch English-language films in English with French and Dutch subtitles, though that’s not always easily available.

I also mentioned recently that I was going to see Blade Runner 2049 (which is good, but could never be as good as the first film). One of the advantages of watching films with subtitles is that it reveals interesting differences between the two or three languages involved, or gives you interesting translation choices to ponder.

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Madame Pipi

Niall O'Donnell 18 Comments

Have you ever met Madame Pipi? You can find her, middle-aged to elderly, usually with glasses and cardigan, outside most public toilets in Belgium, sitting at a table, waiting for you to put your 35, 40, or 50c on her little plate. You might also occasionally cross her path in France, where she goes by Dame Pipi. Why is she there, and why does she want the money? Continue reading →