There are many things that annoy us about how others use our native tongue. That’s just the way our brains work. There’s one interesting example though, that’s often mentioned by British-English speakers: Can I get…?
Can I Get a Coffee?
language evolution
Netflix
When you really think about it, Netflix is an odd name, isn’t it?
Well, when I think about it at least, as I’m sure you’re a relatively normal person who doesn’t spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about the meaning of the names of online streaming services. Luckily for you, I’m just that type of person.
Playwright
First of all, if you want to know about why today is called Boxing Day, I wrote about that here last year. If you didn’t read it then, I encourage you to do so. Even if you did read it last year, why not read it again? You might have forgotten all of the details. I know I have.
If you’re looking for something new though, how about a few brief lines about that curious word playwright?
Mistletoe
It’s Christmas!
Well, I’m actually writing this on the 22nd (and doing some final edits on the 23rd), so I can have a few days off, but you know what I mean. I already covered lots of Christmassy topics last year, so if you’re interested in that, have a look. Today, I want to write a little bit about a simple but mysterious Christmas plant: mistletoe.
I Me Mine
Over breakfast today, thinking about what to write today, I noticed this article on the BBC website:
Colon
While writing about military ranks last week, I wondered if the word colony, which I’d touched on briefly the week before, was related to the word column, from whose Italian translation the word colonel comes from.
My mind then thought of other words, like colony and colon: maybe they could be related too. Colony, maybe that comes from the Latin for column, columna, because it originally referred to a garrison town, where a column of soldiers were stationed. That sounds plausible, doesn’t it?
Hours, Minutes, Seconds
I had another of those putting-two-and-two-together moments today. I was trying to elicit the word second from a student. This was in the context of saying a date. This is often quite tricky for French speakers. In French you refer to a date as, for example, le vingt decembre (today’s date). If you were to literally translate this into English, it would be the twenty December, as opposed to the twentieth of December. French speakers often therefore take a while to get used to adding the the and of, and using the ordinal form of the number.
English-Language Thoughts 