The above photo is of a box I came across recently in a shop in Liège, and is a classic example of how literal translation will usually lead you astray.
Literal Translation
language teaching
Into or In To?
Well, it depends, doesn’t it?
Even if you’ve never thought about it before, it’s perhaps not too surprising that the word into is a combination of the words in and to. If you think about any sentence in which you might use the word, it clearly combines the meaning of both:
He walked into the room.
To is there because there’s movement, and to usually comes after verbs of movement. In is there because he ends up in the room. Easy. But, does this mean we can always replace in to with into?
Less or Fewer?
A pretty simple one today: this is something that many people are curious about. Both are clearly similar, but what’s the difference between them?
Mr, Mrs, and Ms
Teaching French-speaking teenagers recently, I was momentarily surprised when they started to call me Mister. Then I remembered that in French the word monsieur can be used like sir in American English. It doesn’t need to come before a surname, like Mister in English, so most students refer to their male teachers as Monsieur, as we use Sir in English. But they of course understandably translated monsieur to mister.
We use sir to refer to a teacher in most varieties of English too, but not to refer to a man in general when we don’t know his name. It’s only really used in that way in American English.
Mister though, is used in basically the same way in every form of English, as the standard honorific for an adult male. Isn’t it curious though, that for women there are three honorifics: Miss, Ms, and Mrs?
A Dark Horse
He’s a dark horse, isn’t he?
How would you describe the expression a dark horse to somebody who’d never heard it before? After thinking for a moment, you might say it’s a person of hidden depths or secret talents/opinions, someone who achieves something when no-one expected that they might. You might give an example of a quiet student in a language class who suddenly speaks confidently and fluently in an oral exam.
Parking in the Zoning
I mentioned yesterday that I wanted to write about English words which are used in French in a slightly different way to how we use them. And this morning I thought, as I’m still using an AZERTY keyboard, I might as well do that today.
I’ve already written about some English words that are used in French, but today I want to focus on three that are a strange combination of seeming logical yet slightly odd to an English speaker’s ear. I should also state that I’m not criticising or mocking French speakers for using these words. Their use makes enough sense for non-native speakers, and once a word enters another language it doesn’t have to follow the rules of its original language. Anyway, the three words are:
Guns N’ Roses
Mentioning Guns N’ Roses yesterday, I realised something: their use of punctuation in their name is perhaps not strictly correct!
English-Language Thoughts 