Why do we say tonight in English? When you think about it, it’s fairly unusual. Last night makes sense, and so does tomorrow night. But tonight? Where does that come from?
Tonight, Tonight
linguistic drift
Mind your own Business!
If you’re very busy, what noun do you use to describe the state you’re in? Would it be… busyness? No, that doesn’t look or sound right, does it? It’s kind of uncanny, because it sounds like business, but it isn’t, and it looks weird with the Y before the suffix -ness.
For Crying Out Loud!
Usually, when people cry, they cry out loud. But of course you can cry silently, can’t you? That hasn’t always been the case though.
The Latin Quarter
Why do we use the word quarter to refer to an area of a town or city, usually one with a large population of a certain ethnicity, nationality, or cultural identity?
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.
Hedgehogs, Urchins, and Beatles
Hedgehogs are cute, aren’t they? With their little spines, and their noses, and their pink bellies when they’re being subjected to the 15th take of a video their owner’s making of them having a bath in the hopes it goes viral.
Did you Watch Strictly at the Weekend?
No, I didn’t, sorry, I never watch it.
I’m referring here of course to popular BBC Saturday-evening dance programme Strictly Come Dancing (translated into American English as Dancing with the Stars). It’s often referred to simply as Strictly, but if you step back and think about it, isn’t that a little odd?
English-Language Thoughts 