Over breakfast today, thinking about what to write today, I noticed this article on the BBC website:
I Me Mine
linguistics
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.
Placeholders and Little Chiefs: The Meanings of Military Ranks
Using the phrase in general today, it struck me that the word general is of course a military rank. As I began to think about the meaning of general as a military term, I thought it might be interesting to look at the origins of military ranks.
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.
Well, Well, Well
I hope today finds you well.
Yesterday I mentioned that well is quite a common filler in English, used to give us a moment to think, or even for no particular reason at all. After I finished writing, I asked myself, Why well?
Pandemonium!
I passed a poster for an event called Pandemonium this morning (I’m not sure what the event was, so I guess it’s not a very effective poster). That’s not a word I’ve given much attention to in the past, I thought, but looking at it now, does it mean what I think it means?
Le Grand Chelem
Watching Roland Garros this summer, I learned a new French term: Le Grand Chelem. Not that it was very new, as it’s not different from an English term I was already aware of.
English-Language Thoughts 