I was reading a novel recently in which a character speaks a language which doesn’t have the concept of the first and second person, basically no concept of I (or me) and you. As a result of this, the character himself cannot conceive of these concepts. Continue reading
I already told you about this word, whose meaning you probably knew about anyway: it’s one of those interesting bits of trivia that’s often thrown about. Continue reading
Yesterday, I picked up a bargain at a Record & CD Fair: an old vinyl copy of Pink Floyd‘s The Wall for €38. Considering it’s a double album, that’s not such a bad deal. The second-most famous song on the album is probably “Comfortably Numb.” Listening to it last night reminded me of how odd that word comfortably sounds… Continue reading
You’ve probably seen a lot of umlauts in your lifetime. They’re common in German, and look like this: ö. Those two little dots over a little vowel. English of course also has an identical diacritic, the diaeresis. But I already told you that. What I want to look at today though is the umlaut, and one type of umlaut in particular: the metal umlaut. Continue reading
You can have lovely buttered toast for breakfast, but you can also raise a toast to someone. Why do we use the word toast in such completely different ways? Continue reading
Writing about the accents I hear in my head while reading yesterday made me think about another recent case of some literary American/British English differences. Continue reading
Hello! I haven’t written much lately, mainly because I’ve been pretty busy.
With work mainly, though I also think it’s been nice to take a little break from writing, and refresh my mind a little. Not that I’ve been giving it too much of a break, mind you.
English-Language Thoughts 