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
teaching English
Hippopotamus
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
Comfortably Numb
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
The Metal Umlaut
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
A Toast!
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
He Must Mean Trunk
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
Update
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 