thoughts about English

Parking in the Zoning

Niall O'Donnell 4 Comments

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:

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Guns N’ Roses

Niall O'Donnell 13 Comments

Mentioning Guns N’ Roses yesterday, I realised something: their use of punctuation in their name is perhaps not strictly correct!

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Live and Let Die

Niall O'Donnell 5 Comments

The song “Live and Let Die” came on the radio this morning, and it made me think: is this phrase now better-known than the original phrase (live and let live) that it references?

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From QWERTY to AZERTY

Niall O'Donnell 13 Comments

I left my laptop in to be repaired today, which was a pretty smooth operation until I realised I don’t know the French word for hinges. All this means that I’m currently typing this on an AZERTY keyboard.

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Pretty, Pretty, Pretty Good

Niall O'Donnell 10 Comments

Adjective:

(of a person, especially a woman or child) attractive in a delicate way without being truly beautiful.

‘a pretty little girl with an engaging grin’

Adverb:

To a moderately high degree; fairly.

‘he looked pretty fit for his age’

‘it was a pretty bad injury’

Pretty is, well, a pretty interesting word. The definition that immediately comes to mind for you is probably the first one above. What really interests me about this definition is that last part: without being truly beautiful. Pretty is certainly a less powerful word than beautiful. Because of that it, like nice, feels almost like an insult to use it to describe someone. Sure, it’s technically a positive word, but when you’ve got so many other adjectives you can use, calling someone pretty feels like a deliberate choice to not use something more unambiguously complimentary.

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What does the Name of your Favourite Coffee Mean?

Niall O'Donnell 14 Comments

It seems like only a few years ago, when, as chain coffee shops like Starbucks became popular, every second comedian felt compelled to joke about how coffee shops had so many crazy types of coffee.

Now though, such chains are commonplace, and we’re all quite used to the idea of being able to get a variety of coffees. Have you ever wondered though, what all those names actually mean?

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Throwing Shade and Taking Umbrage

Niall O'Donnell 6 Comments

After writing about the word umbrella recently, I began to realise that umbra, the Latin word for shade, has had a little more influence on the English language than you might think.

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