Que Sera Sera

… whatever will be, will be.

You might know the song. And you might know the language the title is in. Or you might think you might know…

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Interesting Animal Names

Just double checking I spelled that correctly. After looking at panthers yesterday, I began thinking about other interesting animal names. One you might know is hippopotamus.

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Black Panther

This isn’t about the film at all, I’ll let you know right now. The title is a blatant, shameless attempt to trick people into reading this. But now that you’re here, haven’t you ever wanted to learn more about the words leopard and panther?

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I Put a Spell on You

At some point in the last few days I was writing about spelling, and a thought recurred to me: is it a coincidence that the verb to spell (as in, How do you spell that word?), and the noun spell (as in magic spell) are identical?

This time I’ve decided to pursue this line of inquiry, and the answer is basically: No, it’s not just a coincidence!

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Why are they Called Romance Languages?

You’ve probably noticed that I talk a lot about Romance languages here. These are languages largely derived from Latin. Currently there are five main Romance languages: Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Romanian.

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Alma Mater

What was your old school like? Have you ever gone back there, to your alma mater?

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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.

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