November 11, 2011
by Graham
1 Comment
A report on BBC’s regional news programme for East Anglia yesterday evening (10 November 2011), and unfortunately not available for watching again after 6 o’clock GMT on 11 November (so you can’t check what I’m about to say after that … Continue reading
November 5, 2011
by Graham
4 Comments
Caroline Hawley, reporting from Libya for the BBC has a couple of times recently said that the new rulers had “wrestled” control of the country from Gaddafi. She is not, of course, the only person to confuse the two words … Continue reading
October 15, 2011
by Graham
6 Comments
Standing in the check-out queue at my local supermarket yesterday afternoon, I noticed that the person behind me was buying a Jamie Oliver knife block set. Like many products these days, it is labelled in several languages. The German, however, … Continue reading
October 1, 2011
by Graham
2 Comments
We’re all used to the so-called intrusive r in English – the ‘r’ pronounced after a word ending in /ɑː, ɔː, ɜː, ə/ when the following word also begins with a vowel. A few days ago, I heard one which … Continue reading
September 27, 2011
by Graham
0 comments
The newspapers and news and current affairs programmes this week are full of Labour “apologising” for the mistakes they made during their period of office between 1997 and 2010. I do not remember politicians ever apologising for their own actions … Continue reading
September 13, 2011
by Graham
9 Comments
They say (whoever ‘they’ are) that travel broadens the mind. In my case it’s just broadened my vocabulary. I’ve come back from a fortnight’s holiday in Germany with a new word in my armoury – cater-cornered. I had never come … Continue reading
August 17, 2011
by Graham
8 Comments
These days, any linguists who claimed to be prescriptivists would find themselves cast out of the linguistic community, and yet to a greater or less extent, we are all prescriptivists, in private at least, and those of us who teach … Continue reading
August 4, 2011
by Graham
0 comments
The Germanic group of Indo-European languages split into three sub-groups – East, West and North Germanic. East Germanic, now extinct, included Gothic, in which the earliest example of a Germanic language in writing – the extracts from the Bible translated … Continue reading
July 28, 2011
by Graham
0 comments
In response to my last post, on Utøya, John Maidment has asked: “How should “Breivik” be pronounced in Norwegian? I keep hearing /ˈbreɪəvɪk/ or sthg similar from Brits on tv.” I’ve replied briefly on the specific question, but it raises … Continue reading
July 24, 2011
by Graham
3 Comments
The tragic and shocking news from Norway in the last days has brought the name of this formerly insignificant island in a lake not far from Oslo to the world’s attention. The name means “the outer island”, illustrating the Scandinavian … Continue reading