May 15, 2008
by Graham
4 Comments
The Spelling Society is to hold its centenary conference at Coventry University, and ahead of this, an article in Tuesday’s Guardian quotes the Society’s Secretary, Dr John Gledhill, as saying “In other languages, like Italian and Spanish, if you learn … Continue reading
May 1, 2008
by Graham
1 Comment
In the late 1980s and 1990s, Oxford University Press published three books of names: The Oxford Dictionary of Surnames (Patrick Hanks and Flavia Hodges, 1988); A Dictionary of First Names (Hanks and Hodges, 1990); and A Dictionary of English Place-Names … Continue reading
April 24, 2008
by Graham
0 comments
I don’t often disagree with John Wells, but I have to make an exception in the case of his blog entry for yesterday (St George’s Day 2008 – 23 April). He says: “In the respelling systems I designed first for … Continue reading
April 17, 2008
by Graham
7 Comments
Traditionally, since the days of Arthur Lloyd James and Kenneth Lee Pike, languages have been divided into two broad types: syllable-timed and stress-timed. French was considered the archetypal syllable-timed language (Lloyd James called this ‘machine gun rhythm’), in which each … Continue reading
April 10, 2008
by Graham
2 Comments
Angshu, in a comment on my ‘Afghanistan’ post, has been critical of my reasoning for recommending the English pronunciation of Afghanistan even to Mishal Husain, who uses a variant that may or may not be an Afghan (whether Dari or … Continue reading
April 3, 2008
by Graham
0 comments
The debate over the pronunciation of Pres. Sarkozy’s name rumbles on. John Wells today seems to be advocating middle syllable stress as the obvious one for English speakers, but he is ignoring the predecents of Mitterrand and Pompidou. He suggests … Continue reading
March 28, 2008
by Graham
4 Comments
Athel Cornish-Bowden in Marseille asks about the final -s in some French place names, and French versions of non-French place names (e.g. Douvres, Londres, Cornouailles). The final -s in these names is often the final remnant of the Old French … Continue reading
March 24, 2008
by Graham
11 Comments
In fact, French names cause all sorts of problems for English speakers, not least of where to put the stress. French, of course, has no lexical stress, but it would be impossible for an English speaker to avoid stressing at … Continue reading
March 20, 2008
by Graham
2 Comments
Now we get to the difficult ones. The fourth way of turning a foreign name into your own language is to look at it, and think, well it’s spelt Łódż, so I’ll call it /lɒdz/. This makes no attempt to … Continue reading
March 19, 2008
by Graham
7 Comments
The discussion about Beijing and/or Peking rumbles on, and leads to the more general question of how we can decide what to call geographical locations in foreign countries. This doesn’t just apply to English, but to any language. So far … Continue reading