November 7, 2018
by Graham
2 Comments
Until about two years ago, I had never heard any pronunciation for this Greek name other than that given by all the current English pronunciation dictionaries: /bəˈlerəfɒn/ (with allowances for varying qualities of unstressed vowels). Then I went to a … Continue reading
May 9, 2018
by Graham
4 Comments
We’re all used to the confusion between the words ‘diffuse’ and ‘defuse’ as verbs, caused by the pronunciation of the latter with the KIT vowel rather than the more etymologically correct FLEECE. If we were to introduce a hyphen into … Continue reading
January 15, 2018
by Graham
1 Comment
I can claim no expertise in either the languages or the peoples of the area of the Bay of Bengal littoral. Today, 15 January 2018, the BBC has been highlighting the plight of the Rohingya people with a series of … Continue reading
January 18, 2017
by gpointon
4 Comments
Following my last post, there seems to have been a spate of malapropisms perpetrated (not perpetuated!) by eminent people on radio and television. The leader of the populist British political party UKIP, Paul Nuttall, described Donald Trump as an anglophobe … Continue reading
June 29, 2016
by gpointon
0 comments
As we know, many English-speaking people use the labiodental /f/ and /v/ in place of intervocalic /θ/ and /ð/. This was at one time claimed to be a feature of Cockney, but it is far more widespread than that. An … Continue reading
May 11, 2016
by gpointon
0 comments
Until the end of the 19th Century, when, in Britain at least, we began to have universal education, most people, however intelligent they were, didn’t have access to as much knowledge as we have today. The ‘educated’ classes tended still … Continue reading
February 20, 2016
by gpointon
3 Comments
Whether it is the cardinal sin, or the (cuddly?) slow-moving animal, there is a question mark over its pronunciation. On this morning’s edition of Saturday Live on BBC Radio 4, the well-known ‘sloth-woman’, Lucy Cooke, was interviewed. She always says … Continue reading
November 14, 2015
by gpointon
3 Comments
As every British seven year old knows, the answer is “a stick”. We can add -y to almost any word to make it mean something like ‘like a …’ or ‘quite …’, rather like -ish. Generally we add just the … Continue reading
April 21, 2015
by gpointon
3 Comments
I’m not sure whether errors of spelling or grammar introduced to a text by spell checkers are eggcorns in the same way as those caused by a misunderstanding in the mind of a person, but here are two that I’ve … Continue reading
April 19, 2015
by gpointon
1 Comment
It gets worse! Walt Disney couldn’t even spell his nom-de-plume. This is a still from the beginning of the cartoon version of the book.