vocabulary
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French Phrases in English the French Wouldn’t Understand
French and English have a long and interwoven linguistic history. English wouldn’t be the language it is today without its French influences over the past thousand years. Not only do countless English words have their origin in French, but English also uses French sayings with a much higher frequency than sayings from other languages. But…
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A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
Have you ever typed an unknown word into Google to figure out what it means and come across a website called UrbanDictionary? If not, I highly recommend it. Warning: this website includes many vulgar terms and while it is constantly evolving, changing, and growing in size, anyone can edit it, so many of the examples are…
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Contronyms – a word that is its own opposite
Have you ever seen a word in English and thought ‘I know what that means!’ only to realise that it was being used to mean the exact opposite? If so, you have encountered something known as a contronym. What are contronyms? According to Oxford, a contronym is: A word with two opposite meanings, e.g. sanction (which…
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Great Green Dragon – English Adjective Order
Have you ever wondered why ‘a red, large coat’ just doesn’t sound quite right in English? Did you know that in English, we have a preference for adjective order? This is especially true when they go before a noun? If you aren’t a native speaker, how can you become used to certain adjectives going in…
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International Phonetic Alphabet and Phonemic Alphabets
/gɛt jɔː ʃwɑː ɒn/ Have you ever seen something that looks like the Roman Alphabet but then it has some extra dots, symbols and letters you have never seen before? Does it follow other words and come after vocabulary (usually)? If you answered yes to these questions, then you have most likely come across something…
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Great Vowel Shift
Have you ever wondered why English pronunciation is so difficult? Why are words written one way but pronounced in another? In addition to English’s bastard origins, there was a great event over a couple of centuries of extreme linguistic and phonological importance called the Great Vowel Shift. Questions, questions? So what is this Great Vowel…
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Puns – Watt is Love? Baby don’t Hertz me, don’t Hertz me, no Morse
A pun is a joke that exploits the different possible meanings of a word or the fact that there are words which sound alike but have different meanings. Puns are rife in languages that have words called homophones, or multiple words that have the same or similar pronunciation but have different meanings. English is rife with…
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The Most Important Word in the English Language and Its History
What is the most important word in the English language? How can we even begin to classify words in terms of their importance? What does that even mean? To answer this question, we need to look at some history. History and language For anyone who has studied a little bit of British history, you know…
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What is the plural of ‘you’ ?
As anyone who is learning English will know, you will have come across the fact that English seems to be missing a way to address more than one person directly. But does it really? Is there a plural of ‘you’? Is ‘you’ plural? History Old English – a plethora To answer this question, we need…
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English As She Is Spoke
(This post was inspired by a from Curiosity on English As She Is Spoke. This post is not sponsored by anyone, although it may read that way. Who knows, maybe that will change in the future! *hint, hint*) Hello everyone! So I have been doing a lot of posting on travelling (and some on language…
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MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) – Speaking German
Statement: German pronunciation is hard! I have been writing a lot in previous posts about my trip last summer through Spain, France and Switzerland. Now that I have posted about the last stop, I want to get back to German teaching with this post; let’s focus on pronunciation. For those who come from even somewhat…
