• Language and words in the news – 18th May 2012

    Posted by on May 18, 2012

    This post contains a selection of links related to language and words in the news. These can be items from the latest news, blog posts or interesting websites related to global English, language change, education in general, and language learning and teaching in particular.

    Feel free to contact us if you would like to submit a link for us to include, or just add a comment to the post, with the link(s) you’d like to share.

    Global English

    Logue jam: a catalog of dialogues
    “Catalogue” can also be spelled “catalog.” “Dialogue” can also be spelled “dialog.” But “monologue” is rarely spelled “monolog.” The Americans are at it again.

    Language change and slang

    What does re-moding actually mean?
    The minister could have asked people to walk or to cycle, instead of using the Tube. Instead Transport Secretary Justine Greening asked people to re-mode in a promotional video. Specifically to “re-route, re-mode, re-time”.

    The power of being ‘Grokked’
    It is gratifying for all of us to be deeply known – to be “grokked.” When we are feeling the very painful feelings of life … it is profoundly healing to know that another knows exactly what we are feeling and has deep empathy for our feelings.

    Improve your English

    The O word
    NICE don’t think people who are, let’s say, a little larger than the norm – you know, a bit bulky; blessed with a touch more avoirdupois than average – should be called this word.

    Language teaching and resources

    Reuters video: TV has gone to the dogs
    Cat lovers may be wondering if there’s a channel for moggies. Well, not yet (it’s only a matter of time), but you can buy DVDs for cats to watch.

    Books, words, languages and dictionaries

    Edible dictionary: microbial mothers
    I love my mom and all, but I also want to recognize another set of mothers—those blobs of yeast and bacterial cultures found floating in unpasteurized cider, wine vinegar, and other fermented liquids.

    It depends on what “the” means
    Sentences like “The kids had been writing with indelible markers on the wall of their grandmother’s living room” occur frequently, even though living rooms have four walls, and the meaning is the same as would be expressed by the (less natural sounding) “a wall”.

    G is for gossip
    I’m not the first – by a long chalk – to want to broadcast the fact that it’s simply not possible to have thousands of ‘friends’, unless friendship is redefined in such a way as to leach it of all meaning entirely.

    Cartoon

    Give Us The Tools
    Cameron is portrayed as a woodcutter (lumberjack) with an axe. He’s already chopped down (cut down, felled) a number of trees—a metaphor for the government’s deficit-reduction measures.

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  • Posted by Michael Rundell to Language and words in the news - 18th May 2012 on May 18, 2012 Following on from Gill's comment about 'the': there's a situation I once heard described (I think by Mike McCarthy) which goes like this. A woman (let's call her Jane) is standing in her front garden and asks the following questions to 3 different people: to person A: 'Have you seen a dog?''; to person B: 'Have you seen our dog?'; to person C: 'Have you seen the dog?'. (Jane has lost her dog.) Person A is a random passer-by who does not know Jane or her dog; person B is a neighbour who knows the dog; person C is a member of Jane's family, for whom 'the dog' is 'the one we all know'.. These little words make all the difference.
  • Posted by gill francis to Language and words in the news - 18th May 2012 on May 18, 2012 There are some interesting uses here - especially, I think, the difference between 'the' in 'the kids' and 'the wall'. It's "the kids and we all know who THEY are" versus the generic 'the wall', representing all the walls in a house. No wonder non-native speakers have trouble with articles in English - it's a minefield.
  • Posted by Against all odds to Pass the serviettes: dictionaries and class on May 18, 2012 I beg your pardon, but shall we then be meek and mend our ways at every bidding of the degenerated upper-class' ‽ I understand this phenomenon is partly due to either inverted snobbish or neglectful attitude, or even a sense of always pardoned impropriety. I do not see how the time-honoured 'pardon' can be replaced by 'sorry' still less by 'what', The latest OED does not label 'serviette' as vulgar. Also, OED shows that in these senses 'sorry' dates from the first half and second half of the twentieth century. See. add [1] d ellipt. for I am sorry. colloq. (a) Expressing apology or regret.    1914 G. B. Shaw Fanny's First Play 167 Sorry. Never heard of him.    1923 Radio Times 28 Sept. 19/2 No! sorry, I thought you were Cardiff.    1938 E. Waugh Scoop ii. ii. 157, I will say you're a quick worker. Sorry to barge in on the tender scene.    1954 W. Faulkner Fable 76 He said, ‘All right. Sorry. I didn't know you had a wife.’    1982 W. J. Burley Wycliffe's Wild-Goose Chase i. 17 ‘Sorry to bother you on a Sunday morning‥.’ ‘Think nothing of it’. (b) Interrogatively, requesting an interlocutor to repeat words that the speaker failed to catch or to understand.    1972 T. Stoppard Jumpers II. 62 Miss Moore, is there anything you wish to say at this stage? Dotty (in the sense of ‘Pardon?’): Sorry? Bones: My dear, we are all sorry—.    1978 P. Howard Weasel Words vii. 46 For its part ‘sorry’ is coming to mean: ‘Please say that again; I did not hear you.’
  • Posted by Stan to Apologies are being expressed – or are they? on May 18, 2012 Diane: It is an interesting area. Your example "It seems I owe you an apology …" can be taken as you describe it – a prompt for the other party to dismiss the need to apologise – or it can be interpreted as the apology itself. Stephen: Irish people use 'Sorry' that way too. And it's often used as a sort of pre-emptive apology for interrupting people or disturbing them briefly, much as 'Excuse me' or 'Pardon me' would also be used. The French case is instructive, as are the landlady's feelings about it. Some people get very exercised about the manner of these polite exchanges. Michael: The corporate and legal aspects of pseudo-apologies complicate it further. As your conclusion puts it, "if you really say you’re sorry, it’s an admission of guilt" – that is, it could be construed that way, and may therefore influence how certain admissions are made. Russell: Yes, it's a concession. The type and extent of regret vary greatly, though, hence the variation in how people apologise in different circumstances. I don't know enough about Clarkson to agree or disagree with you on that front. In private, his approach may be very different from what his public persona suggests.
  • Posted by Irene Cros to Language and words in the news - 4th May 2012 on May 17, 2012 Re: What is the worst of all words - this reminded me of a couple of activities from the Recipe book I used to do with my students. In the section 'systems for word learning ' there was an activity by Jim Wingate - 'Favourite words orgy' and then 'Hated words vengeance'. If anyone is interested, let me know and I'll send the descriptions of the activites.

  • Open Dictionary word of the week: zugzwang

    zugzwang (noun) in a game such as chess, a player is in zugzwang when it is their turn to move and whatever move they make will leave them in a weaker position The Spanish debt-drama shows that Europe is in Zugzwang – a situation in chess when there is no useful move – every possible [...]

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  • Language tip of the week: commit

    In this weekly post, we bring more useful content from the Macmillan Dictionary to English language learners. These tips are based on areas of English (e.g. spelling, grammar, collocation, synonyms, etc) which learners often find difficult. This week’s language tip is about how to spell the inflections of verbs like commit. Don’t write the -ed [...]

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  • Apologies are being expressed – or are they?

    English has a variety of options for when we want to express contrition or remorse. We can say we’re sorry, we apologise, we regret something. We can emphasise it by saying ‘I’m so/very/really/truly/awfully sorry’, and so on. Or we can just say ‘Apologies’. Convention dictates in part how this and other ritualised speech acts take [...]

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  • Left, right, left, right.

    The Eurozone crisis claimed another victim on 6 May when Nicolas Sarkozy became the eleventh European political leader to lose his job since 2008. His opponent, François Hollande, has become only the second socialist president of the French Fifth Republic. This change of presidency has been seen by some as a “lurch to the left”. [...]

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  • Language and words in the news – 11th May 2012

    This post contains a selection of links related to language and words in the news. These can be items from the latest news, blog posts or interesting websites related to global English, language change, education in general, and language learning and teaching in particular. Feel free to contact us if you would like to submit [...]

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  • Open Dictionary word of the week: gender reveal.

    We are constantly monitoring the language to ensure that we keep an up-to-date record.  You can be a part of this enterprise by suggesting a word for our Open Dictionary. Every Thursday Laine Redpath-Cole picks a new entry and goes on about it for a bit. This week’s word is: gender reveal (noun) the practice [...]

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  • Language tip of the week: possibility

    In this weekly post, we bring more useful content from the Macmillan Dictionary to English language learners. These tips are based on areas of English (e.g. spelling, grammar, collocation, synonyms, etc) which learners often find difficult. This week’s language tip is about the patterns that follow the noun possibility. The noun possibility is never followed [...]

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  • Some changing uses of ‘grammar’ words: are you across ‘across’?

    Gill Francis is a freelance language consultant and writer of resources for teachers and learners of English.  Her latest project is Skylight, an easy-to-use online corpus access tool (for login details, email gillian.francis@blueyonder.co.uk). _____________ When someone says ‘preposition’ and ‘language change’ in the same breath, you would be forgiven if your eyes glaze over. Prepositions [...]

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  • Ins and outs

    English has a jumbled inheritance of words from many sources; the pie chart shows a statistical analysis based on dictionary etymologies. Even simple contrasting word pairs, such as in and out, may come from different sources: in is a Latinate word, and out is Germanic. Despite their disparate origins, you can usually count on words [...]

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  • An alliterative ABC

    The Pennsylvania-based artist and illustrator, Victor Stabin has sent us a copy of his delightful book Daedal Doodle. It’s an ‘ABC’ for kids learning the alphabet – but with a difference. Books of this type usually employ familiar objects and animals (‘A is for Apple, B is for Bear’ and so on), but this one [...]

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  • Language and words in the news – 4th May 2012

    This post contains a selection of links related to language and words in the news. These can be items from the latest news, blog posts or interesting websites related to global English, language change, education in general, and language learning and teaching in particular. Feel free to contact us if you would like to submit [...]

    Read the full article

  • Language tip of the week: develop

    In this weekly post, we bring more useful content from the Macmillan Dictionary to English language learners. These tips are based on areas of English (e.g. spelling, grammar, collocation, synonyms, etc) which learners often find difficult. This week’s language tip is about how to spell the inflections of develop. Don’t write the -ed and -ing [...]

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