Archive for March, 2010
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Posted by Yuka Masda on March 31, 2010
Well, even good things have to come to an end … In our final Japanese English guest post, following on from last week, Yuka Masda discusses false friends in various forms of disguise. ________ ‘Pīman’ family – non-English loanwords The first one of the two groups of false friends I mentioned in my ealier post [...]
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Posted by Laine Redpath Cole on March 30, 2010
I am surrounded by English but what with all the different nationalities, accents, north and south divides, even in this institute of educational publishing of English-language learning, in Oxford, UK, Brittania, the place where English lives … well English is rather a broad term for the language that lives here. My colleagues from Cumbria and [...]
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Posted by Vicki Hollett on March 29, 2010
We start the final week of Japanese English month with a great guest post from English teacher, coursebook author and fellow blogger Vicki Hollett from Learning to speak ’merican. For earlier guest posts, see our Japanese English page. _______ A cute gesture English teachers quickly learn in Japan is ‘Who me?’ Students make it by [...]
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Posted by Jonathan Cole on March 27, 2010
This post contains a weekly 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 and language change. Please contact us if you would like to submit a link for us to include. Global English More bad [...]
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Posted by Yuka Masda on March 26, 2010
Japanese English month continues with our next guest post from Yuka Masda, from Hiroshima Shudo University. The post follows on from earlier discussions of how Japanese absorbs English words and the state of ‘Japanese English’ today. _______ Throughout history, English has absorbed an immense amount of vocabulary, mostly from Latin (mile, pound, butter, port) and [...]
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Posted by Jag Bhalla on March 23, 2010
Our Japanese focus continues with a guest post from Jag Bhalla, author of I’m Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears from National Geographic Books, featuring 1,000 intriguing and amusing expressions from around the world, plus related light-hearted essays on linguistics, anthropology, psychology and neuroscience. The book is illustrated by New Yorker cartoonist Julia Suits. ______ [...]
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Posted by Jim Ronald on March 22, 2010
Our next guest post, written by Jim Ronald, Professor of English Linguistics and Deputy Director of the International Affairs Center at Hiroshima Shudo University, discusses the transformation English words go through when adopted into Japanese. _______ Words from English always change in some ways when they become part of Japanese: in the way that they [...]
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Posted by Jonathan Cole on March 20, 2010
This post contains a weekly 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 and language change. Please contact us if you would like to submit a link for us to include. Global English Chinese language [...]
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Posted by Michael Rundell on March 18, 2010
While Oscar Wilde was in Pentonville prison in London, he was forced to walk on a treadmill for several hours a day. When this form of punishment died out, the word treadmill might have gone the same way. But by this time it had acquired a figurative meaning – and this now came to the [...]
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Posted by Kati Sule on March 17, 2010
Couch surfing is this week’s BuzzWord from our online English dictionary here at Macmillan. This noun is used to describe staying the night at the home of another person, especially a stranger, for free. The term first appeared on and has been popularised by www.couchsurfing.com, a free and non-profit accommodation network, also called a hospitality [...]
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