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Michael Rundell

A few more thoughts on Irish-English …

January 18, 2010

Sinead – one of the commenters on Roisin Muldoon’s recent blog – speculated that the Irish-English verb ‘to give out’ (to talk disapprovingly or tell someone off) may be a direct translation of a similar verb in Irish (the Gaelic language of Ireland). This happens a lot when languages co-exist, and Irish-English borrows not only [...]

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Here’s to a new decade of language love …

January 6, 2010

Language can be divisive. Some people are relaxed about the way it keeps on changing, but others see change as decline. For them, English is ‘going to the dogs’, standards are falling, and the language is being overwhelmed by ‘slang’ and (even worse) ‘horrible Americanisms’. None of this is new. Samuel Johnson harked back to [...]

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Horrible Americanisms?

November 30, 2009

One of our readers – Trauma Queen – made a good point about global Englishes when commenting on Sarah McKeown’s recent blog about the expression “I’m lovin’ it”. Her question:
Who decides what is “good” or “correct” English when the way it is spoken differs from country to country?
raises some tricky issues about the perceived status [...]

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Pedantic, moi?

November 12, 2009

One of the downsides of being in the dictionary business is that most people have a completely erroneous idea of what we do. A recent article in the Times ticked all the boxes in its caricature of the lexicographer: old, “boffinish” and hopelessly outmoded (still working with card indexes, apparently), we are nevertheless seen as [...]

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Cardiganed old duffers? A lexicographer responds

November 4, 2009

The sad news that Chambers Dictionary is about to lose its lexicographic staff prompted a sympathetic article in the Times. Its author, Allan Brown, contrasted the efforts of Internet dictionaries (“pop-cultural hogwash”) with what he regarded as the work of “proper” lexicographers (“we know that our tongue is safe in their hands”). Very nice of [...]

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In praise of Dr Johnson – a modern lexicographer

September 17, 2009

When you think of the changes English has undergone in just the last ten years, a figure like Samuel Johnson – whose 300th birthday we celebrate on Friday 18th September – may seem remote from contemporary concerns. Everyone enjoys resurrecting Johnson’s more outlandish or amusing definitions, and it’s true that he wasn’t above having the [...]

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I’m a lexicographer – get me out of here

September 14, 2009

We need a new definition for celebrity. None of the dictionaries I’ve looked at (ours included) really does justice to the way the word is used nowadays. Celebrity has become a far more common word in the last 20 years or so: statistics show that its frequency has more than doubled since 1990, its use [...]

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‘Genius’ and ‘rubbish’ and other noun-like adjectives

August 5, 2009

Some people get very upset about nouns being used as verbs. A recent row in the press centred on the verbal use of medal (How many of their athletes were medalled at the last Olympics?) but it turns out that this usage is at least as old as Thackeray. Which is hardly surprising, since forming [...]

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I fail to really see what the fuss is about: there are worse things in life than splitting an infinitive

June 29, 2009

You would have thought there was no sensible person left who believed that split infinitives were a crime to be avoided at all costs. But apparently not. In the space of ten minutes – while reading the Saturday Review in last week’s Guardian – I came across two clumsy sentences. In both cases, the culprit [...]

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Revolving speakers: “So she turned round and said…”

June 8, 2009

Why do we say that someone “turned round” (or turned around) and said something? It’s one of those  expressions people seem to find deeply irritating, and the standard response to what is perceived as “sloppy” English is to imagine it is nothing more than a meaningless filler. I tend to take the opposite view: language [...]

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