global English
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Posted by Kati Sule on December 17, 2010
Similarly to this time last year, we are bringing you a list of those blog posts on the Macmillan Dictionary Blog which have been the most popular in terms of number of readers. Many of them still have ongoing conversations so have a read and join in by commenting! I would like to take this [...]
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Posted by Sharon Creese on December 02, 2010
The other day, an American friend of mine told me he’d got a kitten, but then completely stumped me by saying she was a ‘brindle’. Was that a special breed, I wondered, or did she need medical treatment? It turns out, ‘brindle’ is what we in the UK would call tortoiseshell, and it got me [...]
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Posted by Dawn Nell on November 25, 2010
This week Dawn Nell, the second in a series of guest bloggers who are contributing to this blog over a two-week period, is looking at the ways that you (users) search Macmillan Dictionary. Dawn, who has written before on this blog, is an historian and blogger, working on the history of publishing. She was born [...]
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Posted by Sharon Creese on November 23, 2010
It’s interesting the way the use of the word diet (and its translations) varies around the world and in different contexts. I noticed this first in South America, but I’ve realized since that the same applies elsewhere too. In the UK, when we say diet, very often we mean some form of restriction, usually for [...]
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Posted by Dawn Nell on November 17, 2010
Today we (re)introduce Dawn Nell, the second in a series of guest bloggers who are contributing to this blog over a two-week period. The first of their posts is on the subject of ‘Global English’, and the second will look at the ways that you (users) search Macmillan Dictionary. Dawn, who has written for this [...]
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Posted by Michael Rundell on November 11, 2010
Stan Carey’s post yesterday was a nice reminder of how a word or phrase can suddenly gain widespread currency simply as a result of fashion. And as with any trend, the kudos gained by the user declines in inverse proportion to the number of users – so that in the end the phrase becomes an [...]
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Posted by Stan Carey on November 10, 2010
As you know from last Wednesday’s post on ‘man-words’, Stan Carey is the first in a series of guest bloggers who will be contributing to our blog for two weeks at a time until Christmas. The first of their posts will be on the subject of ‘Global English’ and the second will look at the [...]
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Posted by Sharon Creese on November 09, 2010
I’ve been thinking about other types of language lately, not just those from other parts of the world, but completely different systems of communication; things like semaphore, morse code and sign language. I’ve been fascinated by this sort of thing ever since my first introduction to those pictograph puzzles when I was about seven or [...]
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Posted by Stan Carey on November 03, 2010
We’d like to (re)introduce Stan Carey, the first in a series of guest bloggers who will be contributing to our blog for two weeks at a time until Christmas. The first of their posts will be on the subject of ‘Global English’ and the second will look at the ways that you (users) search our [...]
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Posted by Michael Rundell on October 11, 2010
The two previous posts in this series (see here and here) looked at the relevance of “chunking” in language production. In the last blog, I discussed collocation, and showed how integral it is to the use of a word like crime – to the extent that it is almost impossible to use the word without [...]
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