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.
Language change and slang
Words coined in 2014
From sneckdown to thumbstopper; a list of some of 2014’s most striking neologisms.
Global English
Why Do Brits Say Maths and Americans Say Math?
For a field centered on numbers, math seems pretty confused about its pluralization. Americans and Canadians tend to say math while Brits and Australians opt for maths.
Improve your English
Rope-a-Dope and International Affairs
The expression originated in 1974 when the boxer Muhammad Ali introduced the tactic in his fight with George Foreman.
Books, dictionaries, words and language
Why save a language?
“Tell me, why should we care?” It’s a question I can expect whenever I do a lecture about the looming extinction of most of the world’s 6,000 languages.
Idioms of the world
Idioms can tell us a lot about what matters to a nation. They’re a window to the soul.
On translating a phrasal verb article
Phrazal verbes, ouat arr phrazal verbes? Des verbes a particules, c’est quoi des verbes a particules? A translator looks at some of the issues involved in translating phrasal verbs into French.
The Decline of Grammar Education
“If quizzes on chemistry were as uninformed as those on grammar, they would ask silly questions on peripheral topics and would make no reference to the periodic table, or atoms or molecules.” Geoffrey Pullum rips into “grammar quizzes”.
A grammar quiz not for sissies
Once you’ve read the piece above, you can flex your muscles with this quiz from the delightfully crusty John E. McIntyre. “You want a numerical score on this? What are you, a freshman?”
Ye Olde Medieval Tube Map
The famous map of the London Underground has been given a medieval makeover.
Cartoon
Tina and Mouse
We are translators, mouse. We nuance.
Email this Post
Hi! Thought you might consider including this video on the origins of the word “Yule” in this week’s round-up. Thanks, and happy Yule! (Also, io Saturnalia!). http://youtu.be/thKqObFOw08
Thanks for posting the link!