Month: September 2024

Learning languages at Habs in the 70s

This is a piece I wrote for the newsletter of the alumni association of my secondary school, Haberdasher’s Aske’s in Elstree (Hertfordshire, England). The published version is at Notes 217 | oldhabs | OHnotesThe editor put in above my original title a new title Écoutez, répétez—unfortunately, without the acute accents above the letter e. For…… Continue reading Learning languages at Habs in the 70s

Did a human write this? For humans?

Every so often, I have to delete comments left on my blog by computers. It’s not usually hard to spot the ones written by the laughably named ‘Artificial Intelligence’ (AI). Here’s a particularly poor effort. ‘Attractive section of content I just stumbled upon your blog and in accession capital to assert that I get actually…… Continue reading Did a human write this? For humans?

Best and worst opposites and synonyms

I’ve written before about contronyms. A contronym is a word that is its own opposite. An example is sanction. Sanctioning an action can mean either penalising it or permitting it. https://languagemiscellany.com/2022/08/contronyms/ I’ve just come across the opposite of a contronym: words that have the same meaning, although they appear on the surface to be opposites. I…… Continue reading Best and worst opposites and synonyms

Still writing double s the old way

As I’ve said before, double s was in 1851 often written in English more like a p, or even like the old German ‘scharfes S’ / ‘Eszett’ (ß), which was a compound letter made up of an s followed by a z. https://languagemiscellany.com/2021/11/an-old-way-of-writing-double-s/ I’ve now found an example from as late as 1881. The census…… Continue reading Still writing double s the old way

Structuring texts to make them clearer

Rachel Cayley’s blog Explorations of Style gives some excellent writing tips. She was running the blog as a graduate student and has since distilled her advice in a book Thriving as a Graduate Writer: Principles, Strategies, and Habits for Effective Academic Writing (2023). https://explorationsofstyle.com/book/ What I particularly like about her blog is the advice on…… Continue reading Structuring texts to make them clearer

Saxon Genitive

English has two common ways of expressing possession: the ‘Saxon genitive’ form adds -’s to the end of the last word in a noun phrase referring to the possessor:the king’s wifethe King of England’s wifethe man over there’s wifeFor more on the Saxon Genitive, please see Does English really have case? – Language Miscellany the…… Continue reading Saxon Genitive

140 years to make a Swedish dictionary

In late 2023, The Swedish Academy completed the 39th (and final) volume of its authoritative Swedish Dictionary. The Svenska Akademiens ordbok (SAOB, the Swedish Academy’s Dictionary) is a historical and etymological dictionary, listing 511,960 words on 33,111 pages. https://www.saob.se/ The work began in 1883. Languages don’t stand still, so the Academy is now working on…… Continue reading 140 years to make a Swedish dictionary

Old High German Text on a wall in Melk

We came across this text on a wall in Melk (Austria) on a visit to Melk Abbey. It purports to be by one of the most prolific German poets of the early 13 century, known now as Neidhart von Reuental. In Old High German, his name was spelled Nîthart. The geographical extension von Reuental was…… Continue reading Old High German Text on a wall in Melk