This post is the 4th instalment of the Irish leg of my current Celtic challenge. It covers chapter 3 of Teach Yourself Irish. For previous instalments, please see https://languagemiscellany.com/tag/irish/ Possession, and personal forms of ag Irish has no transitive verb meaning ‘have’. Instead, use the preposition ag (‘at’), see example 1.(1) Ta clann ag Síle …… Continue reading Irish challenge (4)
Month: June 2026
An oddity of English spelling
A crossword clue made me think about one of the many oddities of English spelling. The answer was the word impinged and part of the clue was a cryptic reference to the word pinged. Impinged (past tense of the verb impinge) is pronounced with a ‘soft g’ /dʒ/, as in the consonants at the start…… Continue reading An oddity of English spelling
Odds and ends: German
This post covers some small details of German. Rare suffix for males It’s quite common for languages to form the word for a female person or female animal by adding a suffix to the word for the corresponding male. Well-known suffixes of this kind include English -ess and German -in. (adding the German suffix -in…… Continue reading Odds and ends: German
Welsh challenge (4)
This post is the 4th instalment of the Welsh leg of my current Celtic challenge. It covers chapter 3 of Colloquial Welsh. For earlier instalments, please see Welsh Archives – Language Miscellany Possession Welsh has no transitive verb meaning have. Instead, the verb mae is used with the preposition gyda (‘with’), or in speech often…… Continue reading Welsh challenge (4)
Days of the week in East Asia
Japanese and Korean name 5 days of the week using words for traditional elements (fire, water, wood, metal, earth) and use the words for moon and sun in naming Sunday and Monday. Both languages combine those components with a 2nd component meaning day of the week. Table 1 shows the Japanese and Korean names in…… Continue reading Days of the week in East Asia
Saying phone numbers
If someone asks for your phone number, how do you say it? Different countries have different conventions for this. And, within the UK at least, the convention for mobile phones differs from the convention for landlines. The conventions we use for phone numbers are surprisingly resistant to change, as I discuss below. First steps I…… Continue reading Saying phone numbers
Irish challenge (3)
This post is the 3rd instalment of the Irish leg of my current Celtic challenge. It covers those parts of chapters 1 and 2 of Teach Yourself Irish that I didn’t cover in the 2nd instalment. The 1st instalment covered Irish spelling and pronunciation. Questions and answers Yes and no Irish has no words for…… Continue reading Irish challenge (3)
NSM Natural Semantic Metalanguage
Natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) is a linguistic theory claiming that: all lexical items (lexemes) in any human language are made up of a small number of simple concepts (‘semantic primes’); the semantic primes cannot be broken down into more basic concepts; the semantic primes are universal: the same semantic primes underlie every language. Also, for each…… Continue reading NSM Natural Semantic Metalanguage
Lying in politics
Unfortunate wording from the BBC in early July 2016, profiling Theresa May, about to become UK Prime Minister: “But it was already clear that she saw her future as lying in politics.” Sadly for connoisseurs of garden path sentences and of other forms of ambiguity, by 16 July 2016, the BBC had spotted the unfortunate…… Continue reading Lying in politics
Welsh challenge (3)
This post is the 3rd instalment of the Welsh leg of my current Celtic challenge. It covers chapters 2a and 2b of Colloquial Welsh. For earlier instalments, please see Welsh Archives – Language Miscellany Present tense of bod Table 1 shows the present tense of the verb bod (‘be’), giving the forms used in positive,…… Continue reading Welsh challenge (3)