The airwaves are full of reports and interviews about the imminent exhibition of the Bayeux Tapestry at the British Museum. I’m surprised how many British speakers have been calling this embroidered cloth the Bay-You /beɪjuː/ Tapestry. I’ve always called it the /baɪjɜː/ Tapestry, and I always thought everyone else did too. I checked what the…… Continue reading That stitched thing from Bay-you
Tag: Pronunciation
Sounds and spelling of Spanish
This post summarises the spelling and pronunciation of Spanish. I discuss below mainly standard Spanish of Spain (Castilian), but point out a few of the differences for Spanish regions and Latin America. Spanish Alphabet The Spanish alphabet includes: 26 letters also used in the English alphabet (though <k> and <w> are rare, used mainly in…… Continue reading Sounds and spelling of Spanish
Prescribing a proscription
The UK government recently proscribed an Iranian state organisation, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). I was listening the other day to a BBC radio presenter discussing this with a BBC journalist. Both of them repeatedly said prescribe /prɪˈskraɪb/rather than proscribe /proʊˈskraɪb/. When talking slowly and precisely, people might pronounce prescribe as /prɪˈskraɪb/, but when…… Continue reading Prescribing a proscription
The Italian Language Today
The Italian Language Today, by Anna Laura Lepschy and Giulio Lepschy (2nd edition, 1988) is a useful guide for anyone who has been through a basic to intermediate Italian course. The book has 2 parts: part one The Linguistic Situation in Italy has 4 sections: Italian today; a historical view; Italian dialects; varieties of…… Continue reading The Italian Language Today
Irish challenge (5)
This post is the 5th instalment of the Irish leg of my current Celtic challenge. It covers chapter 4 of Teach Yourself Irish. For previous instalments, please see https://languagemiscellany.com/tag/irish/ The demonstrative seo To introduce a person or present a thing, use seo (‘this’) without a verb:Seo Tomás (‘this is Thomas’). In Munster and Connacht, a…… Continue reading Irish challenge (5)
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
How do you say Magyar?
A few weeks ago, Hungary elected a new Prime Minister, Péter Magyar. Perhaps that is an instance of nominative determinism—his surname Magyar means ‘Hungarian’. The Hungarian word for ‘Hungary’ is Magyarország. English speakers sometimes use Magyar as semi-jocular synonym for Hungarian, but I have the impression that this has become less common in recent decades.…… Continue reading How do you say Magyar?
Odds and ends: English
This post deals with some small aspects of English, grouped under the following headings: Spelling pronunciation meanings mass noun or count noun? word or phrase word histories 1. Spelling 1a. Bookkeeper Bookkeeper (and related bookkeeping) is one of the few English words with 3 double letters in a row: oo-kk-ee. https://whenyouwrite.com/ points out: an English…… Continue reading Odds and ends: English
‘Syntactic doubling’ of Italian consonants
Single Italian consonants become pronounced as double (long) consonants (‘geminates’) if they follow: a stressed vowel some short unstressed words The Italian name for this process is raddoppiamento syntattico (‘syntactic (re)doubling’), or sometimes rafforzamento fonosyntactico (‘phonosyntactic stregntening’). ‘Syntactic’ refers to the fact that the doubling crosses word boundaries, unlike in word-internal geminate consonants as in [gattto] ‘cat’…… Continue reading ‘Syntactic doubling’ of Italian consonants
Shaetlan—the language of Shetland
Shaetlan, the language of Shetland, has now been awarded an ISO 3-letter code: scz https://iso639-3.sil.org/code/scz For more on ISO language codes, please see Russian: an official language at the ISO – Language Miscellany Shaetlan has sometimes been regarded as ‘just a dialect’ of English or as a ‘just a dialect’ of Scots, but the awarding…… Continue reading Shaetlan—the language of Shetland