When people say goodbye in German, they don’t usually say Auf Widersehen, they mostly say tschüß. I always used to wonder where this odd word comes from. Now I know. “In rapid speech, its possibly Wallonian variant adjuus (sounding close to Spanish adiós) yielded the almost unrecognizable word tschüs.” Monthly gleanings for October 2019 |…… Continue reading So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye
Tag: Spelling
Droppin’ g’s = bad speech?
At the end of July, Digby Jones, former Director-General of the CBI (Confederation of British Industry), tweeted about the pronunciation of Alex Scott, one of the BBC’s main studio presenters during the Tokyo Olympics. He complained about her “very noticeable inability to pronounce her ‘g’s at the end of a word”, such as “fencin, rowin,…… Continue reading Droppin’ g’s = bad speech?
Please yous
Phonetic spelling of ‘use’. Written by someone from Liverpool? (In Liverpool, some people say yous as a plural of you.)
Scandinavian language challenge day 38
Today I worked through the last chapter (chapter 12) of Swedish in three months, covering: ‘either .. or’, ‘neither … nor’, ‘both … and”all and ‘whole’ the impersonal pronoun ‘man’ adjectives without a nounhow to translate some common English verbsspellingother words ‘either .. or’, ‘neither … nor’, ‘both … and’ Antingen … eller = either ……… Continue reading Scandinavian language challenge day 38
Scandinavian language challenge day 3
Today, I started the Norwegian part of my Scandinavian language challenge. I am using Norwegian in Three Months (1989), published by Dorling Kindersley under the Hugo imprint. This book contains an introduction preface, a guide to pronunciation (and spelling), 12 chapters, a key to the exercises, an appendix on Norwegian spelling, a mini-dictionary and an…… Continue reading Scandinavian language challenge day 3
Scandinavian language challenge day 2
I am continuing the Scandinavian language challenge I started yesterday. Today, I started Swedish. I am using Swedish in Three Months (1998), published by Dorling Kindersley under the Hugo imprint. This book contains a preface, a guide to pronunciation (and spelling), 12 chapters, reading practice (4 pages) a key to the exercises and drills, a…… Continue reading Scandinavian language challenge day 2