Someone’s first language tends to cause consistent errors when they speak a second language. I’ve always found it interesting see what types of error people make in speaking (or writing) English they have learnt as a foreign language. Those errors can be useful pointers to the features of the speaker’s first language. Spotting those errors…… Continue reading How German speakers pronounce English
Month: October 2022
Flushing out the Oxford comma to clear the NHS backlog
In early September this year, the new UK Prime Mister, Liz Truss (remember her?) appointed Conservative MP Thérèse Coffey as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. Soon after, the press reported that Thérèse Coffey had sent staff in her new departmental fiefdom a strict manual on writing. I haven’t seen the writing manual…… Continue reading Flushing out the Oxford comma to clear the NHS backlog
Do you want help with palindromes?
A palindrome is a sequence of letters that reads the same backwards as it does forwards. Palindromes can be a single word or a sequence of words. Well known English examples are ‘civic’ (a single word) and ‘Madam, I’m Adam’ (a whole sentence—albeit with internal punctuation disregarded). If you want some help in composing palindromes,…… Continue reading Do you want help with palindromes?
Has Cambridge University’s German department driven off in a Wokeswagon?
Reports in today’s media give the impression that Cambridge University’s German department has just issued a diktat that students must, from now on, eliminate all gendered terms when they are speaking or writing German. The rather sensationalists reports accuse the department of jumping onto a woke bandwagon. As far as I can tell after some…… Continue reading Has Cambridge University’s German department driven off in a Wokeswagon?
Time to stop talking about the time
The conjunction while can have 2 meanings: a temporal meaning, introducing a subordinate clause that refers to an action occurring at the same time as an action described by the main clause: They whistled while they worked.a concessive meaning, as a synonym for although: While they aren’t perfect, they are good enough. Avoid while for…… Continue reading Time to stop talking about the time
Hangul Day
Today (9 October) is Hangul Day. Hangul is the name used in South Korea and most of the world for the writing system used in writing Korean. Origin of Hangul Before the 15th century, most written documents in Korea were in Chinese. When Korean was written, people used Chinese characters, known in Korean as…… Continue reading Hangul Day
Pick a name to make people trust your product
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies rely on people called “miners” to make the system work. Close relatives of cryptocurrencies are something called cryptotokens. The people that make cryptotokens work—and allegedly trustworthy—are called “forgers”. Not sure this was the best choice of word to make people trust this mad idea.