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: English: US
Intrusive ‘of’: is it that big a problem?
In the last few years, I’ve increasingly heard people including the preposition ‘of’ after an adjective in creating phrases such as not that big of a deal and how big of a problem. To my ear, ‘of’ after adjectives in such phrases is unnecessary and sounds completely wrong. I’ve heard this construction mainly from Americans,…… Continue reading Intrusive ‘of’: is it that big a problem?
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
The Ashes are starting. Are they singular or plural?
The Ashes cricket series between the national teams of England and Australia starts in less than 7 hours. In between wondering about the cricket, I found myself contemplating verb agreement. Sports teams and singular or plural verbs As is reasonably well known, verb agreement works differently in different varieties of English when the subject of…… Continue reading The Ashes are starting. Are they singular or plural?
English has all the syllables it needs
In this post, I consider whether English has enough distinct syllables to create all the words it needs. Actual, possible and impossible syllables If we look at the sound system of a language, we can identify 3 types of syllable: syllables in words that exist in that language. An English example is brick /brik/. syllables…… Continue reading English has all the syllables it needs
Great sound charts for 14 languages
There is a superb collection of sound charts at https://ielp.ehe.osu.edu/sep/interactive-ipa-charts They cover 14 languages: Arabic, Bengali, English, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Nepali, Persian, Spanish, Tamil, Turkish and Vietnamese. The document for each language contains: a chart showing the consonants used in that language, transcribed using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) another chart showing those…… Continue reading Great sound charts for 14 languages
I apologise for not having an allergy
In recent years, servers in cafés and restaurants in England (particularly younger servers) have taken to saying ‘no problem’ or its near-synonym ‘no worries’ in response to each order by each customer. This sometimes leads to odd results. Fussy, but no problem I presume that ‘no problem’ used in this way originated as a response…… Continue reading I apologise for not having an allergy
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
Momentarily crossing the Atlantic
Listening to the BBC coverage of the Olympics yesterday, I was a little to surprised to heard the presenter (who is Scottish) say she would be handing over ‘momentarily’ to her colleague. I haven’t often heard British speakers use with momentarily with its North American meaning of ‘in a short time, very soon’. As I…… Continue reading Momentarily crossing the Atlantic
Even I wouldn’t use a plural verb here
On the tail end of a radio interview a couple of days ago, I heard someone say ‘agriculture are playing an important part’. ‘Agriculture are’ combines a singular noun with a plural verb and sounded very odd to me. Not a slip of the tongue All of us sometimes get distracted in the middle of…… Continue reading Even I wouldn’t use a plural verb here