I’ve mentioned before the Australian expression ‘no worries’. I apologise for not having an allergy – Language Miscellany I’ve now come across a brief reference to it in Understanding Cultures through Their Key Words: English, Russian, Polish, German, and Japanese, by Anna Wierzbicka (1997). She describes it as a characteristic Australian interjection (alongside good…… Continue reading No worries
Tag: Odds and ends
Is the English language just French in disguise?
Bernard Cerquiglini’s 2024 book bears the provocative title «La langue anglaise n’existe pas» C’est du français mal prononcé (‘ “the English language doesn’t exist.” It is badly pronounced French.’) The title is from a quip by Clemenceau (presumably French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, 1841-1929). Cerquiglini emphasises that it is a quotation by putting quotation marks…… Continue reading Is the English language just French in disguise?
More words distinguished only by tones
I posted recently about 4 words in Mandarin and 6 Vietnamese words, each pronounced ma, but distinguished phonetically (and phonologically) by bearing different tones. Some words distinguished only by tones – Language Miscellany I’ve now come across a list of 4 Burmese words, each pronounced ma, and also distinguished by bearing different tones. Burmese…… Continue reading More words distinguished only by tones
Some words distinguished only by tones
If you have ever tried to learn Mandarin, you have probably come across a list of 4 words (with different meanings) that, although they are made up of the same vowel and consonant, have different pronunciations because they bear different tones. I recently came across a similar list exemplifying the 6 tones of Vietnamese. Mandarin…… Continue reading Some words distinguished only by tones
Distinguishing siblings
Many languages have different nouns for different types of sibling. But different languages use different features to distinguish types of sibling. Table 1 shows the terms for siblings in 3 languages: English distinguishes between male siblings and female siblings. Indonesian (an Austronesian language) distinguishes between older siblings and younger siblings, but does not distinguish between…… Continue reading Distinguishing siblings
Near miss? Or near hit?
Someone recently directed me to a discussion of a point I have never though about before. If a disaster nearly occurs, we might describe the event as a near disaster. The event is not a species of disaster, it is a species of non-disaster. Yet when one object nearly hits another object, we use logic…… Continue reading Near miss? Or near hit?
Not-gormless again
As I have posted before, gormless is one of those strange inherently negative words with no positive counterpart. In that post, I included a picture of a restaurant at Copenhagen airport called Gorm’s. https://languagemiscellany.com/2021/08/can-you-negate-the-word-gormless/ I’ve recently found out a possible reason for using that name in Denmark. Denmark was ruled from about 936 to 1042…… Continue reading Not-gormless again
An English word here? Really?
English words often show up, completely unnecessarily, in texts written in other languages. I came across a flagrant example last week in the weekly literature email from the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The following extract shows the English intruder in bold: Ein offenbar programmatisches Statement der Jury findet man dann unter den Sachbüchern,…… Continue reading An English word here? Really?
A pause can change syntax and meaning
Trying to write something concisely, I came across a quirk of English. I ran into an example where inserting a pause changes both the syntax of a sentence and its meaning. Here’s the context. Sarah Wells married Joseph Randall, but Joseph died within a few years. After that, Sarah remarried. Her second husband was Louis…… Continue reading A pause can change syntax and meaning