Portuguese contains a construction that does not exist in many other languages. The construction uses words: appearing to mean ‘John cut his hair’; but in fact meaning ‘John had his hair cut’.(‘cut’ here is a verb, not a noun.) This post considers: how this construction works similarities with the passive how this construction differs in…… Continue reading Getting your hair cut in Portuguese
Tag: Topic
Some things I like about Hungarian
Hungarian differs from most European languages in several ways, partly because it is not a member of the Indo-European family of languages. Hungarian is a member of the Ugric branch of the Uralic language family. https://languagemiscellany.com/2024/01/the-uralic-languages/ This post covers some fascinating features of Hungarian: vowel harmony front and back vowels in deictic words possessive word…… Continue reading Some things I like about Hungarian
Trying too hard to avoid the passive
The US government website plainlanguage.gov gives some useful guidance on plain writing Federal plain language guidelines. Not surprisingly, one section advises using active sentences. https://www.plainlanguage.gov/guidelines/conversational/use-active-voice/ This guidance is good, but it falls into the same trap as much other guidance by similar organisations. Although many writers use the passive voice too much, there are times…… Continue reading Trying too hard to avoid the passive
Saying where things are in Japanese
Like English, Japanese often uses a basic locative construction to answer a question about where something or someone is. But Japanese uses different constructions for some questions of that kind, although English would use the basic locative construction in those cases too. Kita (2006) summarises 4 such cases. Basic locative construction Japanese often uses a…… Continue reading Saying where things are in Japanese
Mainland Southeast Asian languages
Mainland Southeast Asia is home to speakers of around 280 languages spread across 5 families: the Mon-Khmer branch of Austroasiatic (including Vietnamese and Khmer) Sino-Tibetan (including Mandarin and other Sinitic languages, and Burmese and other Tibeto-Burman languages) Tai-Kadai (including Thai and Lao) Hmong-Mien (languages of southwest China) Austronesian (languages spoken mainly in Oceania, but represented…… Continue reading Mainland Southeast Asian languages
Structuring texts to make them clearer
Rachel Cayley’s blog Explorations of Style gives some excellent writing tips. She was running the blog as a graduate student and has since distilled her advice in a book Thriving as a Graduate Writer: Principles, Strategies, and Habits for Effective Academic Writing (2023). https://explorationsofstyle.com/book/ What I particularly like about her blog is the advice on…… Continue reading Structuring texts to make them clearer
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
The Uralic Languages
According to Kiefer and Laakso (2014), there is a general consensus that there are 6 main branches of Uralic: Ugric: Hungarian (13 million speakers) and, in Western Siberia, the Ob-Ugric languages Khanty (almost 10,000 speakers) and Mansi (probably less than 10,000 speakers) Finnic: Finnish (5 million speakers); Estonian (1 million). Other Finnic languages have many…… Continue reading The Uralic Languages
Perfect tense: lifetime effects
The perfect tense in English reports past events that continue to have an effect in the present. This leads to some interesting effects that are sometimes called lifetime ‘effects’. This name is used because whether a sentence is acceptable (felicitous) depends on whether it relates to a person or subject that still exists. For example,…… Continue reading Perfect tense: lifetime effects