It is a bank holiday here in France and therefore a perfect day to finally give you the next Word-of-the-Month post. I haven’t written anything in a while as I have had some health related problems which meant that I never gave you a “Word of the Month” in October. For those who were waiting Read More …
I don’t know how many times I have heard the argument “yeah, well, we have native speakers working in the company, so they can do the translation”. Or often the (sole) requirement of a translation agency or client will be that a translator is a native speaker. Don’t get me wrong. Most translators do indeed Read More …
No, this blog post is neither about idioms nor is it a pun on the Wheel of Fortune, it is about loanwords. English has a reputation for being one of the languages that contains the most words. Whether the English language is the language in the wold that has the highest amount of words is Read More …
If you are interested in language, you probably know that 1000 new words have recently been added to the online Oxford Dictionary. As the OED explains, this does not, however, mean that these words will be added to the printed edition of the Oxford Dictionary. Not yet anyway, but who knows, perhaps some of them Read More …
My reading habits change slightly with the change of seasons throughout the year. At the beginning of the summer holiday I automatically opt for light reads and mostly fiction. I am not quite sure if the reason behind this is that I am intellectually tired and in need of a break or whether the sun, Read More …
You know that feeling when you’ve tidied up the house and everything is clean and neatly arranged? Or when you’ve finally got round to filing all the documents that have been lying around in scattered piles for ages? Or that feeling of freedom and accomplishment when you at long last have got through your to-do Read More …
This blog is for wordsters, linguists, sticklers, nerds or in other terms: lovers of both the written and the spoken language, grammar and words! I have quite often been called a nerd, and believe me it was not always meant as a compliment. For some reason those who like in-depth research, details and learning are Read More …