6 June 2016
by wpAdmin
0 comments
Apparently this is Greenlandic, an Eskimo-Aluet language from Greenland. It sounds like the tape is playing backwards. What wonderful and strange things languages are! Oh, and I think the subtitles are in Danish.
4 May 2016
by wpAdmin
0 comments
Today’s prize for best street name goes to Bad Homburg Way in Exeter. I suspect it has been named after the German town (twinned with Exeter) but it makes me think of hats! Allegedly the homburg hat was thus named … Continue reading
23 April 2016
by wpAdmin
0 comments
It isn’t only in 2016 that famous people have been dying. Four hundred years ago today, William Shakespeare shuffled off his mortal coil. I’m not sure that artists as influential as Prince or Bowie – or as loud as Lemmy … Continue reading
14 June 2014
by wpAdmin
0 comments
Split up like that, it sounds like like a whole new language but hopefully you will parse it as a positive statement. We had roast beef for dinner tonight (and thus cold meat for a salad tomorrow and sandwich material … Continue reading
10 October 2013
by wpAdmin
0 comments
This one has been sitting in my drafts folder for a while: The mutability of English is perhaps its greatest strength although, FWIW, I normally compose my text messages as short messages with traditional spelling and only the merest smattering … Continue reading
19 May 2013
by wpAdmin
1 Comment
Did you learn anything new today? If not, how about the word “anastrophe”? Apparently this is the proper term for “Yoda speak”, when the little green Jedi master backwards or jumbled says his sentences. Of course, it is not only … Continue reading
9 May 2013
by wpAdmin
0 comments
When people speak, they often punctuate their pauses with short interjections. Observing some colleagues working on editing a video recently, they suggested that academics often do this at the start of sentences. Furthermore, they had observed that scientists typically say … Continue reading
9 April 2013
by wpAdmin
0 comments
It is a shame that, when the use of “spam” was coined as a euphemism for unsolicited advertising material, they did not use a more liquid image. Many of the adjectives that comes to mind when riled by it are … Continue reading
8 January 2012
by wpAdmin
0 comments
Poor old Scrooge: the star of Dickens’ Christmas Carol and a splendid example of a man who, given an opportunity to review his past, present and future, undergoes a wholesale and lasting change into a model of philanthropy and good … Continue reading
3 April 2011
by wpAdmin
0 comments
It was perhaps unintentionally ironic that the Toby Carvery Jane and I took her Mum out to for lunch today boasted “the taste of Britain” as one of the slogans on its wall. As far as I could tell, most … Continue reading