The history of English in 10 minutes1/5/2016 This fascinating and humorous animated video details the roots and history of our beautiful English language, a mongrel language which is comprised of words from 350 others. The video chronologically exhibits the influences the Romans, the Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes, the Vikings, and the Normans all had on English. Of course, no story of the English language would be complete without considering the contributions of William Shakespeare and the King James Bible. The video then goes on to examine the spread of English via Britain's colonisation of half the world. The North Americans get a mention here in regards to their 'not English but somewhere in the ballpark' and its influence on the Brits. The last two chapters consider the influence of the internet and English as a global language. The narration in this series is exceptional - full of all those wonderful English idiomatic phrases and metaphors. I highly recommend all native speakers and advanced non-native speakers take the time to watch this brilliantly done animated video. Does Spanish get your tongue in a twist? Are you at the end of your wits with German grammar? Are you wondering why the French bother with the last letter on every word when they don't even pronounce it? If you think you are having a tough time learning the above languages, then have some sympathy for those learning the ten mentioned in this article. It considers the most mind-boggling and tongue-tying languages that we, as English-speakers, could attempt to learn. Whether it's the alien vocabulary of Basque, the tonal nature of Mandarin, or Estonian's fourteen cases that does it, you may find yourself thanking your deity that English is the world-language, and not one of these challenging tongues. All of them are, however, beautiful in their own way. Click here to view the article "10 Hardest Languages To Learn For English Speakers" How to write 'good'30/4/2013 Here are some tongue-in-cheek rules for writers, as written by Frank L Visco and published in the June 1986 issue of Readers' digest. My several years in the word game have learnt me several rules:
1. Avoid Alliteration. Always. 2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with. 3. Avoid clichés like the plague. (They’re old hat.) 4. Employ the vernacular. 5. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc. 6. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary. 7. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive. 8. Contractions aren't necessary. 9. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos. 10. One should never generalize. 11. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know”.” 12. Comparisons are as bad as clichés. 13. Don’t be redundant; don’t use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous. 14. Profanity sucks. 15. Be more or less specific. 16. Understatement is always best. 17. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement. 18. One word sentences? Eliminate. 19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake. 20. The passive voice is to be avoided. 21. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms. 22. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed. 23. Who needs rhetorical questions? 'To put your foot in your mouth' means saying something, often stupid, that offends, upsets or embarrasses somebody. In most cases, you should also be embarrassed yourself. A very passionate young man addresses several such language-related, foot-in-mouth moments quite humorously in the following Youtube video. Homonyms or: how not to use a spellchecker21/11/2012
Have you ever found yourself at a loss when attempting to translate a word from your mother-tongue to English? Were you not satisfied with the result because it didn't encapsulate the truly rich meaning of the word?
Any speaker of foreign languages is familiar with the beauty and diversity to be found in another language - and sometimes simply the practicality. To this day, I still haven't found a reasonable English translation for the wonderful German word 'doch'. There have even been scientific studies conducted on the incredible breadth of its uses and meanings: Möllering 2001 (Macquarie), Grosz 2010 (MIT), Grosz 2011 (MIT). The following are 25 brilliant words from various foreign languages, for which there are no satisfactory English translations. |