Didn't take forty seconds. Thirty-five maybe

In French these days, if you say 'c'est un bordel' you just mean 'it's a madhouse', 'it's chaos'. Which seems a bit severe on the brothel-keepers or madams of this world: maybe one or two of them are efficient managers. However, the same line of thinking gives rise to the English euphemism 'disorder...

I'm an interloper in this department -- wrong side of the pond -- but in case anyone's interested, 'pop' was the traditional word in Yorkshire too. At least, that's what my father called it. The word 'soda' isn't used much over here (except for a flavourless mixer, as in 'whisky and soda') and nowad...

I don't know much about US English but "three" is often heard pronounced like "tree" in British accents.

That surprises me (and surprise is good for me, I find). In Britain, by contrast, "three" is often heard pronounced like "tree" in Irish accents!

And you just reminded me, there is a dialect of UK English that pronounces 'th' with a 'v'... -Tim Yes, in Britain, it is typical of old-fashioned Cockney (the London dialect) to use f for voiceless th and v for voiced th. f and s have in common with th the fact that they are fricatives (though s c...

The load that I lift from others Makes my load to disappear. I'd never seen make followed by a to-infinitive. Brazilian dude Yes, poetic license, as Katy commented above; but ihas someone written a grammar of poetic license please? Even in poetry there are things you can do and things you can't. Al...

I have this strange habbit of pronouncing the word "bag" as "beg" and "wagon" as "wai-gon." Does anyone know where this dialect comes from? Example A sounds like upper-class England to me: the actress playing Lady Bracknell, in Oscar Wilde's /The Importance o...

This reminds me of the title of that unique academic journal on rude words, obscenities, etc., called /Maledicta/, edited by Reinhold Aman.

Highly recommended!

The French word for "German", allemand , comes from an ancient Germanic *Ala-manniz "all men". But the reason this word is used in French for 'Germans' is that a group of Germani settled near the borders of the Roman Empire, around 250 AD I think, and raided across the border. T...

La plus ça change, la plus la même chose!

You've changed it a bit, but, yes, it's still the same thing. I think it's: Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!

And the reason why it's called alogo (a negative + logos word) is that it can't speak. Horses are the non-speaking contingent in an army; men, as is well known, talk all the time.

This from Andriotis's Etymological lexicon of modern Greek.

Which Foreign Language Is Closer To English? a. French b. German c. Spanish d. Gaelic e. Italian Correct answer and historical references will posted within 7 days. Here's my try. Whether Sunshipper and his historical references will call me 'correct' remains to be seen. In terms of language origin...

Abstain. I agree with most of it, and, mutatis mutandis, it could be applied to the country I was born in (England) and the country I now live in (France). I don't agree with item 10. I do as well as I can with French, and I actively help my less-Francophone fellow Brits to learn the language, but I...

Flaminius, how could I fail to respond to such a politely expressed request? Most linguists (perhaps all linguists!) disagree with me, but I believe the differences between languages and organisms are such that to use genetics as a metaphor for language change is seriously misleading. Let me try to ...

Badandy, there is a big difference between viruses (or any other organism) and languages. Organisms actually exist. Languages don't. A language doesn't change because it doesn't exist. Either (a) the way you speak changes, as you grow up or learn from other people, or (b) the speech of those younger...