Eastpondianly, one knows that the post is delivered by the Royal Mail (in shiny red vans) by a postal worker called a postman or postwoman. Sometimes the postal worker will ride a bike to deliver the post, but they still work for the Royal Mail. If you want to post a letter, you put it in a postbox ...

So, no connexion with scrumping and scrumpy then?

— Garzo.

It is most definitely a westpondian neologism that is never heard in the tired Old World. Neither has it anything to do with Coptic asceticism.

— Garzo.

I have been trying to think of the punny variants of glitterati . The only one I can think of is netterati , which probably refers to those people for whom what is not said in blog is not real. I have heard the menaissance referred to as retrosexual . However, in the verdant country lanes of the Wes...

Here in the Westcountry, I often here daren't , which is pronounced like /dɛɹnt/ (it is a rhotic accent). Colloquially it is often used instead of wouldn't . dialect : I daren't do 'at if I be 'oo! standard : I would not do that if I were you! I've never head dassent around here. Actually there woul...

Some are élan and others plain elan (or is that just a slip?). The SAS train in Elan Valley, South Wales, not that I would be able to keep up! Or you could go for a ride with Emma Peel in her Lotus Elan — now made by Kia, of all people!

Inspiring?

— Always Garzo.

As my mum's family come from Liverpool. I've always thought that Liverpuddlian was a good adjective. We also have Glaswegians and Norwegians on the way. It does seem odd that our languages like to distinguish Israelis from Israelites — are we subtly trying to rob Israelis of an Israelite heritage? —...

I think the links posted above make the issue quite clear, but I'll say it out loud anyway. The Arabic word is واد wādin or وادي wādī . Seeing as plurals are always fun with Arabic, you get two of them: اودية awdiyä or وديان wadyān . The word is used for any valley, wet or dry. There are a significa...

OK

Deirdre decided to have chips with vinegar and/or mayonaise.

Deidre decided to have chips with either vinegar or mayonaise, or both.

Make it three options -- that's logically what such sentence is trying to cram into two components.

-- Garzo.

I do like the idea of using a funeral pall. However, a thing for expensive caskets put the pall out of buisness: the family wanted to show off the fine wood and brass they had provided. There is a part of me, though, that wonders whether covering a coffin is an attempt to distance ourselves from the...

Dismissing the English word for the removal of gas and focusing on the name of the French painter, what is the correct pronunciation of his name? Now, American and British pronunciation of French loanwords is very different. We Brits would stress the first syllable and not pronounce the s : saying s...

Hmm... Context would help here. My initial instinct is to go for that , because it is introducing a restrictive relative clause. However, is love common to most sentences? However, if the sentence is telling us that love is a verb, and that verbs are common to most sentences, one should use a comma:...

You've given a perfect example; passion, guts, pride, gusto, humour and comedy are difficult to define succinctly. I have some notion that these things could be related but no clear idea of how. That's probably because we don't have a direct translation of 'hwyl' so I'm not used to the thought. Pre...

Thanks Anders. The Bescherelle seems appropriate for French, but I'm not sure if volume 1 simply covers verb conjugation. I've also looked at German in Review, which (although a teaching grammar) looks pretty good. I'm still searching...

-- Garzo.[/u]

I'm going to have to be doing more work in French and German next year, and I'm thinking of updating my tools. I still cling onto the bits and pieces that got through by school exams, but they are severly lacking when it comes to versatility and translating obscure academic texts. I really could do ...