I often wondered where the name "Pall Mall" came from. Let's see: there's the garment district for fashionistas, the theater district for those seeking a night's entertainment, and the pall mall for smokers.

In the Germanic languages, the initial "K" would indeed be pronounced, as we do in recently-acquired words like "knish" or the family name "Knievel." Words of this sort that have been in our language longer (knot, knife) have lost the initial K in their English pronunci...

This is my first post on Alpha Agora, so please be kind. Concerning the "would have-would of" issue, I'm curious to know what grade level you were teaching, Mark, when you saw "would of" written out. If we accept "would've" as a proper contraction for (the proper) "...