Tag: language
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Cornwall and the Linguistic Diaspora
You can sometimes find acquaintance and commonality in the most unusual places. I first found Alexis Chateau’s blog around two years ago. I can’t quite remember how, maybe it was the chronicles of her travels around the southern US states. Yet it ended up being her posts on Jamaican culture that I found the most…
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Origins of the English Language: The Norman Conquest
Other titles in this series: Anglo-Saxons; Vikings Let’s get one thing out of the way before we start… whether you call him William: Duke of Normany, William the Bastard or William the Conqueror the man who invaded England from Normandy was not French. He hated the French and they hated him. He was actually of…
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The Power of Words: The Language of Politics
Around election time, the language of our politicians changes. We all know how much they use spin and photo opportunities to sway us to vote for them, but I’ve noticed that certain words get used more than at any other time during a Parliament.
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Figurative Speech: Alliteration
What is alliteration and how do we use it? It is the use of a sequence of words where the consonant sounds are similar or each word in the sentence begins with the same letter or letters. The words may not sound the same, but by starting with the same letter(s) it feels as if…
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Figurative Speech: Hyperbole and Meiosis
It’s often hard to present the idea that language studies and linguistics can be fun or funny, but when we look at issues like syntactic ambiguity we can see that it can be. I’m starting a new series, sort of, with no promises on how many I will do or how often I will publish posts on…
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Syntactic Ambiguity – English Language at its Funniest
No wait, don’t run away, please don’t be put off by the term “syntactic ambiguity” – yes I know it sounds dry and a bit like what you learnt in school and never want to learn again, it’s fun. In fact it’s one of the most amusing facets of the English language. Don’t believe me?…
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Quirks of the English Language
Now I am writing for a living, there are many curiosities that strike me about the language of English, seemingly contradictory grammatical rules, strange spellings, silent letters, that dreaded “i before e except after c” that has so many exceptions. This thread is just a dumping ground for some of the weirder quirks so please forgive me…
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Origins of the English Language: Invaders from the North
This is the second part in my series and it’s only taken me a year to write it! It look at the impact of the Vikings on England specifically though they did invade and settle in Wales, Scotland, Ireland and northern France. The Vikings have a poor press. Conventionally portrayed as horn-helmeted barbarians who raped…
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Origins of the English Language: Zee Germans
Imagine living in fifth century Britannia. You speak a bastardised form of Latin that might have been influenced by the Celtic languages that preceded the arrival of the Mediterranean language. But a new language is about to arrive…
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Origins of the English Language: An Introduction
I’ve had an idea for some time to write a couple of articles on the origin of English, specifically how it evolved out of Anglo-Saxon languages and how much influence north European pronunciation and words contributed to the language today – Viking to the rest of us.
MG Mason Creative 