@guardianstyle on Twitter points to an article by Mark Brown announcing what sounds like a wonderful exhibition the British Library is preparing: Evolving English: One Language, Many Voices (Nov 12, 2010 - Apr 3, 2011). There’s even a second piece, by Alison Flood.
British Library exhibits are reputed to be large, well-made and almost over-abundant (I’ve [...]
Over on Facebook, a friend posted a link to the article “Lotto lout Michael Carroll going back to being a binman after blowing £9.7m win”, in which the Daily Mail, a paper known for its even-handed quality reporting, is nearly falling over itself in breathless excitement over the story of a man who spent a £9.7 [...]
From the article “Prehistoric snake gobbled-up dinosaur babies” by Jeremy Hance, which was published on mongabay.com on March 2, 2010:
A fossilized snake has been discovered inside a titanosaur nest in India, leading researchers to conclude that the snake fed on newly-hatched dinosaur babies, rather than their eggs like modern snakes.
The thought process is quite clear, [...]
Via a recent Failblog post, our attention is drawn to a very bizarre sign in Czech:
What is most puzzling about this sign is that it is not an example of what we’ve seen in the past, a translation error: Zákaz tlumočení does indeed mean “translating [interpreting] prohibited”. Apparently, and without explanation, the sign’s injunction doesn’t [...]
Simon Willison tweeted about an event to commemorate the death of Diana Spencer, Princess of Wales, 12 years ago today. The memorial was held at the Tea Cosy in Brighton, a tea room the menu of which contains an item with a name so long it refuses to fit into my own mental memory. Behold [...]
So we’ve come to enjoy Cupertinos, eggcorns and snowclones, and now the Society for Found-Object Internet Sociolinguistics (SFOIS) has acquired a new member. What is this all about? Well, there was no word for it! What, you’re asking? Those train wrecks of newspaper headlines that lead us down the garden path to end up against [...]
I found this in one of my own open browser tabs.
The UK mobile (AmE: cell) phone comparison site right mobilephone has a short English-Welsh phrasebook for what they say are the 10 most common text message (AmE: SMS) abbreviations in use. Useful if you’re learning Welsh.
Apologies for the lack of attribution to who ever [...]
If you want to drive a car into central London during business hours, you have to pay: a hefty £8 ($13.05, 9.27 €, as per today’s exchange rates) a day, or even more if you pay late. This payment is called the congestion charge (in official documents often capitalized), is managed by Transport for London, [...]
Only one more day available on BBC iPlayer, and unfortunately not available as a podcast, Stephen Fry’s wonderful August 11 episode of his BBC4 radio program(me) Fry’s English Delight mentions eggcorns appoximately 11 min into the show. It’s altogether excellent - including the notes on French, language change, the status of error etc.
Eggcorns as a [...]
Over the last few days, Facebook quite clearly seemed to be upgrading its email notification components. This is what I concluded from the email from @facebookmail.com I found in my own mailbox: Because of some personal circumstances, I happened to post more often to my Facebook account than I usually would have, and more importantly [...]