Friend or Faux? The Linguistic Trickery of False Friends
Dear language learners: have you ever embarrassed yourself in Spanish……
Lingua Obscura
The Totally “Destructive” (Yet Oddly Instructive) Speech Patterns of… Young Women?
Two years ago, this column sprang into life by enthusiastically…
When Language Can Cure What Ails You
There’s no denying that the news of the world these…
The Language Wars
This is a strange time for language. More than ever…
Very British Villains (and other Anglo-Saxon Attitudes to Accents)
It’s a linguistic truth universally acknowledged that any story worth…
The Collapse of Meaning in a Post-Truth World
The annus horribilis of 2016 is finally drawing to a…
The Cozy Linguistics of Hygge and Other “Untranslatable” Words
Wintry days are finally here, and those of us who…
Synesthetic Adjectives Will Make You Eat Your Words
Sweet, sharp, tangy, tart: language is delicious! So in a…
Bad Language for Nasty Women (and Other Gendered Insults)
In an election defined by insults, invective and name-calling, Donald…
The Nitty-Gritty on Reduplication: So Good, You Have to Say it Twice.
I was in Paris recently, where a friend of mine…
