culture. education. literary studies.
Mark arrived on time. Or was it in time? At time??? The use of prepositions in English can be quite confusing to native speakers of other languages. Prepositional phrases can be even trickier because they seem to have a special logic of their own; one needs to learn them one at a time, understanding the …
In an earlier post, I wrote about the etymology of the English words for the days of the week. As we saw there, those words have their origin (for the most part) in the names of some of the main deities of the Germanic pantheon. In this post weโll look at the names of the …
Continue reading "Modern English names for the months of the year – 100% Latin!"
News podcasts are a very useful resource, especially for those who like to keep well-informed. In this post youโll find a short selection of those, each only a few minutes long. As with other podcasts, youโll be able to access all of them easily in your podcast app, or by following the links provided here.
Each year, lexicographers1 working for prominent publishing companies announce a word that, in their judgment, marked the previous year. Their choice usually tells us something about the state of affairs2 in the world we live in and the way language reflects it. In this post, weโll look at the English words of the year 2021. …
grammaticus 