Monthly Archives: March 2019

Tempura, vindaloo, and other Portuguese foods

Posted on March 31, 2019 | Leave a comment

My latest article for The Week is about foods that are generally considered emblematic of the cultures we associate them with, but actually carry names that show their true origins in quite different cultures:

10 signature foods with borrowed names

 

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A post in praise of long titles for books, in which I clarify “long,” give luxuriant examples, describe the function, compare with lengthy titles in other spheres of life, dismiss objections both silly and obnoxious, and cap off with further examples

Posted on March 23, 2019 | 4 comments

Some people dislike the long titles that many old books had. They scorn them or laugh at them.

I rather enjoy them.

In fact, I find them relaxing. I’ve encountered a couple just recently that really eased my nerves. Continue reading →

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The Dock on Queen St.

Posted on March 22, 2019 | Leave a comment
IMG_9468

Homey, if your home has a canoe hanging from the ceiling

Listen to the audio of this on Patreon. You really should, you know. It’s free and everything.

Nostalgic for the lakelands of cottage country? Wish you were sitting on the dock of the bay? Or perhaps you just want wood floors, wood tables, old-school wallpaper, comfy padded chairs, and a place that clearly has musical performances at the back some evenings and weekends? Obviously, you need to go to Queen East. There are plenty of coffice spaces in this stretch east of the tracks, and each one has its own variation. This one’s the cottage-style one. Its owners are from Sudbury. And you can sit in here and almost imagine you’re not in Toronto – just sit near the back and don’t look towards the window. Continue reading →

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Special characters and diacritical marks

Posted on March 21, 2019 | Leave a comment

I’ve recently done a presentation and a webinar on handling words from other languages in English context. (If you’d like me to present it – or another topic – for your organization, ask about my availability!) For it, I created a handout that’s a handy reference for word people. I’ve decided to make it available for everyone. So here it is!

Special Characters and Diacritical Marks

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Who “r” you?

Posted on March 19, 2019 | Leave a comment

My latest article for the BBC is on “r” – that sound we make in many different ways, and sometimes not at all, depending on who we are and where we’re from. It has a very interesting history, and not just in English!

What a single sound says about you

 

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exply

Posted on March 17, 2019 | 2 comments

If you imply something, it’s implicit. If you comply with something, you’re complicit. So why don’t we say you exply something if you make it explicit? I hereby decide and declare that henceforth it shall be so. You can now say “Don’t make me guess what you mean! Just exply it!” Of course, then we’re on our way to saying replies are replicit, which I’m also fine with. And don’t say we already have explain and explicate. Look, implicate isn’t the same as imply and replicate isn’t the same as reply. And complain, complicate, and comply are three different things. Continue reading →

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Pronunciation tip: Kilkenny

Posted on March 15, 2019 | 1 comment

I first learned the name of this city in southeast Ireland from a limerick (ironically). Then I knew it as the name of an ale. Then, for some reason, I started hearing people say it as though it were a modified version of Kokanee, with the stress on the first syllable.

People. People. Here is how to say it, for heaven’s sake. Also how to drink it.

Oh, and for more Irish pronunciation tips, see Pronunciation tip: Sláinte, Céad míle fáilte and Pronunciation tip: more Irish.

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betwixt

Posted on March 14, 2019 | 3 comments

Betwixt the dawning and the day it came
Upon me like a spell,
While tolled a distant bell,
A wondrous vision but without a name
In pomp of shining mist and shadowed flame,
Exceeding terrible;
Before me seemed to open awful Space,
And sheeted tower and spire
With forms of shrouded ’tire
Arose and beckoned with unearthly grace,
I felt a Presence though I saw no face
But the dark rolling fire.

So begins “The Beatific Vision” by Frederick William Orde Ward. Had I presented but the first line, you would have known already ’twas poesy. First line? First word, in sooth! Just as there are words that let you know you’re reading a news article (temblor, pontiff), there are words that declare poetry. Poetry! And tho this bit of rime lay ’twixt the pages of an ancient tome (well, 1927) that declared on its cover no more than “The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse” (the most mystical thing about which being how I come to have it – I think I know, but in recollection I feel a Presence but see no face), had I met it on a glowing screen I would still have known. Continue reading →

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Book sniffing note: Slanguage

Posted on March 13, 2019 | 53 comments

Look, I don’t think I’m weird about this. I really don’t. I think lots of you sniff your books. And probably other people’s too.

The way books smell matters. The cheap hard white academic institutional paper of tenure books and reheated dissertations has a smell that tells you from the beginning that you will learn a firehose-blast of trivialities and you will not admit to enjoying it too much. My undated Hodder & Stoughton edition of The Ruba’iya’t of Omar Khayyam has just a memory of a smell of storytime from thick soft volumes, while my copy of Elementary Particles by David Griffiths has an inexplicable faint whiff of black pepper. For a long time, every issue of National Geographic had a tangy smart pong that was the closest thing I’d ever found to the taste left by a large bug (perhaps a bee) that slammed into the back of my mouth as I was cycling at speed. And nothing – nuh, thing – can match the overriding dusty-honey air of ancient foxed linen rag bond in the subterranean stacks of that Great Pyramid of theatre history, that glorious bibliotechnical Dumpster, the Harvard Theatre Collection. Continue reading →

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flitters, flitterjigs

Posted on March 10, 2019 | Leave a comment

My friend Stan Carey has been so good as to send me a copy of Slanguage: A Dictionary of Irish Slang, by Bernard Share. Naturally, I want to share some of its bounty with you. This evening I flipped it open and found a winner right away – in fact, two winners for the price of one.

The headword is flitters. It means ‘fragments, pieces, tatters’. And it sounds like it should, doesn’t it? Continue reading →

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