Category Archives: The Week

Going off the rails on a gravy train

Posted on September 24, 2016 | 1 comment

Donald Trump tweeted that line about the gravy train again. How Rob-Ford-esque can he get! I decided to do a little digging to find the origin of the phrase. It’s my latest article for The Week:

Was there ever an actual train that carried gravy?

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You can’t use it however you want; however, you can use it

Posted on September 12, 2016 | Leave a comment

My latest piece for The Week is on the word however, which just happens to be one of Wikipedia’s favourite words – however, people aren’t always sure how to handle it.

However: Everything you need to know about a commonly abused word

 

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How do you say “laptop” in Lakota?

Posted on August 17, 2016 | 4 comments

I’ve been on vacation the last few days, so I haven’t gotten to posting a word tasting. But my latest article for The Week is up. This one came at the suggestion and with the assistance of several people involved in the Lakota language preservation projects, and it took me far too long to get around to writing. I was lucky to have enough background in the other languages I mention: Mandarin, Icelandic, French… but the Lakota is the centrepiece, and the point is:

This is how old languages add new words

 

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They made a podcast. I know, right?

Posted on July 22, 2016 | 1 comment

Sometimes when the weather gets so summery I just get so busy summering that I forget things I did a while ago and sent off. I know right? Well, here’s one: a podcast version of my article on “I know, right?” It’s a nice reminder of how much of what we say is verbal gesture rather than literal denotation.

‘I know, right?’: The anatomy of a wonderfully nonsensical phrase

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The Donald: The podcast

Posted on July 4, 2016 | Leave a comment

You may recall that I recently wrote an article on Donald Trump’s language techniques. We’ve made that into a podcast now, so you can listen to it rather than just reading it – if you can stand the sound of Trump’s voice.

How Donald Trump hypnotized America

 

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“ಠ ಠ what is that alphabet?” “ ツ easy!”

Posted on May 20, 2016 | Leave a comment

Another article for The Week! Actually, I wrote this a couple of weeks ago, but it took a while getting posted because they were busy with the thing I wrote my other piece this week about, which shall not be mentioned here.

Anyway, this piece is the necessary sequel to the “How to identify languages” piece. That one focused on the Latin alphabet. This one looks at all the other alphabets. (Well, most of them. The Cree and Cherokee syllabic alphabets were cut to save length. And I skipped a few others that you really are unlikely to bump into.) It even has tips on telling apart languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet – and ones that use Arabic script!

How to identify Asian, African, and Middle Eastern alphabets at a glance

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Trumpery and repetition

Posted on May 17, 2016 | Leave a comment

Slick Donald is confident. Slick Donald is calm. Slick Donald knows just what he’s doing. My latest article for The Week:

How Donald Trump hypnotized America

 

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The quick way to know what that language on the imported cookie package is

Posted on April 20, 2016 | 2 comments

After a bit of a pause while I was busy doing and writing other things, I’ve written another article for The Week. This one is on a shortcut to knowing what language you’re looking at (when it’s written in the Latin alphabet and is a language you’d reasonably likely see on merchandise or in mass media or social networks). The short of it is: It just takes a little character.

How to identify any language at a glance

(My editor wrote the title. Obviously it’s not really any language.)

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The real meanings of these 10 insane words are crazy

Posted on February 23, 2016 | 1 comment

My latest article for The Week is on psychiatric terms that are used very loosely in common speech, such as OCD, ADHD, narcissist, manic-depressive, and paranoid. Want to know what the official diagnostic meaning is? You might be surprised:

10 commonly abused psychology words — and what they really mean

 

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Keep the Ziemas in Ziemassvētki

Posted on December 22, 2015 | Leave a comment

My latest piece for The Week is on Christmas – and Noël, and Navidad, and Weihnachten, and Jul, and Ziemassvētki… Christmas has different names in different languages, and most of them don’t mention Christ. In fact, many of them are retained names of pagan festivals. Does that seem inappropriate? Do you mind Christmas trees, or mistletoe, or – for that matter – the name Easter?

Almost every language has a word for ‘Christmas.’ Few reference Christ.

 

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