Oy! Adding a Little Yiddish to Your English
I am proudly one-sixteenth Jewish. For most of my life, I didn’t even know that. I think I learned of my Jewish heritage in my teens or 20s. However, I realized the other day how many Yiddish words I naturally…
A Lesson with Miss Spelling
Some time ago, my blog was visited by the well-known language arts teacher, Miss Pronunciation. She helped to clarify proper articulation of commonly mispronounced words, such as library and et cetera. I was recently contacted by her colleague, Miss Spelling,…
Prickly Pronunciations
These words all rhyme: New Cue Lieu Woo Do So how do you spell the “oo” sound in English? Um, it depends. The English language represents a mixing of cultures because it has borrowed words from many other tongues and…
Speaking the Queen’s English (Or At Least Her Servant’s Bloody English)
“England and America are two countries separated by a common language.” George Bernard Shaw If you’ve watched BBC comedies or attempted to look for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in a British bookstore, you quickly discover that there are…
Wednesday Words: Shakespeare Shares
How many people can say that they coined phrases that will still be in use over 400 years after they introduced them? Only a handful, I would think. But I have discovered that William Shakespeare is to credit, or blame,…