Speaking of Words: Humorous English
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If my title leads you to hope this column is about amusing things in English, such as funny words like “hornswoggle” and “discombobulate,” I’m afraid I’ll disappoint you.
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Speaking of Words: Euphemisms
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Take climate change, for example. Frank Luntz, a Republican operative who specializes in misleading phrases, recommended to George W. Bush that his administration use that phrase instead of the more honest global warming.
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Speaking of Words: None, The Oxford, and Kindred Commas
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More and more writers and publishers are joining newspaper editors in the belief that the second-last item in a series needs no comma after it.
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Five Words in a Line
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Some friends and I, with too much time on our hands, have long been collecting examples of such expressions, which we call “autonyms.”
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How Did Human Language Get Started?
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Well, all right, there are a few ideas, based on a few facts, but they don’t amount to an explanation, not yet anyway.
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The Double French Invasion
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A few years ago my wife and I flew on Icelandair to Europe. On one of the doors in the airplane was the word Neytharutgangur.
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Are All Languages Alike?
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It sounds absurd even to ask if all languages are alike, or even somewhat alike, as anyone studying a foreign language for the first time will attest. Who could say such a thing?
Speaking of Words: Arabic Words in English
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All languages borrow words from neighboring languages, and if a language has great geographical spread, as English has, it will absorb countless numbers of them.
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Speaking of Words: The Grammar You Already Know
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Suppose you never had a teacher who taught you “grammar,” by which I mean how to diagram sentences, distinguish singular versus plural possessives, avoid dangling participles, and the like, along with spelling.