Words, Woords, Woorden
In this video David Crystal, a linguist with great authority on the English language, discusses his favorite words in the English language.
Lately I’ve been thinking about my favorite words. I don’t necessarily think I have chosen any favorite words consciously, but I think I subconsciously choose to use certain words and certain constructions of words without realizing it.
This phenomenon is even more interesting to me when I think about it in the context of learning a second or third language.
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Shaken not…shuffled?
Time is a precious commodity for me at the moment as I’m trying to rise to the seemingly impossible challenge of preparing myself for yet another exam period. I wanted to take a few minutes to post the most recently encountered curiosity concerning this quirky language called Dutch.
Read MoreFalse Friends
The word friend seems to be a very straight-forward word that most English speakers associate with that warm feeling you get when someone does something thoughtful for you or the contentment you feel when you come in contact with someone that seems to look at the world in the same way that you do. We all know what it means to have a friend. I thought I understood the word friend in all of its senses; that was until I moved to Belgium.
Read MoreHow to trick a Belgian
One of the things I reveled in when I first moved to Ghent was the often-underrated ability to blend in. I had just spent a year living and studying in Spain and often found myself an anomaly in that culture; it was always obvious to Spanish people that I was from somewhere else. It was such a relief to venture out in Ghent and mix in seamlessly with the rest of the crowd. In fact, I seem to have perfected the art of blending in so well that I’m quite often stopped on the street and asked for directions.
My idea for this post came to me a couple of weeks ago, when I was trudging around Ghent, impeded by construction on the tram route, trying to reach a rather out-of-the-way copy shop in which I could purchase a course manual. I had just come from an English literature lecture in which the Belgian girl sitting next to me asked me a question in Dutch about the lecture.
Read MoreWhen the swear word loses its strength.
Belgians are superior language learners. A week or so ago I was amazed again by their vast language capabilities. I was waiting for the tram around 10 in the morning so that I could make my English literature class lecture when an elderly man and woman made their way to the stop. As the tram was arriving the man asked me something in Dutch that I didn’t understand.
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