Language

​Insecurity over the ‘correct’ use of pronouns has led language in an unusual direction, says PETER TRUDGILL In normal native English, the personal pronouns I, he, she, we, they are only used when they appear as the subject of a verb: I am leaving now; he likes coffee; she would like some; we are coming; […]

PETER TRUDGILL on the unlikely origin of the name of a stretch of water off the Scottish coast The sea between the northern Outer Hebrides and the Scottish mainland is called the Minch, while the more southerly strait between the Outer Hebrides and the Isle of Skye is known as the Little Minch. The word […]

Peter Trudgill on a perfectly good word which may find its days numbered The Dutch word for ‘to buy’ is kopen. The corresponding word in German is kaufen; and the West Frisian equivalent is keapje. All the Scandinavian languages also have a related form: Norwegian kjøpe, Danish købe, Swedish köpa, Icelandic kaupa, and Faroese keypa. […]

Logic- and despots – might favour other systems, but, as Peter Trudgill explains, traditional units of measurements still endure. Of the approximately 80 countries in the world which drive on the left-hand side of the road, only four are European: Ireland, Malta, Cyprus, and the UK (plus the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands). […]

PETER TRUDGILL finds much in common between European languages and the English spoken by African Americans. One of the African American comedian Reginald D. Hunter’s best jokes comes from a television appearance here in Britain. It was a linguistic gag. Hunter related a story that went something like this: He was in a bar, somewhere […]

PETER TRUDGILL divides up the continent according to word different languages use to describe the smelly stuff The distribution of words meaning ‘cheese’ in different European languages has an interesting geographical pattern. These words fall into four rather clearly separate zones. In the northern zone, the North Germanic languages have a word for cheese which […]

PETER TRUDGILL traces the clockwork progress of the word ‘orange’ from southern India to northern Europe, and finds the odd detour. The Democratic Unionist Party are having difficulty coming to terms with the official use in Ulster of Irish Gaelic, the indigenous Celtic language of Ireland. They also have a predilection for the colour orange. […]

Peter Trudgill on a remarkable discovery which transformed the way we think about languages. About 230 years ago, Sir William Jones made an amazing intellectual breakthrough. Jones had been born in London of a Welsh father and an English mother, and some reports suggest that he grew up bilingual in Welsh and English, though this […]

We have a number of set phrases in English which we use in a rather automatic and semi-obligatory way at particular times and in specific social situations – such as ‘good morning’ and ‘good evening’, ‘happy birthday’ and ‘happy new year’. There are rules about how to use these formulae. We can say ‘good afternoon’ […]

Many of the materials we use derive their names from the towns they were first made in. PETER TRUDGILL explores the stories behind some of the best-known The sad city of Mosul, or what is left of it, has been very much in the news. Thousands of its inhabitants have been killed, wounded, or displaced; […]

Parisians might like to claim a link for their city back to ancient Greece. In fact the stronger connection is a Yorkshire one The capital of France has many names. In the Gaelic of Ireland it is known as Páras; the Finnish name is Pariisi; it is called Parijs in Dutch; and in Lithuanian it […]

In Romanian Moldavia,the Csángós are oppressed by their Romanian neighbours and misunderstood by their Hungarian ‘relatives’. Photo: Contributed – Credit: Archant Hungarian is a language which is generally considered to have no close linguistic relatives, in any sense of the word ‘close’. Its nearest linguistic relations seem to be the Mansi and Khanty languages, which […]

Why do officials opt for formal phrases when other more instinctive, natural-sounding alternatives are available? On flights coming into London, airline passengers often hear messages from the cabin crew along the lines of ‘we are about to commence our descent into Heathrow airport’. Anybody who knows anything about English will recognise that this isn’t anything […]

The English might claim their language is clear and straightforward, and mock the complexities of others. But when it comes to opacity, it is English which leads the way A German word recently made it into our news. The word was Bundespräsidentenstichwahlwiederholungsverschiebung. It was deemed to be newsworthy because of its extreme length, fifty-one letters. […]