I'm working on a submission to an academic journal with a research buddy - I'm in the UK, he's Canadian, we communicate by email and generally have a pretty relaxed relationship with a reasonable amount of humour ( Read more... )

Hi, I have a question to native English-speakers :)
When, with no particular context, you hear the word "smudged window", does it it sound to you like the window is dirty, or that it is blurred? Let's say: She stood, lost in her thoughts, pointing to the city beyond a smudged window. (this is not a quote, just an example :) )
Thanks a lot!

"Does the sandwich come with?" [overheard at deli, asking does a reuben include sides of pickles or kraut, something of that nature without following 'with' by 'it/them'.I've noticed within the past three years a language change and perhaps others here have, too. Most often, it's noticeable about food as in the above example. A person keeps ( Read more... )

It seems to be impossible to do anything on the internet at the moment without seeing a lot about what's going on in the US, much of it pretty horrifying ( Read more... )

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Can anyone explain what the phrase "cheer for chalk" means?

I saw it (as "but people don't cheer for chalk") here in a tennis article at www.forbes.com and I can't work out from the context what on earth it means ( Read more... )

I'm sorry, I know I sound like some crusty old reactionary here. It's just that this is something that for some reason I find particularly irritating, and I wondered how others feel about it. I generally find things easier to accept if I understand the reasoning behind them, so my question is ( Read more... )

I have some jars of home made strawberry "jam-elly" which has jam with fruit in the top half of the jar and just clear jelly in the bottom half. It was due to a bit of a failure in my jam making technique, but in general the two things are cooked in different ways, jam has the sugar added to the fresh fruit and jelly has the sugar added to the ( Read more... )

As a British English speaker, I've seen a lot of references to 'upstate New York' over the years, and had never bothered myself  too much about the precise definition, as it generally seemed fairly clear from context. And then, this week, I came across a reference to 'upstate Washington ( Read more... )

It seems to me that in AmE the diphthong in cold, colt, hold, mold, sold & told is often (or always?) either too short or absent altogether unlike in words like rose, hope, poke, tone, boat and so on. The dictionaries that I have access to do not mark the audible difference I'm encountering ( Read more... )

The Radio Times last week had an interview with an American actor/actress (I don’t know which term she prefers). In case it matters, the woman’s name is Jane Lynch and she is apparently in GleeMs Lynch is described in the article sub-title as an Anglophile (Britophile?), but unless I’m reading it all wrong, that’s not how she comes over at all ( Read more... )