Free coffee and biscuits caused a rampage
“The staff of the English Department, in an unprecedented act of foolishness and with complete lack of foresight, decided to offer the languishing student body something to cheer them up and maybe carry them through the harsh, cold winter months: coffee and biscuits. In a rampage one bystander described as ‘hauntingly similar’ to the Job Offer Riot of 2008 (when the department advertised one minimal pay opening as a …

Idioms are often beguiling in their incomprehensibility. This is particularly palpable when learning or teaching a new language. For example, Finns say that “cold coffee beautifies,” referring to coffee that has been sitting on the table for too long and is drunk anyway. I am still not entirely sure what the phrase really means, though all the words gathered together seem simple enough.
It is not only language learners that confuse these expressions. A …

In addition to a profound and passionate interest in linguistics, I am equally driven, if not even more so, by a brain-stimulating, soul-shaking fascination towards the North American continent, the U.S. of A. in particular. The questions, research and casual, that arise from a nation so wonderfully contradictory and attached to its past are copious and complex enough to keep me from ever getting a full night’s sleep.
From a “foreigner’s” perspective, it’s always a question …

Which is more important in your everyday life: to understand the language you speak and to recognise the intricate grammatical mechanisms that underlie it or to just speak it and hope that you’ll be understood? Let me rephrase that question. In linguistic terms, do you prize competence over performance? Do you feel that it is justified for you to spend hours on end in school learning the grammar of your native language, when you know …

December 19th, 2008 is YouTube Blackout Day, when some free speech advocates will avoid surfing to YouTube to protest the fact that the site has begun removing videos that it feels are too offensive by algorithmically demoting videos from the most discussed list. But how much of this boycott is an actual infringement on the freedom of speech and how much is it simply people complaining that their ability to reach the mass public through YouTube’s popularity?