Monkey see, monkey do, monkey speak
How Yerkish helps us understand primates Every now and then an article from a sketchy website would come up on my newsfeed, claiming that the first human-monkey hybrid was born or that aliens have called in to return Michael Jackson or something just as outrageous that would make me question what journalism has become. You […]
Did you mean what you just said? Insights on linguistic ambiguities
Did you mean what you just said? Insights on linguistic ambiguities Have you ever experienced a situation in which you, or a friend of yours says something, and you understand there are two interpretations for this sentence? It happened at least once for anybody. It can be very funny: I’m talking to the The office […]
Quebec Anglophones and Francophones: a (not-so-charming) Valentine’s day tale
“I remember” is the slogan we can see written on cars’ plates while wandering the streets of Quebec. It did call my attention the first time I saw these words in 2018 when I was only an alien, an ex-pat convinced that my life in Quebec was going to be easy because of my knowledge […]
The Sun Never Sets on the Aramaic Alphabet
The most influential language you’ve never heard of… What do Genghis Khan, Jesus Christ & Cyrus the Great all have in common? The Aramaic language! This Semitic cousin of Amharic, Arabic & Hebrew is the linguistic success story of the ancient world. Going Viral The original speakers of Aramaic, the Arameans, left almost no mark […]
Gaels of the World – Lenite! – beginning my journey into Scottish Gaelic
Halò. ‘S e Daibhidh an t-ainm a th’ orm – or Hello. My name is David. Literally ‘It is David the name that is on me.’ I have absolutely no reason to learn Gaelic. None whatsoever. When I first came to live in Scotland, bilingual road signs were something I noticed that gave a sense […]
Ancient Antagonists – The Victorians
This article is NOT SAFE FOR WORK We’ve gone through our friends the greeks and romans in the previous two issues, and now we’ve gotten to a part of history that’s not that far away from us, hence it’s much easier and (at times) way more accurate to pinpoint those swear words. The Victorian era […]
