This is a guest post by writer Sally Gurteen (who btw was my 1500th follower on Twitter and consequently won herself a pack of Turner Ink pencils.) She used to live in Barcelona. Now she's back in blightly. There are many things that I missed about England when I was living in Spain. My daily cup of tea was never quite...
So for those of you that received a Turner Ink Xmas card this year, these are the bloopers. How many did you get? A Christmas tail [A classic homonym. It should be tale.] Santa was having a bad day. 4 [up to number 10, spell out the number. So Four] of his elfs [elves] were throwing a sickie and the work experience...
A teacher stood at the front of the class. "Remember, two negatives can make a positive but two positives can never make a negative." From the back of the classroom came the rejoinder "Yeah, yeah."...
I was writing about teen slang the other week. You may recall there was a quiz. Now, I love slang. And teenagers in particular love slang. But I have to admit there's a time and a place. And what's worrying is there seems to be a whole generation of kids who don't know when to drop the innits. Because no-one's...
Ok, so here are the answers from yesterday's post. Was you tidy or was you confuzzled? 1.How might you embarrass a friend? Dekecking - pulling down your mates's trousers. What a jape! Baring Gopping 2. If a girl was to describe an attractive boy, what might she say? Mcfittie - Obvs. Grimmer Bosh 3. If something was amusing it could be described as: Chenzed Savage Hollage - hilarious! 4. If a young person has...
I’m part of a mentoring programme that mentors teenagers in south west London. And during a mentors get-together last night we had a quiz on teenage slang. This will: 1. Make you feel very old if you get them all wrong. 2. Get you instant respect on Facebook from your teenage rellys if you get them all right. But remember if you say things...
In a recent blog post about the Evolving English exhibition, I mentioned Polari. Polari (or alternatively palari, parlare, parlary) was a secret language or gay slang, popular with the British gay community from about 1900 until the 1970s, and made famous by the 1960s radio show Round the Horne with Kenneth Williams. But what are its origins? Well, Polari is a complex...
If you’re in the area of Londinium between now and April 3rd, get yourself down to the British Library for their Evolving English: One Language, Many Voices exhibition. The exhibition explores the beginnings of Anglo Saxon right through to current rap music and shows how English has evolved over the last 1500 years from its small island origins to become one...
Of all the presents I got for Christmas, one of my faves was a book called How to Sound Clever: Master the 600 English words you pretend to understand when you don’t by Hubert van deb Bergh and it's a dazzling collection of sumptuous words such as denouement, anthropomorphise and obfuscate. I recently chatted to a chap at a mulled wine...
There are some words which get even the most competent writers in a twist. I always struggle to spell the town Grimsby (luckily it’s not a word I have to type often). And I have to really think about the homonyms bear and bare. Is it ‘bare that in mind’ or ‘bear that in mind’? So this post is for me...
