linguistlaura

I’m writing this on a train to Yorkshire (an East Midlands Railway train, train fans!). The announcer chap said that if we saw any...

All hipster bars and coffee shops these days have signs with quirky slogans or jokes on them. They come with a punchline that undercuts the ...

In the recent series of University Challenge: The Professionals , shown at Christmas time, Jeremy Paxman asked a question involving a gnu. A...

Another thing I watched over Christmas was a repeat of A Touch of Cloth , a comedy detective series by Charlie Brooker. There's a charac...

I have no comment to make on this. It's just a great image for a Sunday morning. 

(mouseover text: 'You know I've always hated her')

Surprisingly accurate, probably for non-science subjects too (if you replace 'technician' with 'IT support').

Literally  gets a lot of bad press. It's a word in a state of confusion. It's busy getting a new meaning as a kind of intensifier, b...

English is a Germanic language, so it's closely related to German, Dutch and varieties thereof. It's changed a lot over the years: i...