linguistlaura

I'm learning Welsh on Duolingo. Most people in our department are doing a language on it, in some cases for practical purposes but for m...

Full disclosure, as I don't normally do reviews in this blog, so publishing this one might be seen to carry a certain amount of weight: ...

The Conversation tweeted about an article way back in 2018, when things like the World Cup still happened, and included the phrase could hav...

Dangling modifiers are one of those 'grammar' things that children learn about, writers are warned about, and peevers peeve about. S...

I was listening to the radio this morning and they were talking about linguistics. I feel very conflicted about this because I love hearing ...

If you like to take your grammar advice from authority, you'll enjoy the fact that Pope Francis has decreed that we shouldn't use ad...

Hooray! Another article about how 'textspeak' is bad for kids is out! (Daily Mail link, so don't click it – you can get the ide...

Cover of 'Have you eaten Grandma?' by Gyles Brandreth I was considering writing a review of this book, Have you eaten Grandma?...

Family members have names, obviously, but they also have sort of pseudo-names - the kinship terms we call them like 'Mum'. I've ...

This is the first in a short series of posts about things I've noticed in my current book, The Leopard by Jo Nesbo. I'm reading the ...

The Oxford Times published a whinge about the prefix super-   recently (don't click the link; you'll get the idea from this post and...

I seem to do nothing but livetweet linguistics events these days. Here's the tweeting from the English Grammar Day at the British Librar...

Asda's smoked salmon trimmings have this warning on the packet: Warning: Extra care has been taken to remove bones, although some may...

Schoolchildren in this country are currently mired in SATs. These are tests designed to assess how well a school (not individual children) i...

There's been a leaflet sent round lately about the EU referendum happening in the UK. The government has sent this leaflet to all househ...

It's National Grammar Day! Sadly this isn't as fun as it sounds due to the idiots on the internet. However, here is a thing I have l...

A friend posted this photo on facebook the other day: A number of highly intelligent people then missed the point of the joke and began ...

I watched ITV's Harry Price: Ghost Hunter  over the Christmas break, which starred Rafe Spall as the eponymous psychic investigator/fake...

This isn't a post, just a link. It's a post by someone who criticises Michael Rosen. I won't have this. Michael Rosen tirelessly...

On the RSPB's website there's this rather charming text (emphasis mine): Many of us feel there are fewer bumblebees bumbling arou...