If you love language, be a descriptivist, not a prescriptivist!Remember:Just because a word isn’t in your dictionary, doesn’t mean it isn’t a word. Just because a dialect is different from the standard language, doesn’t mean it isn’t valid. Just because someone uses a word in a way you aren’t familiar with, doesn’t mean they are wrong.And, however you […]
Perkwunos: The Original Thunder God
The Celtic, Irish, Norse, Anglo-Saxon, Baltic, Slavic, and Hindu thunder gods are (probably) all connected, and descended from an ancient thunder god worshipped 6000 years ago. The Proto-Indo-Europeans About six thousands years ago, somewhere on the border between Europe and Asia, there lived a people called the Proto-Indo-Europeans . They spoke the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) language, […]
100 British Words for Rain
In the UK, we talk incessantly about the weather. In a recent study, 94% of British people admitted to having talked about the weather in the past six hours, and 38% in the last hour. There are a few reasons for this obsession; The first is that we have a LOT of weather. In my hometown […]
Every Native British and Irish Language
There are hundreds languages spoken in Britain and Ireland. However, only a handful are native languages, which have evolved in the region over hundreds of years. For my full post mapping the history of languages in the region, click on the link below: A Brief History of British and Irish Languages I made this post […]
A Brief History of British and Irish Languages
Two charts and seventeen maps, showing how the languages of Britain and Ireland have changed since the Roman rule of Britannia ended 1600 years ago! First, check out this GIF I made! When most people think of the languages of Britain and Ireland, they probably think of English. It’s the language pretty much everybody speaks, […]
The World’s Loneliest Animals
Have you ever wondered what the loneliest animals in the world are? Well it’s probably humans. No animal is as talented at loneliness as the human. They are able to be lonely in cities of million people, which is really very impressive if you think about it. But some other animals have good reasons to […]
Vietnamese Fruits and Vegetables, Literally Translated
See also: Vietnamese Animals Names Literally Translated
Jack and the beans talk
This comic inspired by a mistake one of my students kept making in class last week. He didn’t know what a “stalk” was, so he assumed “beanstalk” was “beans talk” hahaEat your beans people, they’re very good for you!
Distressingly Realistic Children’s Stories
Children’s books are great, but wouldn’t it be good if they taught useful life lessons rather than just nonsense about talking animals and whatnot?Have you ever wanted to give a child a gift that will force them to learn a hard, important truth about life that will scar them forever?Well look no further! Here are […]
The Dinosaur with Hair: How my meme went viral without me
UPDATE: They Greg James just talked about my meme on BBC radio 1!Wow. So you’ve probably seen this image now in some form or another. It’s been shared on the internet well over a million times now, and it seems to be everywhere. Well, I made the original image! Here is the story of that […]