If you are over 30 and live in the non-English speaking part of Europe (also known as the Continent in the UK), there is a good chance that you remember the times when the Twix candy bar was called Raider. The name was changed to Twix in 1991 (see here), but Raider bars have recently
Christmas is coming up soon, and most of us are so busy that they can only find time to use the term Xmas instead. First, it seems that only the form Xmas but not X-mas or xmas are acceptable. Moreover, Xmas can be pronounced either as [ˈkrɪsməs] (just like the word Christmas, note that the
Apart from the different spelling in British (defence) and American English (defense), there are some interesting points to be mentioned about the pronunciation of the word defence. The Oxford Learner’s Dictionary only mentions the pronunciation [dɪˈfens], both for British and American English, listen here. However, in practice, you will also encounter the variant [dəˈfens], as
Have you also noticed that more and more German-speaking people refer to their parents as Mum and Dad when speaking German instead of, for example, Mama and Papa? This phenomenon does not seem to be restricted to those who have a strong relation to the English language, such as bilingual children or people who lived
A couple of days ago, I came across a confusing paper napkin. The confusing bit was the slogan printed on the napkin: The phrase for ecological thinking people is either grammatically incorrect (it should read for ecologically thinking people), or missing a comma after ecological (leaving out the comma is very confusing, and most people
The verb to bury generally means to hide or put something in the ground. It is of course often used in the context of funerals, and less frequently in the context of hidden treasures. The pronunciation of the words bury and buried (the simple past of bury) is less straight-froward than expected. The standard (British
Many authors believe that they can impress their readers by using words which are not part of the every-day language. This is particularly true in scientific writing where, in addition to words specific to the field and in general unknown to outsiders, authors often use English words that have simpler forms with exactly the same
The chemical element copper has an enormous number of applications in every-day life and in science. I have noticed that there is a bit of a confusion concerning its correct pronunciation. The correct British pronunciation is [ˈkɒpə(r)], whereas the correct American pronunciation is [ˈkɑːpər], see here. The key difference between these two pronunciations is that