When false friends become real…
I just noticed that the programme of the DPG Spring Meeting, which is written in English, explicitly explains that a projector is also a “beamer”. For an explanation of why this is remarkable, see this previous post.
Don’t forget the alphabet
The alphabet is among the first things people learn when they study the English language. Remarkably, quite a number of advanced speakers have problems pronouncing the letters. In particular, the last three letters, x, y, and z cause most of the problems. X is correctly pronounced as [eks], listen here. A common mistake is the
Who’s on the wood way here?
While flipping through the catalogue of a German company called Depot, my wife noticed the expression “You are on the wood way” in one of the pictures. Quite obviously, that is not a proper English expression, but a literal translation of the German phrase “Auf dem Holzweg sein“. The latter is usually translated as “to
How to pronounce fasten
During a recent trip, I noticed that many flight attendants mispronounce the word fasten (as in “fasten your seatbelt”). This is quite surprising given that they use this word very often (I’ll come back to often). In contrast to the word fast, the letter t in fasten is not pronounced. Instead, fasten is pronounced as