Are There Any Celtic Words in English?

Long-time followers of my blog may remember my post on the origins of English. The language tree in that post shows that English is largely derived from Germanic, specifically Anglo-Frisian. So, where are the Celts? Are there no Celtic words in English? As several of...

What Causes A Foreign Accent?

As those of you who have watched my interviews know, I have a strange accent. Definitely not Greek, it’s been mistaken for British (by my American friends) and Dutch (by my British ones). Even worse, I seem to unconsciously pick up the accent of the person...

Describers vs. Prescribers: Reaching a Linguistic Common Ground

When I published The Power of Six, my first collection of short stories, a reviewer said that the book had grammatical errors, albeit small ones. This shocked me, as the book had been professionally edited and proof-read. So, I reached out and asked her for an...

How Language Shapes our World

Noam Chomsky is famous for his suggestion that language shapes the way we think. Put very simply, we have no concept of anything we can’t describe with words. He also believes there is a universal grammar that all humans instinctively adhere to. Although I...

Brilliant Words You Didn’t Know You Needed

Continuing on the subject of words, you may have heard me say now and again how I marvel at the beauty and flexibility of the English language. So why aren’t these beauties found on BuzzFeed part of our everyday conversations already? Errorist (n) Someone who...

Your Fish Has Got Away and other Unusual Translations

The original, short version of this post was written for the Book Marketing Tools blog. This longer version was written as a guest post for Vanessa Finaughty’s blog. One of the best ideas of Douglas Adams had to be the Babelfish. Just stick it into your ear and...

My 4 Golden Rules of Writing

I’ve been wanting to write this post for a while now. The main reason is that I keep coming across several writing rules that make little sense to me. Then, I came across a gem of a post by Constance Hale, “When Shakespeare Committed Word Crimes” on...