The Diacritics Affair

Oct 19, 2016 by

[This is a guest post, written by Roger Fernàndez from Barcelona, Spain] Can a few simple accents become the center of a controversy that occupy headlines? In Catalonia, yes. Catalan is the language of this northeast Spain region,...

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Haves and have-nots

Oct 21, 2010 by

So how do you punctuate the following sentence to make it sensible (although admitedly still not the most beautiful sentence of English!): James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher...

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Give me some space!

Oct 5, 2010 by

In yesterday’s posting, I mentioned that medieval manuscripts and inscriptions often used a line over the top of an abbreviation or an acronym to mark them as such. This was illustrated with the Kirkdale sundial. Another...

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Language vs. orthography

Jun 28, 2010 by

In his comment to my postings about drawing a boundary between language and dialect, Alexander Francis correctly pointed out that another factor that affects people’s perception of whether they share the same language or speak...

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