Foreign Languages

Linguistic Connections

Adjectives, Foreign Languages, Outsider's Perspective, Verbs

In my opinion, one of the best ways to learn a new language is to connect it to the language(s) that you already know.

I refer to this as “making a linguistic connection”.

For example, yesterday I was discussing someone with my wife, and I realized that the best way to describe that person was to use the adjective “pensive” because one of the definitions of this adjective is expressing thoughtfulness.

Almost immediately, I recognized that the word “thought” in the definition and the letters P-E-N-S in the adjective were connected to verbs in two other languages:

  • “pensar”, which in Spanish means to think;
  • “pensare”, which in Italian means to think.

I could list many other linguistic connections that I have made over the past few years, but that is unnecessary here.

You can also make linguistic connections within your native language (such as English), too. You do not have to be learning another language to make them.

What linguistic connections have you made, either within English or between English and another language? Contact me!

“… recognize your Employee’s and Peers!!”

Apostrophes, Capitalization, Common English Blunders, Foreign Languages, Nouns, Outsider's Perspective

I saw this in a message from a corporation to its employees yesterday.

Problems:
1. Two exclamation marks appear where only one should appear.
2. Common nouns are capitalized even though they should not be.
3. An apostrophe appears where it does not belong.

Explanation:
The corporate message encouraged readers to nominate others for recognition.

The full sentence was “Please be sure to recognize your Employee’s and Peers!!”

One problem with this sentence is the second exclamation mark at the end of the sentence, as if the first exclamation mark were insufficient.

Can you imagine putting two periods at the end of a sentence? That would be nonsensical, right? Putting two exclamation marks at the end of a sentence is just as nonsensical.

Unfortunately, this seems to be an increasingly common blunder in American English.

Another problem is the capitalization of the two common nouns. There is nothing special about an “employee” or a “peer” that requires capitalization in this sentence.

Unfortunately, this also seems to be an increasingly common blunder in American English, as if a huge contingency of Germans had moved to the U.S. and started to misapply the German approach to capitalization to all nouns in English.

The third problem is the most glaring. An apostrophe was inserted with the pluralization of “employee”, which is incorrect.

Solution:
“… recognize your employees and peers!”

“Mosquitoes” vs. “Mosquitos”

Foreign Languages, Nouns, Plurals, Versus

While recently investigating a system that daily sprays for this pest, my thoughts went to the the correct pluralization of the noun “mosquito”.

Problem:
It is not always clear how to pluralize a noun that ends with the letter “o”.

Explanation:
Years ago, U.S. Vice-President Dan Quayle became the butt of jokes when he told a student that the word “potato” should be spelled P-O-T-A-T-O-E.

The veep’s misspelling was likely due to the fact that the plural of “potato” — which is spelled P-O-T-A-T-O — is spelled P-O-T-A-T-O-E-S.

In other words, this singular noun with an “o” at the end is pluralized by adding E-S, not by adding only S.

Similarly, the singular noun “mosquito” — spelled M-O-S-Q-U-I-T-O — is pluralized in English by adding E-S instead of by adding S.

I believe that some American English speakers pluralize the singular noun “mosquito” by adding only an S because this is how the noun is pluralized in Spanish and because of the increasing influence of Spanish on American English

Solution:
Use “mosquitoes” with an O-E-S ending for English. Use “mosquitos” with an O-S ending for a language such as Spanish.