Monthly Archives: January 2012

You was in the history of English

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Ingrid Tieken

One of the corrections in the second edition of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, originally published in 1814 but reissued in 1816, includes you was. This change was recorded by Kathryn Sutherland in her comparison of the two editions of the novel (Penguin … Continue reading →

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3 PhD positions for the project: we are reviewing the applications

Posted on January 31, 2012 by BtU Admin

The three PhD positions for the Bridging the Unbridgeable project that were announced earlier in this blog have now been advertised officially. You will find them on the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics website. For more information about the positions … Continue reading →

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“Sweet Honey”

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Ingrid Tieken

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This image comes from the website of Plurabelle Books, which is situated in Cambridge (UK). It is part of a bookplate indicating the ownership of the book in which it was found. The owner’s full name is John Raymond de Symons Honey, … Continue reading →

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Does incorrect spelling matter?

Posted on January 21, 2012 by Ingrid Tieken

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“… who moved differently then I knew”: this is a quotation from the website announcing the film Pina by Wim Wenders (UK release 22 April 2011). The error, then for than, is a typical Dutch mistake, according to Joy Burrough-Boenisch in her … Continue reading →

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Prescriptivism conference: Leiden 2013

Posted on January 20, 2012 by BtU Admin

As announced earlier in this blog, the next prescriptivism conference will be held in Leiden, on 12, 13 and 14 June 2013. A call for papers will be launched soon. Meanwhile, we are happy to inform our readers that we … Continue reading →

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Waterstone’s and their apostrophe

Posted on January 19, 2012 by BtU Admin

A few days ago, Marilyn Hedges, one of our contributors, left a comment to tell us that she had heard on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme that Waterstone’s has decided to drop its apostrophe. As Marilyn summarised: The reason given … Continue reading →

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Reading John Honey’s The Language Trap

Posted on January 17, 2012 by Ingrid Tieken

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John Honey’s The Language Trap, subtitled “Race, class, and the ‘standard English’ issue in British schools”, is a 38-page pamphlet published in 1983 by the National Council for Educational Standards. It is a controversial document to say the least, even by … Continue reading →

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Grammar advice on the go

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Robin Straaijer

I just found out this week that linguists at University College London have developed an app called interactive Grammar of English (iGE). The app is based on the British Component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-GB) developed by the … Continue reading →

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3 PhD positions for the Bridging the Unbridgeable project

Posted on January 6, 2012 by BtU Admin

In the course of the next few weeks, three PhD positions will be advertised for this research project. So keep an eye out for more information, on this blog as well as on the University of Leiden Centre for Linguistics … Continue reading →

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Fighting Estuary English with an English Academy

Posted on January 5, 2012 by BtU Admin

This is a suggestion made by John Honey in Language is Power (1997:166-168). Estuary English Honey describes as being typically characterised by t-glottaling and l-vocalisation (though there are many other characteristics of Estuary English as well). Already in 1989 he … Continue reading →

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