ponderful reblogged
Habet! In the Coliseum A.D.XC, Simeon Solomon, 1865
Oil on canvas 102 x 122 cm (40 x 48 in.)
Source: sothebys.com
victoriousvocabulary
Never make fun of someone who speaks broken English. It means they know another language.
H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
ponderful reblogged
Emotions, in my experience, aren’t covered by single words. I don’t believe in ‘sadness,’ ‘joy,’ or ‘regret.’ Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I’d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, ‘the happiness that attends disaster.’ Or: ‘the disappointment of sleeping with one’s fantasy.’ I’d like to have a word for ‘the sadness inspired by failing restaurants’ as well as for ‘the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.’ I’ve never had the right words to describe my life.
Jeffery Eugenides (via heteroglossia)
ponderful reblogged
The English language is like London: proudly barbaric yet deeply civilised, too, common yet royal, vulgar yet processional, sacred yet profane. Each sentence we produce, whether we know it or not, is a mongrel mouthful of Chaucerian, Shakespearean, Miltonic, Johnsonian, Dickensian and American. Military, naval, legal, corporate, criminal, jazz, rap and ghetto discourses are mingled at every turn. The French language, like Paris, has attempted, through its Academy, to retain its purity, to fight the advancing tides of Franglais and international prefabrication. English, by comparison, is a shameless whore.
Stephen Fry (via katiebennett)
ponderful reblogged
14 wonderful words with no English equivalent
Koi No Yokan (Japanese) — The sense upon first meeting a person that the two of you are going to fall in love. Zeg (Georgian) — It means “the day after tomorrow.” Seriously, why don’t we have a word for that in English?
Rhwe (Tsonga, South Africa) — College kids, relax. There’s actually a word for “to sleep on the floor without a mat, while drunk and naked.” More words…
Source: theweek.com
ponderful reblogged
my ideal life is a harem of male english teachers
The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary
James Nicoll, 1990
Source: ponderful