Old-school news, just in time
by Kevin Burton You’re not even tired of turkey yet, as Thanksgiving was just yesterday. Unfortunately for most of us the holiday is more of an annual “couldn’t eat another bite” day than a day of Thanksgiving to God. Well here’s a list from Dictionary Scoop that may inspire you to wake …
Continue reading “Bet You Didn’t Eat These Things Yesterday”
by Kevin Burton At one of my newspaper stops I was introduced to readers as speaking “fluent Spanish” That wasn’t, and isn’t, quite true. But I do speak some Spanish and it has done me some good over the years. How much Spanish do I speak? I once described it as “enough …
Continue reading “Now The Dictionary Is Speaking My Language”
by Kevin Burton On a tip from a new friend, I knocked on the door of Interlingua language school one day, and asked the good people there to employ me. Shockingly, they took me up on it. This was in the Reagan 80s. I was in somebody else’s country, Mexico, and somebody …
Continue reading “In Praise Of Mexico, Lettuce And Billy Joel”
by Dictionary Scoop Traditions come in all shapes and sizes, from a small family tradition involving a special breakfast treat to an annual activity shared by an entire community. In that sense, some traditions around the world may seem downright strange to a keen observer. That’s why we’ve decided to highlight some of …
by Dictionary Scoop Language is like a passport to the world; it connects us, teaches us, and sometimes leaves us scratching our heads. With more than 7,000 languages spoken globally, the world of words is full of surprises and stories. If you are a language lover, these 13 facts about languages will keep your curiosity …
by Kevin Burton I am a proud, practicing pepperhead. Some like it hot, I like it hotter. I go to a restaurant and look for that little flame icon next to the entrées, to know which ones might contain a little heat. That search though is sometimes unrewarded. I’ve (mostly) stopped ordering …
by Kevin Burton Come and get it kids, quibble and bits, short takes, follow-ups from recent posts, bits of news….. A day or two after I wrote about the letter Z and its two pronunciations (zed and zee), Meriam-Webster made “zeitgeist” its word of the day. The dictionary says zeitgeist is “the …
by Kevin Burton There was a brief time in my life when I got paid in pesos, as I was teaching English to Mexican nationals in a language school in Puebla, Mexico. I don’t remember all the specifics now, but for some reason I wanted change for (I think) a 1,000-peso bill. I …
Continue reading “Careful How You Navigate Foreign Exchange”
by Kevin Burton There is a cove that I visit, a path where I meander, to which no one on earth can follow. I don’t go often, but when I go, I go down deep. Out of despair from not being able to break into journalism, I decided at 24 to go …
by Kevin Burton There was a time when I had multiple dozens of penpals from around the world. More than once I heard this joke: What do you call a person who speaks three languages? Trilingual. What do you call a person who speaks two languages? Bilingual. What do you call a …
Page 7 