Old-school news, just in time
by Kevin Burton Here’s one subject that never came up when I was teaching English in Mexico – thank God! In English, when you see the vowel combination “ae” how do you pronounce it? This was brought to my attention on an otherwise glorious Saturday morning by our friends at the Merriam-Webster …
Continue reading “Wobble Talk And Fighting Words In English”
by Kevin Burton My career as an English as a Second Language teacher came to an abrupt early end one night under the streetlights outside a small taco shop in Puebla. To tell you how and why that happened, I first turn to BBC writer Nicole Chang, who recently wrote about what speaking …
by Kevin Burton When my parents issued me flash cards before kindergarten, I wondered why the work “knife” had a K in it when it didn’t do anything. All these years later I hear from Merriam-Webster that not just e’s and k’s but all the letters of the English alphabet are silent at …
by Kevin Burton Silent E is so famous it has a song, we all know about that one. We know how the letter e at the end of man, changes the word to mane, for example. The silent e turns the a from short to long. But did you know all the …
by Kevin Burton Sometimes my commute to work is stress-free and extra-special on a Friday or a Monday. Most Page 7 readers know I am legally blind and do not drive. To get to and from work I use a subsidized ride service offered by the county where I live. Happy is …
by Kevin Burton It is conventional wisdom in the United States that a US passport is the prized possession. It would be foolish to downplay the benefits of American citizenship to many who live here. But for some it may be wise to at least look into what some other places may have …
by Kevin Burton Leaving your home country is a foreign concept that pushes against everything you have known from earliest childhood. At least for Americans it is. What set of circumstances would cause you to think about relocating permanently? Wednesday we told one woman’s story. Amber Blackmon moved from the United …
by Kevin Burton Amber Blackmon told her story Monday on insider.com, I wish she had told more of it. Or maybe it’s better this way. Maybe we are meant to insert our own details into what she has given. The story hit home because she did something I sort of did years …
by Kevin Burton Within my general and ongoing shameless plea for readership, I got specific two months ago. On the occasion of Mexican Independence Day I lamented that nobody in Mexico had ever read Page 7 (“Happy Birthday Mexico, Please Read This,” Sept. 15). That hurts, because I used to live in Mexico. …
by Kevin Burton Though I write the Page 7 blog alone, there is someone who talks back to me about its content from time to time. No, I don’t mean my wife Jeannette who proofreads the copy for typos and tone. I’m talking about spell check. Spell check has saved my literary …
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