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The Smothering Arms of English
A neighbor of mine, he’s trying to improve his English, and he’ll sometimes say the wrong word. I usually know what he means, but he’s asked me to correct him anyway. This seems like it should be rude...
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Grammar Moves on the Dance Floor
Suh-tee-bun! That’s my name (스티븐) pronounced in Korean. Each consonant must be followed by a vowel sound, which means my two-syllable name has three syllables when spoken in Korean. Perhaps I’m a bad...
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Synaptic Renaissance
One of the best lessons I learned in college was never formally taught in the classroom. Instead, it manifested itself organically through a series of interactions with a professor who decided, for...
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Spitting Out the Words
When you curse in a story, what are you trying to do? Are you trying to shock the easily titillated? Are you trying to express a mood or help define a character? Are you trying to seem “realistic” and...
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Lovely Words
Foist Oxford tells us that to foist is to “impose an unwelcome or unnecessary person or thing on”. Much more interesting is the example given by reference.com, “to foist political views into a news...
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Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo
Standing in the checkout line at the local grocery are two 22 year olds. They were married at 18. Young, the people said, but in love and not stupid (at least not that stupid) and both of them have a...
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Cussing in Creative Writing
Fairly recently, Tom Hanks dropped the F-bomb on Good Morning America and the bad word police shit their pants in response. It’s irritating that I’m from a country that has organizations devoted to...
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Alas, Chocolate Funeral
We worked in our university’s commissary, regularly skinning fifty pounds of potatoes and slicing eighty pounds of onions and doing all sorts of extremely mundane tasks. She was Russian and very...
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Swearing in the Classroom
Ji-eon approached me while I stood at the lectern. She sheepishly grabbed a black dry erase marker and wrote “sheet” followed by the word “shit.” Her cheeks flushed in embarrassment. “How to say?” she...
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Possessive
There are some seriously bookish, utterly geeky friends who populate my little corner of the world. As you might imagine, this tends to lead to some rather odd discussions. There are probably not too...
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