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Lovely Poetry from English Immigrant Schoolchildren

Posted by Grant Barrett on August 15, 2020 · Add Comment

The vast majority of young students at Oxford Spires Academy in England are refugees and economic migrants. According to teacher Kate Clanchy, this mixture of cultures and languages creates something magical, including some remarkable poetry in English. Clanchy has published some of them in an anthology, England: Poems from a School. They include the wistful, [...]

Latvian Expressions

Posted by Grant Barrett on February 20, 2015 · Add Comment

A Latvian expression that translates as “Did a bear stomp on your ear?” is a more colorful, though no more kind, way to tell someone they have no ear for music. Also heard in Latvia is an idiom that translates as “You’re blowing little ducks,” meaning, “You’re talking nonsense.” This is part of a complete [...]

Origin of Nosy

Posted by Grant Barrett on March 5, 2011 · Add Comment

Are we a nosy species? A listener married to a woman from Bangladesh explains how a Bengali term that translates as “nose-going” reflects the naturally inquisitive style of Bangladeshi culture. In many languages, the nose figures prominently in words and idioms involving inquiry or investigation. Martha notes a Spanish term, olfatear, related to the English [...]

Foreign Language Range of Love

Posted by Grant Barrett on March 15, 2008 · Add Comment

A listener calls from in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to say that in her native Spanish, she can use several different words for love to denote a whole range of feelings, depending on how close she is to the other person. She’s frustrated that English seems to lack that same spectrum of words meaning various degrees [...]

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Lovely Poetry from English Immigrant Schoolchildren

Latvian Expressions

Origin of Nosy

Foreign Language Range of Love