English Today: Volume 5 - Issue 4

A contemporary Bible
Roger Coleman
Published online by Cambridge University Press:

17 October 2008, pp. 3-8
- Article
- - Get access
    
    Check if you have access via personal or institutional login
    
    Log in Register
- Export citation
A report on how Oxford and Cambridge have prepared a Bible for the end of the 20th century.

Turning a dictionary inside out
William Barker
Published online by Cambridge University Press:

17 October 2008, pp. 9-15
- Article
- - Get access
    
    Check if you have access via personal or institutional login
    
    Log in Register
- Export citation
In the last issue, an editor of the new OED described his work. Here, an observer looks in on the OED2e being prepared.

Hong Kong’s English newspapers
Andrew Taylor
Published online by Cambridge University Press:

17 October 2008, pp. 18-27
- Article
- - Get access
    
    Check if you have access via personal or institutional login
    
    Log in Register
- Export citation
An analysis of the style and content of the South China Morning Post and the Hongkong Standard.

Machina sapiens?
Published online by Cambridge University Press:

17 October 2008, pp. 28-30
- Article
- - Get access
    
    Check if you have access via personal or institutional login
    
    Log in Register
- Export citation
MICHAEL BULLEY is dubious about the prospects of computers ever acquiring the infinitely flexible human art of language.

Kaleidoscope
Published online by Cambridge University Press:

17 October 2008, pp. 31-33
- Article
- - Get access
    
    Check if you have access via personal or institutional login
    
    Log in Register
- Export citation
The television cop series Miami Vice has had an impact at least on names used in Miami, Florida, where the action is. Some local officials were at first upset by the title of the show, arguing that it put the city in a bad light. However, neologistic entrepreneurs showed that the title had potential. As a result, there are now Miami Mice (a pest-control company), Miami Twice (a secondhand clothing store), Miami Spice (a shop for seasonings), Miamic Nice (a chiropractor), and Miami Slice (a luncheonette) – as reported by the New York Times Service, May 1989.

Grammatical overkill?
Torkil Christensen
Published online by Cambridge University Press:

17 October 2008, pp. 38-41
- Article
- - Get access
    
    Check if you have access via personal or institutional login
    
    Log in Register
- Export citation
Why do some foreign users of English make certain, almost predictable ‘mistakes’?

Yeah, well, anyway, um…
Ruth Wajnryb
Published online by Cambridge University Press:

17 October 2008, pp. 48-51
- Article
- - Get access
    
    Check if you have access via personal or institutional login
    
    Log in Register
- Export citation
As the mother of a 10-year-old boy as well as the language teacher of adult migrants, I am often in a position to wonder at the glib, confident, oral fluency of my child in contrast to the hesitant, halting, broken, jerking, unassured, more-miss-than-hit staccato of my language students. Many a time have I, on their behalf, envied my boy his brash, native fluency, wishing some of it would blow their way, onto their fractured lives which could be so transformed but for the barrier that is language. There must be many a language teacher yearning to facilitate this kind of verbal flow and confidence in their students.

English Today