English Language

I was asked how my interest in the curiosities of the English language began, and perhaps it was on the occasion of my mother announcing that we were going to Oxford Circus. At that time, during the later years of the war an excursion to the West End, we lived in North London, was something of an adventure.

During the long bus ride I amused myself with thoughts of lions, tigers, clowns, ringmasters and the like. Imagine my disappointment on alighting at this Oxford Circus place to find only crowds of people and masses of traffic. My pleas of “Where’s the Circus” were answered with a “This is it”.

Both of us were English, speaking the same language, with perhaps twenty five or twenty eight years between us, and a heartbreaking fundamental error of miss-understanding had occurred between us.

Perhaps that’s where it all started.

John Tunstill

“Whales in Wales” wails the Morning Gazette

A shock headline yet to be seen, but, with regard to the poor creature that was stranded in the Thames last week it shows once again what complexities the English language holds in store for the unwary.

One of the interviewees repeatedly used the verb “to restrand”. At first I wondered if the channel had changed and I was listening to a broadcast about weaving, and that to restrand was to rethread a needle or loom with cotton or similar material. But no, to restrand is now the accepted way of referring to the repeated process of running aground, to re-beach, to again arrive on the shore, the strand, hence, to strand, and, by implication and usage, to restrand. I rest their case!

But as for broadcasting, an original term meaning to scatter one’s seed far and wide, rather than planting in narrow rills or trenches, it has now been usurped by the radio and Tv media who send their messages to the far corners of the universe.

To return to the unfortunate marine mammal. The tail of the creature was referred to as a fluke, the correct term I believe. But a fluke is also a chance happening. Which could give rise to yet another headline; “Fluke spotted in fluke restranding”.

English as she is spoke!

The website www.tunstillsdislexicon.com has five thousand confusions of the British language, an irreverent and irrelevant look at the words we use and the way we talk.

Hope you like it

Best wishes

John Tunstill