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Republish for FreeRepublish This StoryRepublish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license. What do the Chinese, Swedish and Zulu languages have in common? When we talk about accents in a written form we are talking about emphasis or stress marks above the letters described as: Grave, Acute, Circumflex, Tilde, Umlaut and Dot; NOT a national … [Read more...] about accent

Republish for FreeRepublish This StoryRepublish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license. Today’s definition of absurd is to be stupid and unreasonable, or silly in a humorous way and examples of that are:What an absurd thing to say! Don’t be so absurd! Of course I want you to come. It’s an absurd situation – neither of them will talk to the … [Read more...] about absurd

Republish for FreeRepublish This StoryRepublish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license. Put your hand up if you ran around as a child with a gnarled semi-straight stick of wood pointing at things and invoking the abracadabra invocation before mounting a brrom and whosshing off to fantasies imagined?These days abracadabra is just a fun word … [Read more...] about abracadabra

Republish for FreeRepublish This StoryRepublish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license. Contrary to popular belief the word abominable did not come from the Latin ab ‘away from home’ and homo ‘human being’, and so literally meant ‘inhuman or beastly’.Until the 17th century it was frequently spelled as ‘abhominable’, and … [Read more...] about abominable