What does cheeky mean? How about the words twee and naff? A British ex-pat says she finds it hard to convey the nuances of these adjectives to her American friends. This is part of a complete episode.
A listener in Romania learned English in the Southern U.S., but after going back home to where a British English is taught, people are having a hard time understanding his accent. Where we learn a language plays a big role in how we speak it. This...
You know those words whose meanings never seem to stick in your mind, no matter how many times you flip back to the dictionary? Martha wrestles with the term atavistic, meaning “the tendency to revert to ancestral characteristics.” She...
Martha shares a quip that’s all too true: “I don’t find it hard to meet expenses. They’re everywhere!” This is part of a complete episode.
A listener shares a phrase he learned in Peru that translates as “more lost than a hard-boiled egg in ceviche.” It describes someone who’s lost or clueless. This is part of a complete episode.
In an earlier episode, we discussed linguistic false friends, those words in foreign languages that look like familiar English words, but mean something quite different. Martha reads an email response from a listener who learned the hard way that in...