Following our conversation about the dismissive phrase, Not my circus, not my monkeys, Nelly, who is a professor of French and Russian in Marquette, Michigan, shares a handy Russian saying that translates as “the circus left, the clowns remain.” For...
Male baristas aren’t called baristos for the same reason that male Sandinistas aren’t Sandinistos. There’s a certain class of nouns in both Italian and Spanish where the definite article changes to indicate gender, but the noun stays the same. This...

