The ‘Dummy Do’: English’s Weirdest Grammar Quirk
While most European languages form questions by simply swapping the subject and verb (like the German "Trinken Sie?"), English requires the addition of a meaningless "helper" word: the "Dummy Do."…
Tag: cornish
The Town That Fought Over Its Apostrophe
What happens when a local council tries to erase a single punctuation mark from a place name? In the English village of St Austell, it ignited a surprisingly fierce linguistic…
The Rebirth of Cornish
Once officially declared extinct after the death of its last native speaker in the 18th century, the Cornish language (Kernewek) has experienced a remarkable revival against all odds. This is…