Insights archive
Red Pony is a team of writers, editors, Microsoft Office template developers and communications trainers. We have been writing about our areas of expertise for over a decade in our Red Pony Express newsletter.
This collection features the best articles from the last 10 years.
Barbarous mutilations
This brings us to the thorny matter of punctuation. All these abbreviations lost their full stop long ago. Even some relatively new ones, like app for application, are allowed to stand alone (and obviously, using full stops when tweeting and texting would defeat the purpose of the abbreviations that have developed, if u c wot I mean. But in formal text, what is the convention for punctuating words that still feel like abbreviations?
Australia’s oldest words
Every country where English is spoken has contributed local words to an already large vocabulary. Every day in Australia we use words originating from some of the hundreds of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages.
Behold the contronym
Like platypuses and echidnas, those creepy monotremes of the animal kingdom, the world of words contains a few rare and paradoxical oddities of its own. Consider the contronym.
Once upon a time in America
Yet there are many words we use every day that came to us from America, and which Australians probably considered alien at first. Some describe indigenous cultural traditions, flora or fauna, so it is no surprise that a local name was needed: moccasin, papoose, powwow, pecan, skunk, igloo and wigwam are examples. The origins of some other words are less obvious to us today: totem, shack, chocolate, barbecue, hammock, hurricane and cannibal are all of Amerindian derivation.
Foreign words and phrases in English
Why are there so many foreign words cluttering up our language? Well, they’ve been doing it for over a thousand years now, so if it ticks you off, you’re a bit late.
Fifty words for snow, no word for go
We’re all familiar with the observation that such-and-such a language has no word for ‘sorry’, or ‘please’, usually made in order to cast a slur on the character of the speakers of such an unsolicitous language. Citation of words such as schadenfreude (shameful joy at the misfortune of others), serves a similar purpose in reverse – they have a word for something nasty which they must be doing all the time, but which we don’t require, as such thoughts never cross our minds.
Creeps from the deeps
Perhaps you are familiar with a common horror movie device – it’s the opposite of the ‘sudden surprise’ that startles the audience and the protagonist at the same time. This is the one where the monster/tidal wave/giant squid looms up behind the protagonist to reveal its vast immensity to the audience before the protagonist turns around to be devoured/drowned/ingested.
Mind your language
There’s a couple of different routes by which a word joins the vast English vocabulary: we enlist a Latin or Greek word to help us describe a new concept or object (the pneumatic tyre, the personal computer); or new words find us, crashing the party uninvited and ready to start meaning things all on their own.
Pick your national metaphor
I was listening to a visiting American political analyst on the radio the other day talking about the differences between Australian and American political language.
Hvae you seen tihs beofre?
What are we doing when we read? We are absorbing meaning through the symbols on the page or screen. This takes greater mental effort than simply listening, although that’s an act of interpretation as well.
Pronouns: A matter of life and death
In his recent book, The Secret Life of Pronouns, psychology professor James Pennebaker writes about how our use of pronouns reveals much about our social status, health, honesty … even our propensity to commit suicide!
Pedants’ corner: Old words, new meanings
The philosophers tell us that life is change. And this applies to language no less than it does to the creeping decrepitude of our mortal flesh. However, just as there will come a time when I can be more accurately described as ‘food for worms’ than ‘Andrew’, so there comes in the evolution of a word—‘literally’, for example—a point at which its old meaning is eclipsed by its new.
Episodes in the archaeology of spelling
Spelling in the English language can sometimes seem a very arbitrary proposition. Aside from the peculiarities within the language itself, there’s the long list of variations between US and British/Australian usage.
The man without words
As Schaller explains, the consequence of not having a ‘language’ is so profound as to be almost unimaginable. Words not only affect how we interact with the world around us, they even control our capacity to think and conceptualise our experiences. We need words not only to communicate with other people, but also to build our own mental concepts of the world, our experience of it, of who we are.
Verbing nouns
But where does experimentation with language stop and gibberish start? A recent article in the Boston Globe tackled the problem of ‘verbing’ nouns. What? Well, when you verb a noun you are – just like it sounds – turning it into a verb.
Spelling traps – licence/license and practice/practise
The closest competitors for the stationary/stationery pairing (one of which, hopefully the correct one, you’ll find in my article above) for the title of Most Confused Spelling are the practice/practise and licence/license combinations.
Etymology corner
Welcome to an occasional feature of the Red Pony Express that will uncover the murky origins of mysterious phrases that have entered everyday idiom but which do not immediately betray their origins. This month: pushing the envelope, which means to exceed or extend the boundaries of the possible (or indeed, the permissible).