Gaston Dorren, language writer

A ‘snake-iron’ is a train. I get that. And a ‘vulture-iron’ is a plane. Beautiful. Both words are used in Q’eqchi’, a Mayan language spoken in Guatemala and Belize. Or to be completel...

https://languagewriter.com/2024/04/11/corncob-iron-say-what/

I think of myself as a language and linguistics writer, not a polyglot. But nor am I ashamed of speaking a few languages – imperfectly, but serviceably. So when the people of the Butter No Pars...

https://languagewriter.com/2024/01/19/butter-no-parsnips/

Latin has them, Russian has them, and even English has preserved a tiny trace of them. I’m speaking of case endings, those grammatical boobytraps that make second-language speakers hesitant to ...

https://languagewriter.com/2024/01/18/making-a-case-in-three-simple-steps/

A Cypriot reader of Babel drew my attention to what he considered ‘a big mistake’ in the Greek translation: my claim that Turkish is spoken in Northern Cyprus. ‘There is not a country named...

https://languagewriter.com/2023/07/14/capital-mistake/

When you’re learning a new language, prepositions seem nice and easy at first. But after a while they prove to be pesky little buggers, keen on causing mischief. That’s certainly true for Pol...

https://languagewriter.com/2023/03/24/after-john-after-jam/

To memorise new words in foreign languages, I use all kinds of tricks. I look for etymological relationships to more words I know, I stick Post-its to objects, I listen to songs that have the wor...

https://languagewriter.com/2022/09/14/let-me-mnow-your-mnemonics/

Screenwriters write for the screen, ghostwriters write like (invisible) ghosts and sports writers write about sports. As a language writer, I write in language about language. Or rather...

https://languagewriter.com/2022/07/08/what-does-a-language-writer-do/

I’ve just published a Dutch-language book titled Seven Languages in Seven Days. It teaches the Dutch-speaking reader how to understand written Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Italian, Spanish, Port...

https://languagewriter.com/2022/07/06/reading-western-european-through-a-dutch-lens/

“If the Chinese script is not abolished, China will certainly perish!” So said the literary author Lu Xun in the 1930s, and many in China agreed. History has proved him wrong, of course. How ...

https://languagewriter.com/2022/01/23/chinese-writings-near-death-experience/

… called L’Anglophonie.‘Aren’t you Genghis Khan, love?’ the barmaid asks the first man.‘I am’, he replies. ‘Except Genghis begins with a soft g. Jenghis rather than Ghenghis. Thin...

https://languagewriter.com/2022/01/06/an-emperor-a-painter-and-a-gigolo-walk-into-a-bar-%EF%BF%BC/