George’s Reviews > The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way > Status Update

"I've been working on it most of the afternoon (I told you wordplay is addictive) and the best I can come up with is 'Am I as stupid as you are?' which reads backwards as well as forwards but, alas, keeps the same sense in both directions. " :-(

"Often the names we know places by are nothing like the names the locals use. In Italian, it's not Florence but Firenze..." What! Well I'll be damned. A non English speaking country doesn't use the English form to spell their city names. Next you'll be telling me french people don't say Parissss and Germans don't say Munich.

"To a foreigner it must seem sometimes as if we are being intentionally contrary. Consider that in Britain the Royal Mail delivers the post, not the Mail, while in America the Postal Service delivers the mail, not the post."

Northern Ireland comes up a pleasing amount in these language books I've been reading lately. This one has the shibboleth of the northern Irish dialect that is: mate how do u say the letter 'h'?