James Hogg

@RobertHarrisonv @unclejfranklin @JoyceCarolOates My Google search didn't turn up that photo, strangely.

@unclejfranklin @Real_James_Hogg @JoyceCarolOates Yeah I mean it’s an entirely different photo and shows that the restoration took very few liberties and did a pretty fantastic job

this is George Bernard Shaw? looks like a 2026 actor who has been "aged" unconvincingly. does not look like the historic Shaw in most photographs I have seen.

@grahamscheper He called himself Augustinus, not Augustine.

We typically refer to Latin-speaking figures with their Latin names, but we used to use the fully naturalized English forms. Chaucer e.g. calls Augustine “Austyn” and Statius “Stace”. Boethius is “Boece”. Occasionally, we still preserve some of these today (e.g. Livy, Horace).

@DennaTyska De som har bott i Sverige hela sitt liv vet vad detta är: sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwedene…

Filmjölk betyder “Schwedenmilch” på tyska (= ‘svensk mjölk’ eller ‘mjölk från en svensk’) Gör vad du vill med den här informationen

@PAHoyeck You've got to admire this translation of "Le grand écart":

I often poke fun at the liberties taken by French translators, but I gotta say, the decision by English translators to change Notre-Dame de Paris to The Hunchback of Notre-Dame might beat them all.

@Apayauq1 Dressmann

Dress is suit in norwegian. There is a clothing store chain named Dressman.

@DennaTyska Varför heter det semester även när det inte varar i sex månader?

Varför kallar du middag för middag trots att det inte är på middagen?

@ElenaBee0 None of them is correct. He lives in Angoulême.

Which sentence is correct?

@GermanSimply_ And one of them is international: chair de poule, goose pimples, piel de gallina, gęsia skórka, etc.

@GermanSimply_ One of them was borrowed from the French esprit d'escalier.

German has words for moments English just lets pass unnamed. Not feelings. Moments. Ones you've lived a hundred times and never had a word for. 5 of them. 🧵🇩🇪

@globalds @jhallwood We spell it buoy and pronounce it like boy.

@jhallwood I am hoping the American pronunciation of bouy never arrives

The American pronunciation of ‘mayor’ is really creeping into British English. It has to stop.

@sentantiq But I like the image of Rosie fingering Dawn.

quick while no one is talking about POLYTROPOS ῥοδοδάκτυλος ᾿Ηώς, typically translated as "rosy-fingered" should be "rosy-toed Dawn" because the image is of a woman rising from the horizon and trailing her feet in the water....

@RealOxfordComma If the Oxford comma was good enough for the King James Bible and the First Folio of Shakespeare, it's good enough for me.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a list in possession of three or more items is in want of an Oxford comma.

When Mark Antony apostrophised Caesar's dead body, he uttered these immortal words: O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, That I am meek and gentle with these grocer's.

@DrFrancisYoung My favourite vikings are the Muslim ones who attacked Sigurd off the coast of Portugal when he was on his pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

Given that 'viking' is strictly an activity rather than an identity, the only true Viking bishop was Christian of Aarhus, who led a raid on England in 1069

@DrMichaelBonner Liddell & Scott actually chose the word "complicated" to define one way in which the adjective is used.

Just to add to the discourse surrounding the meaning of πολύτροπος, I note that Livius Andronicus construed that adjective rather literally as versutus -- obviously derived from versus 'turned', meaning versatile, dextrous, crafty, sly, &c., as other authors use it. Virum mihi, Camena, insece versutum...

@CharmOfCulture Where can I see the ratings to which you refer?

This is the most underrated city in all of Europe.

How do sperm donors donate sperm? Do they masturbate, or do they have sex with a nurse?

@aakashgupta He never drops the "wotacism".

Monty Python's Biggus Dickus scene works because Michael Palin improvised the punchline names live on camera, in character, never dropping the rhotacism. The guards laughing in frame are four credited comedy writers, all aware of the script, all unable to hold it together. The premise is Pontius Pilate, played by Palin, telling Roman guards about his friend in Rome. The names changed take after take. Naughtius Maximus. Sillius Soddus. Incontinentia Buttocks. The guards are Chris Langham, Andrew MacLachlan, Bernard McKenna, and Charles McKeown. All Python collaborators. All knew the scripted lines before cameras rolled. That setup is the actual craft, and the popular "unaware extras swapped at the last minute" story misses what's hard about it. Comedy laughter is almost impossible to fake on screen. Studio audiences sweeten it. Sitcoms sell reactions with timing tricks and reaction shots cut in post. Standup measures laughs in seconds because real ones decay in milliseconds. The hardest version of the problem: get four trained comedy actors to lose composure during a take, on cue, repeatable across multiple setups. Palin solved it by removing the script as the variable. The guards knew the written lines and were waiting for the next absurd name to land. Palin kept feeding them ones nobody had prepared. The laughter on screen is the gap between what was rehearsed and what just came out of his mouth, generated live, with the rhotacism never breaking. The scene runs 56 seconds. The accent stays consistent. The Pilate deadpan stays consistent. Every laugh you see is produced by one actor improvising and three actors trying not to break, and failing, take after take, until Terry Jones had enough usable footage to cut around. This is why the scene survives 47 years of comedy evolution. Most iconic bits are jokes that landed once. This one is a working demonstration of how to manufacture real human reactions inside a controlled production. Closer to Robin Williams on a late-night couch than to a written sketch. Michael Palin held character while writing the funny part live, against a roomful of comedy writers who knew exactly what the script said. The laughter on camera is professionals losing to a better professional.

@AndyInSalford @sabrinalouise_1 And we don't say "a answer".

@sabrinalouise_1 We don't have front yards...