the view from fanling

How big are your vocabularies? No, that’s not a misprint. Each of us has at least two vocabularies: one of words that we actually use (disre...

If, like me, you grew up in postwar Britain, you probably had at least one formidably severe, intimidating maiden aunt by whom you were occa...

English is a mongrel language. Around an original framework of Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse has accumulated a vast, higgledy-piggledy superstru...

It is now more than thirteen years since the British relinquished control of Hong Kong, but it was always a Chinese city in any case, so not...