Ezra's Essays

Category: Language

  • FURTHER THOUGHTS IN PRAISE OF NON

    Recently I dictated an essay in praise of what I believe is a prefix in the English language. That prefix had to do with the word “non.” You will remember – or I hope you will remember – that I wrote in that essay that I was asked many years ago to identify my daughters.…

  • PISSANTRIES, POLITICS, AND A GORGEOUS MISTRESS

    I generally keep my notes for future essays in my head but in some cases on an old dictating machine on my desk. Two of these notes appeared simultaneously and I thought that there were enough similarities that they could be married together. The first essay has to do with the ancient word for an…

  • THE MOTHER TONGUE AGAIN REVISITED

    In previous essays I have always credited Sven Lernevall of Stockholm with the observation that the English language is a rich language. Sven’s native tongue is Swedish and he has mastered the English language gracefully. When I comment on the mother tongue, it seems to me that the comments tend to be endless. I suspect…

  • THE MOTHER TONGUE REVISITED

    For better or worse, I was born in this country and so my mother tongue is the language of the Anglo-Saxons. Those of us who speak the English language are quite fortunate in that the language of the Anglo-Saxons has now become the lingua franca of the world. Perhaps one of the reasons for the…

  • MY HUSBAND ESSAYETTE NO. 3

    I don’t watch much television these days, being confined to the dialogue. But in noodling around the television, I ran into a program featuring an interview involving two homosexual men. From what I could gather, the two men have been together for more than 20 years and a crisis has now arisen. It seems that…

  • THE OLD AND THE NEW NORMALS

    My linguistic skills are limited. I speak the mother tongue of English in a generally acceptable form. I used to mutter a few words in Italian and some in German. A lack of use has tended to cause those skills to diminish. And then there are two derivatives of the English language which are worthy…

  • COUNTRY SPEAK | MISSING WORDS

    In a previous essay, I commented on missing people. In this case, I will try to comment on a very few missing words from our vocabularies these days. This exercise is called “Country Speak.” I call this essay “Country Speak” because the words that are missing from urban areas are found most often in the…

  • IRISH EARWORMS

    This essay is a love story in the Irish tradition. It has nothing to do with horny politicians trying to seduce an intern nor does it have to do with an amorous preacher trying to embed a soprano from the church choir. It has to do with the Irish use of the English language, the…

  • Letter to Kevin 6/15/05

    Kevin – Judy and I were delighted with your response to the letter and the essay about Mencken. I am not surprised by your mother withholding it from you. She may well have referred my letter to the FBI or to the Texas Holy Roller Diocese before she let you read it. Basically, from the…

  • REFLECTIONS ON A LONG WORKING CAREER

    One Sunday morning recently, there was a series of reports about mosque bombings in Iraq. One sect would try to bomb out the other sect. John Warner, the senior senator from Virginia and the head of the Armed Forces Committee in the Senate, got things terribly confused. Warner, who is a mature man, confused sectarian…