Mike Pilewski writes about life, politics and culture in the United States
German is an easy language to learn, but it’s not an easy language to pronounce. The umlauts and the “ch” are only the first hurdle. Letters like “l”, “r” and “y” are tricky. You have to know where to split compound words, and it takes a while to get the intonation right. Tourists sound horrible when they try to pronounce … >>
My dad never goes to the supermarket. Well, he does, but he just calls it “the market”. Why exaggerate? If Americans are having a good time, they’ll say things are “great”. Not Dad. To him, everything’s “fine”. He means the same thing, but it sounds more honest. I find this refreshing. For decades, an inflation of intensifiers has been corrupting … >>
Every revolution needs a poet. The civil-rights movement was won not by people marching in the streets or setting fire to their neighborhoods, but by the eloquence of their leaders, who opened the ears and minds of the establishment. Martin Luther King talked about the problems in his neighborhood, but his dream was a dream for everyone. He made civil … >>
This column was originally written for Spotlight Online. As some of you may know, I write the Replay section you hear on Spotlight Audio each month. We present the voices of people who have been in the news and explain the language they use. The language we use when giving background to recent events is just as important. A few … >>
You can’t get any more American than this: a sport that was long considered our “national pastime” and whose yearly championship — played only between US teams — is rather pretentiously called the World Series. Although baseball had its heyday from 1900 to about 1950, it’s still popular: 19 million people watched last year’s championship between the New York Yankees … >>
No one is sure who first said it, but most of us will agree that “Britain and America are two countries divided by a common language”. To Americans, Britain is a strange place where fish have fingers, cars have bonnets and people collect children. Or are we the strange ones for putting the baby carriage in the trunk instead of … >>
From time to time, we need to take a moment to recognize the unsung heroes who keep our society functioning the way it should. They work with untiring dedication. They are willing to put the greater good ahead of their own well-being. Without them, everything would collapse. I’m talking, of course, about those who teach, and fight for, proper punctuation, … >>
Do you know the difference between nationality and citizenship? A lot of people use these words to mean the same thing — but they don’t. The word “citizen” comes to us from Latin civitas, meaning “city”. The French took that word centuries ago and made the word citeain — someone who lives in a city. Today, a citizen is a … >>
The past week in the office has led me to one conclusion: there are better places to spend the summer than in a German industrial park. It’s nice to open the window to catch a breeze, but it’s never long before you hear: hammers, saws and other construction equipment jackhammers trucks that run their engines all day in order to … >>
With the soccer World Cup approaching, much of the world is focused on athletic prowess. But wouldn’t it be nice if intellectual achievements were followed with as much passion? What if, instead of showing men chasing a ball, the television cameras showed a contest of mental skill? Exactly that happened last week, when American sports channel ESPN and the ABC … >>