10 Comments

Canadian here (though born in the U.S.A. nearly 62 years ago), Brit parents, translator and copy-editor, so well versed in the differences between Brit and U.S. English and how Canadian English straddles the two. Gobsmaked that I've lived all this time never knowing that a frown was anything other than a furrowed brow.

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☹️

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Of course, the biggest sports team name drama this month was the news that "Utah Yeti" is dead :(

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Utah Yeti was too good for them.

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Is it really possible for Yeti coolers to own the rights to the name "Yeti," given its long history in folklore? I'm put in mind of Disney attempting to trademark "Day of the Dead" a decade ago. Feel like this is its own post in the making

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I haven't done a deep dive on Yeti naming, but it's not inconceivable that Yeti sports-team merch would overlap with Yeti cooler merch, which would lead to trademark conflict.

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Thanks for this! Particularly enjoyed “Is ‘immersive’ the new ‘extreme’?” by Honolulu Quirk and James Harbeck on how to pronounce 64 French expressions (watched the whole thing and followed along out loud!).

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Thanks for the shout-out, Nancy! And also: cute winter boots!

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Is there similar ambiguity in international English around what part of the face smiles?

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Well, there's “smize”: https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/smize/

(Honestly, though, I don't know.)

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