Language Acquisition Gifts

'Young lady, stop talking to your dad in such a disrespectful way! After all he's a man with degrees and can fill in his unemployment benefit application in five different languages!'

"Remember the golden rule: more buzzwords, less real words."

"Bert, I'm confused. What happens after we circle the wagons, tighten our belts and walk a mile in our customer's shoes? Is that when the chickens come home to roost?"

"In the first place, it isn't "maddening crowd.' It's 'madding crowd.' "

"And the last little piggy cried, 'Oui, oui, oui' all the way home."

Solicitor speaks legal jargon and has a translator who tells client: 'You haven't a hope!'

Campaign for Plain English

Pirate boy reciting the alphabet

"Whenever he shows up everything turns to crap!"

Thru versus Through Traffic

"You'll love this. It's swarthy yet munificent, didactic and gregarious with hints of dogma."

'I can't force jocose if I'm not feeling it.'

"You and your, 'why bother to learn another language. Everyone in the known universe speaks, Zarconian'!"

A Copy Editor and His Dog

Assault 'n' Vinegar

Punctuation Police

Backfire

"The good news is that we do have a little wiggle room."

Restaurant Francais: All you can pronounce £30.

"You've got to learn about verbs. How else are you going to verbalize your feelings?

"Damn - another letter to the editor."

What's normal?

"No, I really thought each sentence ended with an emoji!"

Lesser known greek gods,

'What amazes me most is that years ago I couldn't even spell teacher - now I are one!'

"If Google Translate is correct, they want our women and our cattle."

Man packing suitcase with French vocabulary

'The Questioner'

"We've decided that it will be better for his later development if we speak to him only in legalese."