The English Juf

That tiny dot above a lowercase i or j has a name: it is a tittle. The term is rare in everyday conversation, but it has been part of English for centuries.

The English word actual and the Dutch word actueel look as though they should match. They do not. This false friend regularly produces sentences that are grammatical but mean something quite different from what the speaker intended.

The English word apron once began with an n. People used to say a napron, but the boundary between the article and the noun gradually moved: a napron became an apron.

The word queue contains five letters but is pronounced exactly like the single letter Q: /kjuː/. The remaining four letters appear to be waiting quietly behind it, which is pleasingly appropriate for a queue.

Goodbye feels like one of the most ordinary words in English, but it began as something much more elaborate: a blessing meaning “God be with you.”

Eventually and the Dutch word eventueel look temptingly similar. Unfortunately, they do not mean the same thing. This is a classic false friend, and it can change the message of an otherwise perfectly good sentence.

Why does colonel sound like kernel? Discover how English kept an older pronunciation even after the spelling changed.