By David Shariatmadari / The GuardianWhat is it about language that gets people so hot under the collar? Passionate feelings about what’s right and wrong extend from the use of “disinterested” to what gay people are allowed to call themselves. APOSTROPHE CATASTROPHEA so-called “grammar vigilante” has been correcting shop fronts in Bristol, England, for more than a decade. But this syllable-flip is in fact a fairly common linguistic process called metathesis. All English speakers live with the results of historic metatheses that caught on: horse used to be “hros” and bird used to be “brid.”

Source: Taipei Times June 18, 2019 14:37 UTC