English - The Real Deal

读者Edward的问题：师范大学为什么是normal university？嘿嘿，我以前也有这个疑问，借着这个机会跟大家分享一下：
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language给出的normal school的定义：NOUN: A school that trains teachers, chiefly for the elementary grades.
也就是说，normal school合在一起是师范学校，不应把它拆成normal + school ——“正常的学校”。
如果你的好奇心没那么容易满足，还是想知道为什么偏偏叫normal school而不是其他的名字，请看这段：

Translation of French école normale (so called because the first school so named was intended as a model) : école, school + normal, normal.
原来又是受法语影响。
此外，wikipedia的normal school条目有不少有用的信息，尤其是这一段：
The terminology is preserved in the official […]

对标点符号不太在意的朋友看看这篇报道： Comma quirk irks Rogers
The validity of the contract and the millions of dollars at stake all came down to one point — the second comma in the sentence.
Had it not been there, the right to cancel wouldn’t have applied to the first five years of the contract and Rogers would be protected from the […]

在网络流行语方面我一向后知后觉，两三个月前才第一次接触到Orz（这里似乎该加个“汗”）。前几天和朋友吃饭时有人问起Orz到底是什么意思，正好这个网站的留言里也第一次出现Orz，我就仔细挖了一下Orz的来源。找到一篇挺有意思的英文介绍，摘录如下（有较多语法和拼写错误，未修正）：
“Orz” is a popular symbol, a pictograph, a fun stuff, a strong meme, a fashion and even a subculture in Far East Asia since 2004. It’s originally from Japan. It illustrates a guy facing left and kneeling on the ground, the “o” means the head, the “r” means the hands and the body while the […]