Again, apologies for my late blog, especially to my good friend Andrew, one of my (few) regular readers. In my defence, I am still waiting for his blog to be set up. Actually, it is a weak defence. I saved my first draft of this blog post on 22nd August, which is over a month ago. I’ll write about what I’ve been up to in a month’s time.

My stint as an English teacher had made me more self-conscious about my spelling and grammar. I’ve also noticed how the English language has changed during my 18 months in China. Obviously, there are new words such as:

• Credit crunch
• Sub-prime
• Collateralized debt obligation
• iPhone
• Macrogolisation – the realisation of some old truths about money:
• cannot keep borrowing it forever
• it does not grow on trees
• people do want it back

OK, the list is not comprehensive and says a lot more about my interests. Plus I made the last one up after looking up the ingredients for the moisturiser I use.

The phrase that I have thought about the most is “at the minute”. When I first heard it I thought it sounded completely incorrect, yet, it seems (and probably is) grammatically sound.

Which wordsmith first came up with this phrase?