Letter 1a

Dear Hanna,

I have just found the word ‘frienemy’ in an article in the Guardian newspaper ( UK).
This is a portmanteau word combining friend and enemy. I had never come across the word before and, wondering how behind the times I am linguistically, I googled ‘frienemy’ and found a quarter of a million citations. I then googled the other spelling of the word: frenemy, and found 125.000 mentions.

I live in UK but then I am an aging codger (69) and am clearly way behind the linguistic times.

What an excellent concept ‘frenemy’ is! I think I have several frenemies!

Free bus pass HLT Reader.

Letter 1b

Hi there

Here is a good tip. If you want to be in touch with new words in English make friends with Urban Dictionary online. For example it has 15 entries for ‘frenemy:

1. An enemy disguised as a friend.
"What do you think about frenemies?"
"I say, keep your friends close, and your frenemies closer"

2. The type of "friend" whose words or actions bring you down.(whether you realize it as intentional or not) The type of friend you ought to cut off but don't cuz...they're nice... good ...you've had good times with them. U know...they're good people that you can count on to bring you down again sometime in the near future. The friend you may or may not have cornered about their quicksand like ways and keep around because "its in the past"...and so was one minute ago. The person that will continue to bring you down until you demand better for yourself.
When you ask yourself is that person my friend or enemy...they are your frenemy. Straighten em out or leave them. Don’t put up with it.

3. Someone who is both friend and enemy, a relationship that is both mutually beneficial or dependent while being competitive, fraught with risk and mistrust. Zack is John's frenemy. They get a long in the office but both of them work on internal competing teams.

4. someone who you pretend to like but really you both know you hate each other..
That girls is my frenemy i hate that stupid ho

5. A "friend" a "bad friend" who cares only about themselves. A friend who gets their way no matter the cost, and who they step on along the way. One might stay in a "frenemy" situation because they are fearful of this person. Also known as a toxic friendship.
Classic example: when your best friend steals your boyfriend of three years she was a frenemy all along.

6. A person with whom you may have a lot of fun and/or a lot in common, who also has a vile and random dark side. These relationships are worth doing a cost/benefit analysis on. Also, limiting relationships with frenemies to non-SO relationships is a must. Why? Because it’s ultimately all about them after all, and you will need to be in a position to get away from them for indefinite periods of time. Know too, that you will probably become their frenemy as well—because you won’t be able to keep from talking behind their back. If this happens, don‘t expect everyone to get it—some will wonder why this person enrages you so much and others will wonder what you see in them.

It is recommended for your own safety/sanity that you limit yourself to one frenemy at any given time in your life.

7. A portmanteau of friend and enemy; an enemy who acts like a friend. Sometimes spelled frienemy. Beware of the frenemy

8. A person who pretends to be your friend to get connected to other people you may know and then blows you off once they are connected to your friends. They are very smooth and everyone thinks that person is great until they are eventually traded up by this person for another "better" social connection. They are social climbers and usually the social "leader" in the group. No one wants to reveal this actual frenemy for fear of backlash from the rest of the group. The frenemy will actually put you in a bad light to other people behind your back without making it seem like they are talking about you and actually spill anything you may have told them to others without making it seems they are telling a secret. Be aware of the frenemy because they will have your friends alienate you to be their friend. They are fake and although you may be a smart one to recognize them, others may not and exude praise upon them until they've been tricked by the frenemy.

Susan just told me that Vera made her sad by yelling at her for no reason. Susan said all she tried to do was tell Vera that she was wrong about changing her plans to go shopping. Do you think Susan may be Vera's frenemy? Vera hasn't said anything about the argument at all until I spoke with Vera and she stated that she tried to politely inform Susan that she was not up to go shopping without giving details about a personal situation and Susan just kept at her until she blew up. Yet Susan has told the whole group about the fiasco and everyone feels bad for Susan.

9. A person who seems to be a friend, but takes every opportunity to make cutting remarks under the guise of being honest, naive or just stupid. A Frenemy is a 29 year old who says to a 50-year old who is being sexually harassed at work by person of same age-"Oh, I guess old people still want to have sex, too!"

10. Someone you love to hate
"Why do you hang around with that kid?"
"I don't, he's just my frenemy." "Huh?" "I enjoy treating him like shit."

11. China. We're basically en route to war with them, but they're so essential to our everyday lives we can do nothing about it.

We can't live without little plastic cars.

From the Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert.
China's our frenemy. They're communists, but they stabilize our economy

12. Your enemy who's also a friend.
Kitty Pryde is on the X-Men and Lance Alvers is on the Brotherhood. They're on opposite teams, thus making them enemies but they're still friends....Therefore they are each others frenemy.

13. A person who is your friend but acts like your enemy.
Your Friend: "OMG that is such a terrible skirt, seriously do you mean to turn guys off or is it just your off fashion style?"

You: "Have you noticed that you are such a frenemy?"
disrespectful mean fake two-faced pretending

14. a word used, usually in tabloids, to describe two people, usually famous people, who are enemies in the press and friends in real life or vice versa, generally a technique used simply to gain publicity. Lindsay Lohan: omg look we're on the cover of US weekly AGAIN!!
Paris Hilton: omigod Lindsay this frenemy thing is doing wonders for our image

15. A frenemy refers to a company that can be both a partner (customer, vendor, etc.) and a competitor at the same time.
Sir Martin Sorrell said he counts Google as a frenemy of WPP, the ad agency empire that be built. On one hand, Google offers WPP a chance to buy cutting edge interactive ads for its clients. One the other hand, Google makes no secret of its intentions to allow anyone to buy ads for themselves, which could disintermediate ad agencies.

from: www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=frenemy

Greetings Hania

Letter 2

I am attaching a photo of my Alexandra arguing with Stephen Krashen at the Hildesheim children’s literacy conference about the importance of incomprehensible input. I don’t think he had thought of it before and she made such a good case he rather fell for her.

He told me a lovely joke... An old man was walking down the street when he met a frog. The frog said, 'I'm not a frog. I'm a princess and all you have to do is kiss me and I will be all yours.' The old man, bent down, picked her up and put her in his pocket. Out of his pocket the frog said, 'I don’t think you understand. I am a beautiful princess and all you have to do is to kiss me and I am all yours.' The old man said, 'Listen! At my age it is more interesting to have a talking frog!'

Andrew

PS Alex sold 30 copies of her published book...more than Longman on one side of her, OUP on the other and Macmillan opposite!

Letter 3a

Hi Hania,

I have received a certificate from you-THANKS! You know, sometimes I cannot understand the policy of the Polish universities which pass nuggets of information on requirements of published articles on to the students of the PhD programmes.

Lately I have had an argument with a lady in the dean's office about the credits points for a published manuscript. I was surprised to hear that the publication of the articles which are not reviewed has little value according to the university rules.

Honestly I cannot see why I need to stick to the list of magazines and journals presented by the university. Apparently, there is a number of different website magazines like yours whose the articles are reviewed and I think very highly of such website mag.... For the simple reason, I cannot get 3 or 2 points for my article because it was published in the unknown magazine. that's rubbish!

What is your point of view? I would appreciate your reply

Best wishes Jack

Letter 3b

Hi Jack

well different universities approach the credit point system differently... As I / we see it, HLT is not an academic publication but a forum for all teachers to exchange ideas, although it is a member of DOJA and has an ISSN number.

We issue certificates of publication, universities in some countries recognize them, others don’t.

Greetings Hania

Letter 4

Dear Hanna,

UK Deputy Prime Minister, Patricia Hewitt, recently gave a speech about people she called welderly, and these she defined as people over 65 who are still hale and hearty and could be useful to the economy. I googled the term and found 7000 references, which in Google terms is a very small number. I therefore suggest that maybe the welderly, ( uncountable) is maybe a new word at the beginning of its career in English. When I googled the ilderly I found only 700 references.

I feel good about catching new words early in their linguistic infancy. How about you?

Mario Rinvolucri, Pilgrims

Letter 5

Hi Hania,

With all the negative things happening in Poland recently, ministers dying in plane crashes, floods etc, it was great to see we had ‘Polish Cultural week’ here in Rome recently. I was a bit tied up & unable to attend many of the activities, however, there was one thing I certainly was not going to miss & I didn't!!

The showing of Kieslowski's 2nd film on a full size cinema screen. In English, the title would be something like, ‘Tranquility’. It was made in 1975 and about 80% of the public were Polish & spent a large part of the film laughing at the props and behaviour of some of the actors. I assume they saw it as archaic!

Jerzy Stuhr, the main actor was present too, as he's currently working on a film with Italian director, Nanni Moretti. He gave us an insight into the film & Polish life in the 70's, as well as giving a simultaneous translation of the film, as there were no subtitles. I have to say that I found the spoken translation a bit disturbing & at times, tried to ignore it, as I find Kieslowski easy enough to understand even without the spoken language.

It was great piece of work of course, by a great master!

Best wishes

Danny

Letter 6

Hi Hania, (and Mario)

I would love to write something for HLT again.

But I would want some changes in HLT beforehand. Last time I looked the pdfs that we can freely download from HLT, there are no references of where they came from--not good human connectivity nor science, when we give them to others and print them out for our students. Sorry if this might feel like blackmail, but I do it for the sake of my colleagues who need to cite materials so they can convince others of the value of humanistic language teaching, that you have in HLT. It should be something very simple to add the reference of the article at the top and bottom of all the past articles and future articles. And it gives HLT more publicity. Just my 2 cents that could be worth millions in citability.

warm regards Tim