Morning Stories

No, I'm not entirely certain — but appearances suggest: most fingers are already finished by the time a human arrives in the cradle. They're still a little small. And still a little clumsy. But as fingers go, they're perfectly fine and ready to feel their way through the world.

"Excuse me, what?" When two umlauted vowels land in the same word, things get suspicious — and decidedly Basler. "Wottsch e weeneli im Chläppergässli spaziire, hösch?" (Do you want to go for a walk on Slap Alley?) is a prime example.

What does "cyranomising" mean? Christian Wehrli explores why Cyrano de Bergerac reveals more about language, love, and communication than any textbook. An essay on Rostand, rhetoric, and the power of words.

Art is Art. And Art means Art. Every single facet that artists shape, form, and live within their immeasurable imaginations.

Oh no—not again. A sentence that, in just two words, unites two languages. «Stau» is a dense German word for traffic jam; «big» is the large word in English. No, this isn’t a critique of the author—i.e., me—but merely an observation that, by the end of this sentence, turns to dust. Sorry.

Strictly speaking, the plural would be correct. There isn’t just one house where the mad rewrite the fate and story of humankind.

For a long time, even Canadians themselves didn’t really know who was living up there at the northernmost edge of the Arctic. This mysterious group had settled long before the first Europeans ever arrived, struggling to survive in the biting cold.

Days and nights used to be long — and rarely entertaining. Life in the northern world, hundreds of years ago, was sparse: a bit of fog, bone-deep cold, a view of the next hill, and endless forests with no exit.

“This surgeon really messed up,” someone in the audience said. “And what about that nurse? She’s even worse!”