[Tubby Isaacs]

My old English teacher would have an absolute field day with that one. He'd spend half an hour deconstructing sentences, adding and removing punctuation and asking us to analyse the change in meanings, before gently leading us to the conclusion that the construction itself is the cause of ambiguity, and wholesale re-phrasing is required.

Do you remember if he mentioned having studied Latin? Of course, it's possible to be incredibly precise/ nitpicky without having studied a word of it, but often people like that have. As I have, and I like the sound of these lessons.

None of it did me much good in work, mind. Helped me get jobs, no doubt about that, but I then found myself slower at picking up the substance of the job than people who'd studied almost anything else.

[RedSparrows]

I didn't ever study Latin but find the above fascinating, also. Usually with a political bent rather than a purely linguistic one, but still.

Studying a language radically different from English is very good for this, too. It's good for the brain and good for thinking both about meaning in your own language, and the contingency of meaning per se.

All, naturally, beyond the braying cretin.