Blyton, who wrote more than 700 books and died in 1968, was the best-selling English-language author of the 20th Century.

BBC: Enid Blyton legacy to Newcastle's Seven Stories centre

For that, I turned to my favorite commentator on language, author Michael Erard.

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Quim Monzo is the best-selling author in the Catalan language.

BBC: Sense of the City: Barcelona

Happy Birthday was sung (in French, English, the local Wolof, and a fourth language this author has yet to determine), homemade cake was unveiled and dance moves were displayed.

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"It was a question of seeing a live game, " said Redshaw, the author of an English-language history of the club.

WSJ: M��laga: England's Best Team...in Spain

Jennifer Powell-Lunder, a clinical psychologist and author of "Teenage as Second Language: A Parent's Guide to Becoming Bilingual, " says midcareer professionals must be especially vigilant about recognizing when they sound like teen wannabes.

WSJ: Mastering the Finer Points of American Slang

Steven Pinker is Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, US, and the author of the best-sellers The Language Instinct and How The Mind Works.

BBC: Aventis science prize 2003 - Pinker

This is a guest post by Nataly Kelly, Chief Research Officer at the Boston-based research firm Common Sense Advisory and author of Found in Translation: How Language Shapes Our Lives and Transforms the World (Penguin).

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"'Kicking ass' is acceptable vulgarity, " says Michael Adams, professor of English language at Indiana University-Bloomington and author of Slang: The People's Poetry.

BBC: Kentucky 'kicks ass': Taking pride in plain speaking