Linguistics Wisdom from ESL Students

I have the joy and challenge of teaching some newly-arrived Saudi Arabian students this term. Some nuggets of knowledge from my two most opinionated, outspoken male Saudi students:

Day 1: "Cooking for women only".

"Fashion magazines for women only".

Day 2: "English? Very easy".

"I like read Shakespeare, Dickens". (in Reading for Beginners)

Day 3: "English in America and Australia? Same".

"I read there only 85 words different".

"Linguistics? That mean grammar".

Day 1 through 6: (in response to a "what does the word '____' mean?")
Random exclamations of the same word, words that sound similar, words that come next in the dictionary.

E.g. "What does the word 'comprehend' mean?"

"Comprehend".
"It mean comprehend".
"Compare".
"Conflict".
"Contradict".
"Agree disagree". (not sure where he was going with this - but it's a handy answer, apparently, for most questions)

Day 6: "Teacher, I want know your opinion about book Da Vinci Code"

"Teacher, what mean word 'hijack'?"

Day 7: with a look of utter resignation: "English very difficult. Every day something new".

I'm glad I didn't strangle them on Day 1, or Day 3. It seems they are coming around. And I have great anecdotes to share when I get home.

How to Lose a Voice in 5 Days

The following must be completed after a lengthy, relaxing vacation during which little time is spent around other people. This ensures little immunity to any germs other than those brought home by immediate family members.

Day 1. Start a new teaching job - preferably one that includes students newly arrived from foreign countries. They bring with them all those nasty airplane germs.

Day 4. Call in sick due to a fever and extremely sore throat. Worry about whether your new job will still be there tomorrow.

Day 5. Still have your job? Great! Today, be sure to overcompensate for your sick day by talking too much. Students don't need to work alone - they need to engage in facilitated discussion. And they really do love your jokes!

After work on your 5th day, pick up some friends for a road trip. Be sure to ask them lots of questions on the drive. With the radio on. That way you can demonstrate how loud you can talk.

Arrive at your destination and meet new people at a BBQ. Tell them all about yourself and be witty and engaging.

Join a band and spend the next 5 hours singing, yelling, and making stupid jokes into a microphone. In a smoke-filled bar. (If there are no smokers, you might want to burn incense. A lot of it). To speed along the process, frequently move between the hot, stuffy, smoky bar and the chilly outdoors.

Attend an after party and verbally spar with your bandmates. Become passionate and argue - this leads to increased volume and therefore increased strain on your voice.

Find a hotel room with a hot-tub. Sleep on the carpeted floor where the mold and dust can most easily gain access to your breathing passages.

Day 6. Wake up sounding like Patty and Selma. Be prepared for new nicknames. And to hone your skill at charades.

Silly Random Quizzes

While drinking coffee and trying to wake up, I've been surfing around and found myself on Miss's 360 page *wave* - and was too sleepy still to avoid clicking on the 3 question personality quiz (which was indeed accurate for both Miss and myself - I'm one of those sappy ones).

The inanity of some of these quizzes cracks me up. Apparently I'm 34% sociopath, 68% "average American", I would fail the U.S. Citizenship test, my 1920s name is Violette Liota, and my inner child is "surprised". How's all that for inaccurate!!?? (Okay, I like the name Violette, but I'm much more than 34% sociopath! Dammit! Must...set...fire...to...neighbour....)

My favourite result, based solely on my name and gender, and changing completely each time I refreshed the page, was:

***My Superhero Profile***
My Superhero Name is The Winter Fly
My Superpower is Meditation
My Weakness is Atomic Explosions
My Weapon is Your Silver Analyzer
My Mode of Transportation is Kayak

What's your Superhero Name?http://www.blogthings.com/superheronamegenerator/


I'm off to meditate in my kayak.

The Winter Fly

Blogging Blahs

Obviously I've lost any motivation whatsoever to blog - for months. I read other blogs and I both smirk and retch at the effluence of pretentious, self-indulgent babble - and wonder if others do the same at mine.

But since my little trackery thing tells me that a few people do pop in to see if I'm still alive (or perhaps they stumble upon my blog by sheer accident), I guess I still have an audience *wave*- and that in itself motivates me to write. 'Cuz the only writing I've done lately has been academic fluff (I can still pull an A out of my arse at the eleventh hour) or emotionally-charged journal entries - and ain't nobody gonna read those!

I've been a hermit of late. After struggling to the finish line of school, I've taken the last two weeks to do nothing productive, and it's been quite lovely. I've not yet mastered the art of total relaxation and so have spring-cleaned the living-room and kitchen, defrosted the chest freezer (which had become a solid block of ice), and started a cross-stitch project. But the rest of my time has been spent playing computer games, watching movies, reading fiction for fun, and sleeping. I love sleeping.

During this time, though, my mind has been steadily chugging away, shifting from school mode to work mode as I commence my latest job search.

I'm also finding myself more at peace with, and enjoying observable results from, the emotional and mental processing I've done over the last several months: reframing the events of my childhood and my life so far, clarifying my personal values and beliefs, and consciously choosing my responses instead of reacting from a place of repressed emotion - exhausting effort, but oh-so-worth it!

March Madness

Yes, I know it's April. March is gone. I completely missed it. Went a little mad (as in crazy) and before I knew it, it was today. Thus the title.

Causes of my madness are in the process of being qualitatively described and prioritized in order of impact (although the valency of any given causal factor is liable to shift dramatically with changes in mood, sleep levels, chocolate intake, and the weather).

Results of my madness are as follows:

# of crayon pictures drawn = 47

# of songs written = 2 (given that I haven't written a song since high school, this is actually pretty impressive)

# of "Me" posters created = 1, lovingly mounted in the hallway (through which I pass several times a day) by His Geekness.

# of magazines harvested for pics for my "Me" Poster = 32

# of Munchkin "Me" posters created = 0.5 (8 and 10 year old munchkins really don't seem to care that much about making a poster to reconnect with their inner child - go figure!)

# of winter term classes passed with a B or better = 2

# of winter classes not passed = 1 (and it was Relaxation Yoga - I just couldn't manage to get myself out of my warm, comfy bed on time to go nap with a bunch of strangers on a sweat-stinky wrestling room floor. Given that this is the first class I've EVER failed, this is also pretty impressive. How many people do you know who've failed naptime??)

# of 1962 VW Beetles who sat for six months with a totally $%#!ed up carburetor = 1

# of 1962 VW Beetles who finally got a new carb bought for them = 1

# of 1962 VW Beetles who also got an oil change! = 1

# of 1962 VW Beetles with mold growing on their carpet and seat = 1

# of 1962 VW Beetles who are happy to be taken care of again = 1

# of new outfits I discovered in my closet when I looked beyond the black sweaters and jeans = infinite!

# of electric guitars that now belong to me = 1 (and her name is Glennda, named after The Old Fart, my Dad)

# of electric guitars I haven't smashed in a wild frenzy of "oi oi oi" = 1

# of guitar chords I can play = still only 3

# of relaxing, rejuvenating, reconnecting retreats enjoyed = 1

Qualitative results of my period of madness include all those mushy things, like a stronger, happier, more intimate relationship with His Geekness; more confidence in myself as a parent; more patience with my munchkins; more passion for, and in, my music; more laughter and singing - and most importantly, a greater sense of ME. Yay!!

Miss Taken Identity

What is it with strangers feeling the need to tell you who they think you are, or who they think you should be??! Or more accurately, why must they act on that feeling?!

At the grocery store last night, quietly bagging my own groceries and minding my own business, a woman felt the need to strike up a scintillating conversation with me:

Woman: "You know who you remind me of, and you probably hear this all the time".

Me: "I have no idea".

W: "That woman who was dating Scott Petersen and didn't even know he was married!"

Me: "Scott who? You mean that guy who killed his wife and children?"

W: "Yeah, that one! You look just like her."

Me: "I love it how people feel the need to tell me who they think I am".

What the...?? What if I were that woman? Thanks for the reminder! (I'll have to remember that one - that'll learn 'em!)

A previous incident while waiting for a bus was funnier, and somewhat less disturbing.

Woman: "Is your name Jennifer Fitzsimmon?"

Me: "No, it's not".

W: "Are you sure? You're Becky's cousin, right?"

M: "Yes, I'm sure. I do know my own name. And I have no cousins named Becky" (turns up volume on Mp3 player)

EDIT: Please note that my incorrect identification of Scott Petersen as the man who killed his wife and children, not the man who killed his wife and unborn child, is due to the fact that I hitherto had absolutely no clue who Amber Frey (Petersen's girlfriend) is, and obviously only a rough idea why Scott Petersen is infamous.

What do you call...

...someone who speaks three languages? Trilingual.

...someone who speaks two languages? Bilingual.

...someone who speaks one language? American.

Word Nerd, meet Science Geek....

His Geekness sent me the following link this morning. Just how many words can one spell using only chemical symbols?

Talkman for PSP

Sony has released a language translation "game" for the Playstation Portable. It's called Talkman and translates between English, Japanese, Korean and Chinese. Check out this review for details - be sure to scroll down and watch the Japanese ads, especially the "Buy you a drink?" one.

Endangered Secret Women's Language

Feminist group Guerilla Girls has a short blurb about Nushu, an endangered written language used exclusively by women in China. Ancient Scripts has a brief article about Nushu here. Japanese University Professor Orie Endo's research project can be found at World of Nushu.

Professor Role Model

After taking some online quizzes tonight that said I am an Interpersonal Thinker, I have a female brain, and I make a lousy superhero*, I chased down a story about Gaak, a rogue robot that escaped from his enclosure.

And discovered Gaak's creator, Noel Sharkey, a multi-disciplinary Professor who dropped out of school at 15, dropped acid, and played in rock bands before pursuing a successful academic career. (Okay, so I didn't drop out of school at 15, but I did wag a few days and go to the beach). Oh, and he's on his third marriage!

Here is Noel's homepage at the University of Sheffield, and here is a neat article about him by the American Society for Engineering Education.

*Please note, being a lousy superhero has little to do with having a female brain, but more to do with my lack of motivation to save the world right now.

Fundoshi fun

Unable (or maybe just unwilling) to explain how my brain works sometimes and thus the thought processes leading to this post, I would like to share with you the kind of fun you, too, can have in Sapporo in the Winter - in your underwear. Well, Japanese underwear. More like a piece of cloth that may or may not cover your privates, especially while ice-climbing.

Be sure to scroll to the bottom of the first page and click on Fundoshi '98.

Orfogramma

Awful grammar? Languagehat has a great post about a Russian term, "orfogramma", which means a point of uncertainty in the spelling of a word, a place where you can't tell from the sound alone how to write it.

One comment stated that which was obvious to me:

I suppose though that in English "letter which must be determined by
orthographic rules rather than sound alone" is almost synonymous with
"letter".

In other words, English spelling sucks. Or as Mizuki says, "English is crazy business!"

A Japanese rooster says "kokekokkou"

Here's a handy dandy link to the sounds animals make in Japanese. (Please note that in Japan a rooster makes the same noise as it does in the U.S. or Australia, but people express this sound differently in Japanese and in English). There are even links to pronunciation samples, and a groovy little song about frogs!

For true animal polyglotism, check out Sounds of the World's Animals, sponsored by the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics at Georgetown University.

Be the first to spell the sound a zebra makes - in any language! (A zebra vocalization sample is provided. It sounds like a faulty laser gun to me).

English is crazy business!

One of my dear students, Mizuki, shook her head in resignation today and stated "English is crazy business" (a phrase learned from yours truly). She had tried unsuccessfully to find the meaning of the word "creu" in her electronic dictionary. "Creu" is how she heard the word - which turned out to be "clue". Despite the Japanese R/L distinction (or lack thereof), there is still the issue of spelling the sound "oo" - is it "ew", "ue", "oo", "u" or something else?

This situation led to me to search online for electronic dictionaries that accept phonetic spelling. I followed a tangent, as I usually do when surfing the internets, and found what purports to be the original version of the somewhat-known poem about the chaos of English spelling and pronunciation.

Four yer paruzil: The Chaos

Whose Line

One of my favourite TV shows is Whose Line Is It Anyway?. The American version, hosted by Drew Carey, invited special guest Richard Simmons to join the frivolity. Here's the result: Whose JetSki Is It Anyway?

(My other favourite TV show is The Daily Show with John Stewart. He wants me. I can tell).

That's Mr. Chreviewier to Yahoo!

This is probably old news to some, but new to me.

Google the terms "medireview", "chreviewier", "primreview" and see what you come up with.

Are these new additions to the lexicon? Well, I suppose it depends on how you look at it.

While reading a post about spellchecker errors on Language Log, I learned that a few years ago some Yahoo Mail users experienced a unique form of editing. Emails in HTML format that were sent to a Yahoo address were filtered by Yahoo's security...uh, filter...and certain words, or partial words, were automatically changed to prevent cross-site scripting attacks. Eval was changed to review (so medieval became medireview, primeval became primreview, and, my favourite, cheval became chreview).

At some point, Yahoo resolved the filter problem, but there are plenty of remnants to be found on the Net for your reviewuation.

To Blog or Not To Blog?

From www.dictionary.com:

Main Entry:
blog
Definition:
to author an online diary or chronology of thoughts
Etymology:
1999-2004; abbr. of Weblog
Usage:
blogged, blogging; blogger, n

Oh yes, the intractable word nerd must begin her debut blog with a dictionary definition, for after all, the dictionary is her most favouritest book in the whole wide world!

I do recall that the vast majority of high school papers and reports I composed began with a dictionary definition of the topic in question. By the time I reached college my introductory repertoire had increased slightly - I had added the time-honoured tradition of beginning with a grandiloquent exposition, a lofty missive, verbose palaver...

"If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, blind them with bullshit". My father, circa. all my life.

As a linguistics student and self-identified word nerd with an interest in computers and many things geek, I thought it high time I began my own blog. So here 'tis. I have nebulous ideas regarding potential graduate work in computers and linguistics and this shall be my medium for tracking such ideas. I shall also post whatever the heck I feel like at any given time, including personal interests such as my band, step-parenting, post-modern feminism, old-school VW Beetles, and of course, word antics (a general term referring to all things that tickle my language funny bone, such as www.engrish.com and http://paul.merton.ox.ac.uk/language/analogies.html).

So, to answer the pressing question in the title of this, my very first blog post:

I shall blog. (Standard British English)
I be bloggin'. (African American Vernacular English)
Please to blog me. (learner English)
All your blog are belong to us. (geek English)
Blog on! (rocker English)