Skellig decoded

So, for those of you who just sighed at the sight of a post in poorly written German, allow me to elaborate on the last entry.

Skellig is a book by David Arnold.  I had seen the telemovie a few months back and I thought I should probably read the book at some point... but then I simply forgot it existed.  About a week ago on of my friends mentioned it on Facebook as a highlight of a recent reading club thing, so I decided to borrow the copy in my library and read it myself.

It was a really good book.  I can thoroughly recommend it - especially to people looking for something a young teenage boy wouldn't completely hate (but isn't full of bum-jokes or "warriors of the whatever").  It's something I consider a good stretching book in that it half straddles a few different genres, so it can move you out of reading the same thing all the time.  It's a little bit fantasy, and little bit family drama, a little bit kids-own-adventure.  Once upon a time it would have been classified as "fantasy", but these days I guess it would be "speculative fiction".

The lead character, Michael, narrates the story, which takes place over a few days in his life.  His family has just moved house to a complete wreck of a place.  The previous owner was too old and infirm to take care of the house (he basically moved into one room on the ground floor in the end - even having a toilet installed), and the place needs a lot of repair work in order to get it ready for the new baby...

Except the baby came early.  Too early.  Everyone is trying to fix the house and worry about the baby at the same time.  Michael feels incredibly out of sorts.  He isn't sure what he should or could be doing, and he's worried that the baby might die.  He isn't worried without reason - the baby really might die.  He hopes he can make her better just by thinking about her - and getting other people to think about her as well.  Even the weird man he found in his shed.

There's a weird man in the shed.  He's just huddled in the back corner, behind piles of junk stored by the previous owner, apparently living off bugs, mice and the occasional Chinese takeaway   He's grumpy, crotchety, stiff with arthritis and waiting to die.   This distresses Michael no end, as he doesn't particularly want anyone in his house to die - even the weird people his parents don't know about.

Speaking of weird people, Michael's new neighbour, Mina, is the kind of girl who would no doubt be the weirdest kid in the school - if she actually went to school.  She's home-schooled, which perplexes Michael initially, but then turns out to be very useful.  She helps Michael get the strange man out of the shed (which is very unsound and might collapse at any moment), and in the process they discover something quite remarkable.

Let's just say the strange man might definitely be strange, but he might not necessarily be a man.

The book consists of very short chapters (most only two pages long), which are quite easy to breeze through.  It's the sort of book where you just want to read "one more chapter" before you put it down.  It gets oddly hypnotic, in places, but vocabulary is, by and large, true to the character.  It sounds like something a "Nothern" boy might say.  I'm not sure exactly where the book is set, but it seems to be somewhere in the North-East of England.  I'm also not sure exactly what age Michael is, but I'd say somewhere between 9 and 12.

One of the things I really liked about the book was the relationship between Michael and his father.  They clearly love each other very much and get along quite well.  There are a few fights and scuffles, but you always get the sense that Michael can see that his father cares about him and is concerned about him.  It makes a pleasant change from the kids' books where the parents are the obtuse people who are getting in the way, or the jerks who just don't understand.

Now, I obviously didn't say all of this in my last post, but I did, at least, say this:

"It was very good, and quite interesting"

Practice German Journal: Skellig

Ich habe das Buch Skellig von David Almond gelesen.  Es war sehr gut und ganz interessant.  Der Held des Buch (auch der Icherzähler) ist ein Junge, der Michael heisst.  Seine Familie hat eines neues Haus gekauft, und Michael ist nicht froh.  Das Haus is alt und heruntergekommen - es braucht viel reparieren.  Aber, das ist nicht warum Michael nicht froh ist.  

Michael ist nicht froh weil seine kleine Schwester sehr krank ist.  Sie war zu früh geboren.  Sie ist sehr klein und sehr schwach.  Er ist besorgt wegen sie.

Aber...  Etwas seltsam ist in seine Garage.  Ein Mensch?  Ein Mann?  Eine Kreatur?

Ein Engel?

Mit seine neue Freundin, Mina, helfe Michael der Mann.  Michael und Mina finden etwas erstaunlich, und lernen viel.

Michael ist eines sympathisch Charakter.  Er scheint meistens realistisch - jedoch manchmal ganz unwahrscheinlich.

Die kurzer Kapitels des Buch gefällt mir.  Das Buch war sehr einfach zu lesen. Ich fand es schwer zu anzuhalten.  Ich empfehle dieses Buch Ihnen.  Es war gut.

Cheese smuggling!

Something to warm the heart of every Thursday Next fan:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19751695

The journal

Every now and then I realise I haven't been following my own advice.  I was flicking through George Kutash's book on learning skills for language learners (very late-80s/early-90s, but still worth a look) when I came across a chapter where he talks about replacing action with substitute action (or something like that - the book is in my house, this computer is in my office).

He talks about how we frequently focus on the tasks we're good at to act as a substitute for the tasks we actually need to work on.

It's something I do far too often.  I will often do something where I can see quick and obvious improvement instead of taking the time to work on something harder and slower going.

It's also very similar to one of the study skills techniques I often recommend to my students:  the "what am I avoiding" question.  At some point, you will notice that you are actively avoiding doing a particular task.  That's the task at which you are probably weakest, and the one that probably needs to be directly addressed.

For me, it's writing (well, producing).  I'll happily read another grammar rule to avoid actually producing a sentence.  Seems strange, given that I would probably write underwater if I felt the urge...

...which is probably the reason why I avoid doing it in my target languages.  Because I don't have the skill to write the kinds of things I usually write, it doesn't feel enjoyable to me.  I have to rethink and "simplify" everything I want to say to the point where it isn't what I want to say anymore.

I had plans to write a journal in both languages, and I let it all go while I distracted myself with reading other things instead.

It's time to face the music and dance, though.  Yes, I will write poorly.  Yes, I will get the sentence structure wrong.  Very, very wrong.  Yes, I will struggle to find the right vocabulary (especially since I really should stop looking things up in Google - it's not a good habit to get into).

And, yes, I will occasionally post my ugly, ugly journal entries on this blog.  I see no reason why I should suffer alone.

Maybe I am - just a little

Learning Esperanto, that is.

I really shouldn't.  I'm wasting valuable time that I could be spending on revising and shoring up my German and Estonian.  But...

But it's like a cross between a language, a game and a cult.  It's just so much fun to play with.

And, apparently, I *am* the average Esperanto speaker.  I read a blog post that listed the following people as the folk who are most likely to learn Esperanto:

• Travellers
• Geeks
• Language Lovers
• Vegetarians/Vegans

Now, I'm pretty sure those are meant to be separate categories, but the only description I don't match is vegetarian... and I have a habit of ordering vegetarian meals at restaurants anyway.

So, apparently it's fate.  Nothing for it - I'm going to have to learn Esperanto.

And the word of the day is...

...dubitative

It means means using a modal verb that indicates "showing doubt about whether an event will occur" (LING550 lecture notes): You might make it on time

The other modals also have fun words:

Obligative = must (you must pay the rent)
Permissive = may (you may be excused)
Abilitative = can (but I can't pay the rent!)

In prescriptive grammar, "can" would always be abilitative, I suppose, but in descriptive grammar "can" can be used for permissive moods

Hey, wait a minute... "I'll pay the rent!"

Were does something like shall/will come into this?  That's not in my notes...

The Ultimate Solution

Of course, if you really want to avoid the problem of having to fend of vampires from the unreliable safety of a vampire-proof bunker that's bound to fail eventually, you could just jump the cue and become a vampire earlier in the piece.  No messy, being-pulled-to-pieces-by-vampiric-hoards scenes, that way.

Ever since I read Matheson's I Am Legend, I've found the movie adaptations a bit, well, wimpy.  They completely chicken out on the ending.  Both The Omega Man with Charlton Heston and I am Legend with Will Smith insist on bringing in a real live human girl (forgive the spoilers, but I can assure you there ain't no human girl in the book) and a promise of an enclave of human survivors.  Neville's great contribution to the world is helping humanity.

Pfft!

In the book, it turns out that he's pretty much the last man standing - and he had the situation all wrong.  He wasn't a lone human holding out against mindless monsters that were trying to eat him (although they kind of were trying to eat him); he was a scary serial killer murdering innocent vampires in their sleep.

In the book, everyone who survived the plague became a vampire.  Everyone.  Neville was really the only exception (that we know of).  What was left of society went a little crazy for a short time (well, wouldn't you if you had died and suddenly everyone was a vampire - including you?), and then they got over it.

It's such a brilliantly simple idea.  If everyone is a vampire, then vampires are the normal people.  You get over it and get on with it.  You form yourself a nice little vampiric society where you don't have to worry about being attacked by the vampires.  The only thing you have to worry about is the occasional human serial killer who goes around staking vampires in their sleep.

But those Hollywood types do like to hold out hope for humanity...

Things to keep you awake at night

You know, it's no wonder I have difficulty getting to sleep most nights.  I have so many deeply important things to think about and worry over.

Why, take last night, for example.  I was lying in bed for a good hour, wondering how one could convince Australian primary schools to teach Esperanto in years 4, 5 and 6 (I now have a plan - but I'm not sure why), and then I spent some time thinking about the perfect vampire-proof bunker.

These things are important, and it's a good idea to think about them ahead of time.  You don't want to be stuck in a vampire or zombie infested dystopian town without a good plan for how to hunker down and survive the inevitable attacking hoards.

Granted, the odds that I'll actually find myself as the protagonist of an I Am Legend type situation are slim, but you can never be too careful.

Obviously, you want to avoid any of the horror movie cliches that would be involved in using a traditional bunker or storm cellar.  Eventually, if you have a bolt-hole that's naturally dark, you will come home at the wrong time to find something lurking in the dark.  Vampires like dark places, and therefore have the natural advantage.

No, you want it to be full of natural light - so, above ground, away from trees and things that can cast shadows, and plenty of windows.  At the same time, you don't want the windows to be the weak point of the design.  Strong (thick steel) walls and roof with a lot of thin windows and skylights consisting of thick glass bricks should do the trick.  It probably wouldn't hurt to have a couple of spots where you could pull back a small section of steel wall and use it as a gun sight for a rifle or a flame thrower.  It just needs to be too small to fit a hand through.

There would need to be plenty of ventilation that could be quickly sealed off - both electronically and by hand.  Redundant methods of everything.  That's always the weakest point in any plan - relying on only one way to do anything.  If the ventilation can only be closed electronically, and the vampires think of trying something when the generator is off-line...

It's probably an idea if you don't rely too much on a generator, anyway.  There's got to be a way you can keep a stock of batteries charged, and have enough firewood and tinder to keep things lit even without power.  Using fire would create smoke, though, which could blacken the windows.  Better make sure everything is easy to clean.

Still on the concept of ventilation, it would probably help to have some stores of oxygen in the bunker - as long as you understood that they would, of course, eventually explode, and made sure they were positioned so that any explosion would cause more harm to the vampires than to you.

I think a few bolt-holes within the bolt-holes wouldn't be bad for business, either.  A number of holes in the ground with skylights (and mirrors to amplify whatever natural light can get in) - each equipped with water, sugar and battery-powered sunlamps.  If the vampires manage to get into the bunker you can jump down the nearest hole and seal the trap-door.  Then, it would be handy if you had a number of methods for torching everything above ground.  Mind you, if you have designed the bunker well enough in terms of picking up natural light, you really only have to wait until morning (as long as you are definitely fighting vampires, rather than zombies)...

Still, redundancies are always the way to go.

So, it would be useful if you had more than one door into the bunker (and perhaps a tunnel) as long as you understood that each door (and definitely the tunnel) could be the weak point that dooms you to vampire lunch, and prepared accordingly with redundant methods of killing anything that gets through any entrance (understanding, of course, that they could be used against you - or result in a terribly unfortunate accident).

It would also be handy if you had a way to tell if anyone was already in the bunker before you opened any of the doors.  A lack of interior walls would be good, but at the same time it might not be a bad idea to have a series of heavy-duty tables that could be overturned to make "emergency walls" when necessary for shooting things from behind a low wall.

The point is to always assume everything will fail, and have a number of alternatives available.

Then your biggest concern will always be making sure you get back before dark...

I am *so* not learning...

...Esperanto.

Esperanto has taken over from Italian as the language I'm not really learning, but occasionally allowing myself to be distracted by.

I found Italian strangely alluring right up to the point where I went to Italy.  Now I find I'm over it.  It seems as though all of my vague and ill defined reasons for being interested in Italian have been trumped by "yeah, but Italy kind of sucks".

Maybe I'll come back to it one day through my love of English (once I rekindle it).  It is one of the close cousins of the English language - both languages having Latin as an ancestor.  I have a feeling I'll get around to revisiting French first, though.

Right now, though, Esperanto seems more interesting - and a lot easier.  It's sliding into my head in a way I find strangely appealing, but also slightly alarming.  After reading over a basic grammar key, I can remember not only what "kio estas tio" means, but also why it means that - I'm parsing sentences much more easily than in the early days of German or Estonian.

Actually, I think it would be exceptionally interesting to compare Estonian and Esperanto.  Estonian is complicated and difficult (and the Estonians seem almost proud of that), while Esperanto is simplified and straightforward (and the Esperantists are definitely proud of that), but I've noticed a lot of similarities.

The whole building-blocks approach that Esperanto has seems very Finno-Ugric to me - and there's even a similarity in some of the vocabulary.

Take the question "Do you love me?" for example.

In Estonian it is "Kas sa armastad mind?" and in Esperanto it's "Ĉu vi amas min?"

Now, both "Kas" and "Ĉu" have exactly the same function - they just flag the rest of the sentence as a yes-or-no question.  It's a catch-all for the way we start questions with certain verbs ("do you", "are you", "does he", "is she", "did they", etc).

"Sa" and "vi" ("you") are the subjects of the sentence, so they have no endings.  If they were the objects, they would be "sind" and "vin" respectively.  "Mind" and "min" ("me") are the objects.  If they were the subjects, they would be "ma" and "mi" respectively.

"Armastad" and "amas" ("love") are both constructed by putting specific endings on the root of the verb ("armasta" in Estonian, "am" in Esperanto).  The "d" in "armastad" signifies that it is present tense - which is exactly what the "as" signifies in "amas" (the "d" also signifies that it is performed by "you", which is a distinction that doesn't exist in Esperanto - but that's another story).

If I were to push the sentence into the past tense, I'd add an "s" and an "i" (not necessarily in the same order) into the verbs in both.  "Armastad" would become "armastasid".  "Amas" would become "amis".

All of which leads me to attempt to write a short poem in both languages:

Kas sa armastasid mind?
Kas ma armastan sind?
Kus meie oleme, nüüd?
Ja, siit,
Kuhu?


Ĉu vi amis min?
Ĉu mi amas vin?
Kie ni estas, nun?
Kaj, de tie ĉi,
Kie?



(Actually, I suspect I should have written "ĉi tiam" instead of "nun" - but I've probably made a heck of a lot of other mistakes as well.  At least one of which being crappy poetry...)

The Numbers Game

There is something weird in our collective psyche that seems to think quantity counts.  Deep down, on a fundamental level, we equate value with numbers.

Take juggling, for example.  If you tell someone you juggle, and they are not jugglers themselves, one of the first questions you will be asked is "how many balls can you juggle?"

Not "do you juggle knives?" or "how long can you go without dropping them?" (and certainly not "contact or toss juggling?" - because only other jugglers ask that).  No, all they care about is "how many?".

Now numbers juggling can be interesting to watch, but so often the routine just devolves into keeping the balls moving, rather than trying to move them in an interesting way.  Personally, I prefer to watch the routines which involve juggling smaller numbers of props but with a wider range of interesting manoeuvres.  I once heard someone say that the mark of a good juggler was what they could do with three balls.  I think there's a lot to that.

It's the same question, regardless of what you seem to be talking about.  Always "how many?"

"How many books has he written?"

"How many times has the article been cited?"

"How many downloads has it had?"

"How many tickets were sold?"

"How many native speakers does the language have?"

I think the biggest problem with the numbers game does not come from confusing the value of quantity with the importance of quality; I think it comes from the slow death that is often inflicted on things with low numbers.

High citations beget high citations (whether the content is worth it or otherwise), but articles without high citations are often overlooked in favour of their highly cited cousins - and many people won't even bother looking at them.  It's possible they will never be cited again.

Languages with low numbers of speakers will dwindle and die, as everyone makes the decision "what language shall I learn?" based on the answer to the question "how many people speak it?"

As we make decisions based on numbers, we condemn things to obscurity, rather than just "poor numbers".

It's better to have low numbers than none at all...

Posting on the Other Blog

Sometimes I don't know which of my blogs a post rightly belongs in, but I've recently spun out something a bit long and vaguely scholarly, which I thought wouldn't be embarrassing on my other blog.  So it's over there:

http://thesharonb.blogspot.com.au/2012/11/a-fantastic-language.html

Borrowed energy

I'm currently running on borrowed energy.  Sadly, I'm actually borrowing it from 2010 - specifically the 2010 Oslo Eurovision Song Contest.

I decided, in a weak moment, to buy the Eurovision albums from 2010 and 2011, seeing as I've been using the 2012 album to keep conscious for the past few months, and am starting to worry about the fact that I think I'm beginning to understand the lyrics from the Italian entry (whadaya mean it was in English?  That doesn't seem right...)

The 2011 album was unavailable through the shop I used, and they cancelled my order, but I've been listening to 2010 for the past few days.  If I start muttering "Allez allez allez" in the middle of otherwise normal conversations, or talking about the blue underwear I bought just the other day, you'll know why.

It was actually much better than I remembered.  Mind you, this is coming from someone who is using Europop to stay awake.

I haven't been able to think coherently for more than a few minutes at a time for a while now.  The music helps.  Well, it helps with the task at hand - it's not quite capable of making me remember the other things I have floating around on my lists of things to do.

I have no good reason for being so out of it.  I'm just tired.  I live most of my days backwards, waking up feeling exhausted and then beginning to perk up and get things done just as I should be thinking about going to sleep - and then I hit a point where I know I'm definitely over-tired and I should have gone to sleep hours ago, but for some reason I'm still doing something else.

I'm not alone in this - there are others who have it worse, so I really have nothing to whinge about.  I'm just feeling the effects of what amounts to self-inflicted exhaustion.  I do get at least 5 hours' sleep most nights, so I actually have it pretty sweet for an insomniac.

But I'm tired.  I'm physically tired, and only seem to wake up when I'm moving (and finding it harder every day to actually start moving).  And I'm mentally tired and only seem to be able to keep going when there is some sort of rhythm feeding through my ears.  And I feel tired on a deeper level - I'm tired of trying to figure out what I want from life and coming up empty every single time.  I thought I knew what I wanted earlier in the year, but now I'm back in limbo.  I'm so tired of being in limbo.

And I'm completely resigned to being tired.  When I was younger I used to have these one-sided arguments with God, asking him what stupid lesson I was supposed to learn and why he hated me so much ("for he grants sleep to those he loves" Ps 127:2).  But these days I'm like, "Eh, God hates me.  Whatever."

I spend so much time in this place where nothing moves that I've stopped expecting movement.  I've spent so much time in this place where all I feel is "tired" that I've stopped expecting to feel anything else.

I suppose that sounds depressing.  It doesn't feel depressing.  I've been depressed so I know what depressing feels like, and this isn't it.  I feel happy enough, cheerful on most occasions, just tired and washed out.

So I whistle a happy tune, and it keeps me upright.  I remind myself to keep functioning, and I keep functioning.  I'm just running on music until I can find some reserves.  I must have some somewhere...

And they went to sea in a sieve

There are days when I feel like my brain could
If it wanted to
I suppose
Although I must admit that it doesn't
Not really
Not often
And very rarely does it make any
Although,
It must be said
That I never really
And that's what I've been
Kind of
All at sea in a sieve...
One day I'll remember to sleep

Everything done is a minor victory
Everything not done is my own damn fault
I have no one to blame but myself
That I'm all at sea in a sieve

I know what I do and I know what I should
And if only I'd listen to me, I'd be good
But all of it ends in a heap at my feet
And I'm all at sea in a sieve

And I'm all at sea in a sieve, my dear
I'm all at sea in sieve.
And in the end it's my own damn fault
That I'm all at sea in a sieve...