Aino Chapter 4 - We Sneak Behind the Iron Curtain

So, I noticed I'd let it go four weeks since I last posted a chapter of Aino.

Sadly, no one else noticed and nagged me, which means my brilliant plan of getting you lot to act as my deadline enforcers may not be working.

I'm trying to convince myself it's because two-weeks is too long for short attention spans, and not because you don't care.

You know, back in the Victorian period there was a whole month between chapters for serialised novels.

Crazy stuff, eh?

Anyway, the latest chapter of Aino is here: Chapter Four - We Sneak Behind the Iron Curtain

In this chapter, we find out what our Narrator thinks of van Havien's idea. Something else might happen, too. Perhaps involving teeth.

Mul on Ananass

In what is quite possibly a hideously ill-conceived idea, I've created yet another blog. Sort of.

I've decided that, if I'm going to make any real progress with learning Estonian, I'd better start trying to use the language for something. Since I'm not yet up to paragraphs, I thought I'd better stick with sentences.

How do you make a sentence worth reading? Stick it in a picture.

Thus Mul on ananass exists. Although, perhaps, it shouldn't.

Let's have someone who can't draw create a comic in a language they barely know. Doesn't that sound brilliant?

If you're lucky, I might start mixing some German in there, too. Just to make sure no one can ever understand anything.

Feather

The other day, while walking towards my building from the carpark, I found a feather. I din't know what bird it comes from, but it just happens to be the Estonian flag: blue, black and white.

It's quite nice, actually. Makes me wish I was a graphic designer so I could turn it into something people could share...

Speech and Drama - or, A Curriculum

I studied Speech and Drama (and a close cousin, Speech in Action) for a good ten or twelve years. I actually have an Associate Diploma in Speech and Drama, and I was partway towards assembling a programme to sit for the Licentiate exams when I moved to Tasmania. I always meant to finish putting together my programme and go for the Licentiate Diploma, but I guess I lost momentum.

I have my Associate Diploma through the Australian College of Music, although I did take some exams through the Australian Music Examinations Board. I also took Grade Three piano exams through the AMEB - which was enough to convince me I didn't like taking music exams. I once took a look at the curriculum offered by the Trinity College of Music, and I was interested in trying to sit an exam through them, but I ended up sticking with the ACM.

I've been thinking, lately, about these colleges and the way they operate. You see, ideally, children and teenagers take classes though a private tutor/teacher. The teachers (normally) took these classes as children, kept going through high school, took the Licentiate exams and maybe the Fellowship exams and are now in a position to make a career guiding students through the process of sitting for the exams.

The way it works is that the college publishes a curriculum, hands it over to the student (with the help of a teacher) to assemble and practice the material to meet the curriculum (for a practical exam) or find and learn the information asked for by the curriculum (for a theory exam), and then sends around an examiner to examine the student on how well they have fulfilled the curriculum.

A typical curriculum for, say, the upper grades of Speech and Drama would involve something like this:

• The student would choose a novel to read. They would read the entire novel in preparation for the exam, have a preselected passage from that novel which they have practised and can recite by heart in addition to being able to read randomly selected passages on demand. They must also be able to answer questions regarding any aspect of the book including: the life and works of the author, the plot and characters, the period of time in which the book was first published, other major works of the period.
  
• The student would compile an anthology of poems. They would be expected to recite one of the poems (of a certain length) and be prepared to read any of the other poems on demand. They must also be able to answer questions regarding any aspect of any of the poems in their anthology (see above).
  
• The student would choose a play to read. Everything that applied to the novel also applies to this play.
  
• The student would choose a Shakespearean play, and ditto.
  
• The student would prepare a speech/talk of a certain length regarding a given subject (there is usually a selection of subjects to choose from). They may have palm cards or notes, but should be able to maintain adequate eye contact with the "audience" throughout the presentation. They must be prepared to answer any questions regarding their presentation.

Usually, these curricula were themed according to literature from a particular place or time. For example, take everything I've just mentioned above and limit it to works from the 18th Century. Or the Victorian period. Or a particular country, such as Australia. This is all with the exceptioin of Shakespeare. You may be asked to specifically choose a Tragedy, History or Comedy, but you always had to do Shakespeare.

The theory curriculum would usually consist of knowledge of several areas of literary history, a bit of literary theory and the theory of speech (organs of articulated speech; the role of breath; the use of pause, pitch, pace and volume; etc).

Basically, a student is given a list of things to explore and is expected to gather a solid knowledge of literature, history and good pronunciation (with the aid of the teacher).

I've been wondering, lately, why something similar doesn't exist for language learners. Surely that would be a brilliant way to sink into a language - in addition to the "theory" of the grammar and vocabulary, you also have to explore the history and literature by finding material for a programme and knowing it inside-out?

How well would a student learn a language if they had to be able to cover the vocabulary of a selection of books, plays and poems and be able to answer questions about all of it (perhaps in 1L for the early grades and in the target language)?

I know it improved my knowledge of the English language no end - not to mention my reading skills.

An existential question

When you scroll on a web page, is the part of the page you can't see on your screen still there?

Does it actually exist, or is it merely a series of coded bits of nothing that will only be actualised in any meaningful way if it is processed through the screen?

Does the screen show me part of a whole, or all there is to see at that given point in time?

Mouses

The rule goes: for living things, ouse turns to ice for plurals (mouse - mice, grouse - grice, louse - lice), while for inanimate objects ouse turns to ouses (house - houses, scouse - scouses [that's "scouse" as in "stew", not as in "Liverpudlian"]).

Therefore, the answer to the question "what's the plural for 'computer mouse'?" is 'computer mouses'.

Now, having gotten that out of the way:

I currently hate all of my mouses. They all suck. My mouse at home is a dodgy little portable laptop mouse that doesn't even have a scroll function on it (I gave my "good mouse" to my mother along with my old computer), and it has recently decided that, even though I can find nothing wrong with it, responding appropriately to movement is not high on its agenda. My mouse on my desk at work scrolls nicely, but has also decided this whole "moving the pointer when the mouse is moved" thing is overrated. The mouse at the reference desk is cordless and the batteries are at that stage where they don't want to work all the time, but they don't want to stop working enough to warrant new batteries...

In short, I am surrounded by mouses that are annoying the heck out of me.

To make matters worse, the other day I tried one of those new "mighty mouse" things at shop and it was really good. Those are nice mouses, I have to say. I really want one, but I really don't want to spend $99 for the privilege of having it. Yet, now I can't see the point of buying another mouse which won't be as nice.

So, I'm stuck with crappy annoying mouses and I can't bring myself to by a new one as they'll either be a) to expensive, or b) not as good as the one that's too expensive.

I think I'd be better off with mice.

Follow the music

Every now and then I hear of a musical instrument I have never encountered before, or I just get curious about one I heard of a long time ago, and I have to find out what they sound like.

So, I do what every good librarian does and look it up. The Internet's a great thing, isn't it?

However, the last few times I went looking for instruments, I found a few bands.

My curiosity about the autoharp lead me to discover Doofus and Catseye (why oh why won't Catseye put out a second album?) - who in turn lead me to discover CDbaby.com, through which I discovered Simple Gifts and Circe Link (okay, she's actually a person, not a band).

Recently, I've been curious about the nyckelharpa, which has lead me to discover Ranarim. I'm waiting to see what I find by following them...

By the way, nyckelharpas and autoharps are both instruments I will probably never play myself, due to the fact that they have an awful lot of strings which one would have to tune. Give me four strings any day of the week, and I'll be happy.