Something to warm the heart of every Thursday Next fan:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19751695
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
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.
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.
Friday, November 16, 2012
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:
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.
Thursday, November 15, 2012
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...
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...
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
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...
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...
Monday, November 12, 2012
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...
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...
Sunday, November 11, 2012
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...)
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