So, it turns out that, apparently, Juhan Liiv is my great aunt's first cousin once removed's wife's sister's husband's niece's husband's uncle.
Who said online family history whatsits were a complete waste of time?
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Change of Place(name)
Well, folks, I've been thinking of doing this for a while, and so I'm just going to give it a try.
If I'm successful, I'm going to change the URL for this blog tomorrow from sharonbryan.blogspot.com to sharonbrambles.blogspot.com. Well, actually I'm going to try to transfer the whole blog over to a new blog, with a different URL and a slightly different name.
I have no idea how this is going to pull off, but you have to try things sometimes.
I've always been ambivalent about having my name as the URL, so I'm finally going to do something about it.
Maybe. My next post could well be along the lines of "Well that was a stupid idea - back to normality".
If I'm successful, I'm going to change the URL for this blog tomorrow from sharonbryan.blogspot.com to sharonbrambles.blogspot.com. Well, actually I'm going to try to transfer the whole blog over to a new blog, with a different URL and a slightly different name.
I have no idea how this is going to pull off, but you have to try things sometimes.
I've always been ambivalent about having my name as the URL, so I'm finally going to do something about it.
Maybe. My next post could well be along the lines of "Well that was a stupid idea - back to normality".
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Five Year Plan
Over on Syntax of Seaweed (must remember to ask if that blog title is just an attempt to fuse the concepts of linguistics and veganism, of it there's a story behind it), Colm has been talking about making a Five Year Plan.
I realised the other day that I'm about two years into my last "five year plan". I came up with it while I was cycling around Estonia in May/June 2009, and it's now May/June 2011, so...
So I guess it's time to see where I'm at, in the grand scheme of things.
I have to admit, the FYP I made back in 2009 was largely the result of a mid-tour crisis. Since 2007 I had been flirting with a vague idea that I would eventually move to Estonia to work and study for at least a year, but I hadn't really narrowed down what would be involved in such a thing.
I had been "Living Vague" for a few years at this point, having come to the conclusion that my ability to make decisions about my future left something to be desired. This was the result of a roof-top epiphany I had back in 2005. To put this in context, I have to go back to 2003.
In 2003 I was completing my honours year in a double degree: Arts (majoring in English Literature) and Education (secondary English/Drama). At this point in my life, my plan for the future was to teach high school English and Drama for a couple of years before setting up a private Speech studio. I was teaching part-time, finishing my honours programme and thinking of trying to get work in Canberra (the country's capital), as I thought it would be a good experience. I had applied for a job there, and thought I had a pretty good idea about what would happen next.
In 2005 I found myself standing on the roof of a small school in a small town in Tasmania, applying a large sign to a short wall. There was one point, while waiting for my boss to bring the rest of the equipment up onto the roof, where I looked out over the rolling hills to the sea, and thought: "How the heck did I get here?"
At that time, I never wanted to teach again. Although I still had vague dreams of becoming a private Speech teacher, I was really looking at any path that would take me away from classrooms. I realised I really had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. Not a clue.
I also realised that, really, I never had. I just gave people a sensible sounding answer whenever they asked me, and then went along with that. When my "plans" were tested, they crumbled like the poorly formed illusions they were.
So, in 2005 I decided my plan for the future was "just keep swimming".
In 2007 I decided I wanted to spend some time in Estonia, but was still basically taking my outlook on life from a combination of Dory (from Finding Nemo) and assorted lyrics from Robert Lee Castleman's songs (Well I'm blessed, I guess/By never knowing which road I'm choosing/To me the next best thing/To playing and winning is playing and losing).
"Living Vague", like I said. Just waiting to see what comes next, and giving up the illusion that I can have any control over it.
Then, halfway through my cycling tour of Estonia, I found myself in Rakvere. Now, I'm sure Rakvere has its good points, but it was the ugliest town I had encountered on my tour, and I was there for a proper rest-stop. I had passed through some genuinely pretty places, and was now cooling my heels (well, actually walking around a lot) in a town that seemed to consist mostly of ugly Soviet-style apartments. After you've done the castle, and gone for a walk around town, there really isn't that much else to do in Rakvere.
It gave me time to think, and I was suddenly over come with a sense of "What are you doing with your life?" You want to move to Estonia? Why? What are you going to do? Where will that get you?
If it is possible to have a crisis of faith in regards to vagueness, I was having one. This nagging sense that I didn't know what I wanted out of life haunted me for the next three days. Then I found myself in the Liiv Museum.
I had no idea who Johann Liiv was before I walked into that museum. I was only familiar with a handful of Estonian writers, and I only really knew them by reputation - my grasp of the language wasn't good enough for anything else. The woman who came to give me a ticket asked me what I was doing in Estonia. One thing lead to another, and I found myself saying that I wanted to come back in a few years to study literature.
It was something I had said before, but up until that moment I hadn't realised I meant it. Previously, it had just been an idea I was playing with, now it was an honest-to-goodness goal.
I left that museum with a book of Liiv's poems and an idea of where I wanted to be in five years time.
Then I started to think about what I would need to do in the next five years to get there.
Here's the list of things I came up with:
Oh, and I've recently had my first honest-to-goodness academic journal article published in the Australian Library Journal.
That's not too bad, I guess. I really need to focus more on the journal article side of things, I've got a few degrees to finish off and I need to start thinking about that TESL stuff eventually, but I seem to be making fairly decent progress through my five year plan.
Which means it must be about time for something completely unexpected to carry me away in a totally unpredictable direction.
Bring it on, I say. If the past is anything to go by, 2013 should be an interesting place.
I realised the other day that I'm about two years into my last "five year plan". I came up with it while I was cycling around Estonia in May/June 2009, and it's now May/June 2011, so...
So I guess it's time to see where I'm at, in the grand scheme of things.
I have to admit, the FYP I made back in 2009 was largely the result of a mid-tour crisis. Since 2007 I had been flirting with a vague idea that I would eventually move to Estonia to work and study for at least a year, but I hadn't really narrowed down what would be involved in such a thing.
I had been "Living Vague" for a few years at this point, having come to the conclusion that my ability to make decisions about my future left something to be desired. This was the result of a roof-top epiphany I had back in 2005. To put this in context, I have to go back to 2003.
In 2003 I was completing my honours year in a double degree: Arts (majoring in English Literature) and Education (secondary English/Drama). At this point in my life, my plan for the future was to teach high school English and Drama for a couple of years before setting up a private Speech studio. I was teaching part-time, finishing my honours programme and thinking of trying to get work in Canberra (the country's capital), as I thought it would be a good experience. I had applied for a job there, and thought I had a pretty good idea about what would happen next.
In 2005 I found myself standing on the roof of a small school in a small town in Tasmania, applying a large sign to a short wall. There was one point, while waiting for my boss to bring the rest of the equipment up onto the roof, where I looked out over the rolling hills to the sea, and thought: "How the heck did I get here?"
At that time, I never wanted to teach again. Although I still had vague dreams of becoming a private Speech teacher, I was really looking at any path that would take me away from classrooms. I realised I really had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. Not a clue.
I also realised that, really, I never had. I just gave people a sensible sounding answer whenever they asked me, and then went along with that. When my "plans" were tested, they crumbled like the poorly formed illusions they were.
So, in 2005 I decided my plan for the future was "just keep swimming".
In 2007 I decided I wanted to spend some time in Estonia, but was still basically taking my outlook on life from a combination of Dory (from Finding Nemo) and assorted lyrics from Robert Lee Castleman's songs (Well I'm blessed, I guess/By never knowing which road I'm choosing/To me the next best thing/To playing and winning is playing and losing).
"Living Vague", like I said. Just waiting to see what comes next, and giving up the illusion that I can have any control over it.
Then, halfway through my cycling tour of Estonia, I found myself in Rakvere. Now, I'm sure Rakvere has its good points, but it was the ugliest town I had encountered on my tour, and I was there for a proper rest-stop. I had passed through some genuinely pretty places, and was now cooling my heels (well, actually walking around a lot) in a town that seemed to consist mostly of ugly Soviet-style apartments. After you've done the castle, and gone for a walk around town, there really isn't that much else to do in Rakvere.
It gave me time to think, and I was suddenly over come with a sense of "What are you doing with your life?" You want to move to Estonia? Why? What are you going to do? Where will that get you?
If it is possible to have a crisis of faith in regards to vagueness, I was having one. This nagging sense that I didn't know what I wanted out of life haunted me for the next three days. Then I found myself in the Liiv Museum.
I had no idea who Johann Liiv was before I walked into that museum. I was only familiar with a handful of Estonian writers, and I only really knew them by reputation - my grasp of the language wasn't good enough for anything else. The woman who came to give me a ticket asked me what I was doing in Estonia. One thing lead to another, and I found myself saying that I wanted to come back in a few years to study literature.
It was something I had said before, but up until that moment I hadn't realised I meant it. Previously, it had just been an idea I was playing with, now it was an honest-to-goodness goal.
I left that museum with a book of Liiv's poems and an idea of where I wanted to be in five years time.
Then I started to think about what I would need to do in the next five years to get there.
Here's the list of things I came up with:
- Learn Estonian
- Learn at least German or Russian - preferably both
- Get a Master's degree in something
- Get some papers published in journals
- Get TEFL qualifications
Oh, and I've recently had my first honest-to-goodness academic journal article published in the Australian Library Journal.
That's not too bad, I guess. I really need to focus more on the journal article side of things, I've got a few degrees to finish off and I need to start thinking about that TESL stuff eventually, but I seem to be making fairly decent progress through my five year plan.
Which means it must be about time for something completely unexpected to carry me away in a totally unpredictable direction.
Bring it on, I say. If the past is anything to go by, 2013 should be an interesting place.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Nomenclature
I've been thinking about my name lately.
I'm a little bit over it, to be frank. I never used to think it was that complicated, but lately I've started to notice how often I need to repeat myself when I say it, or how often I trip over the keys while typing it out, or how it's just stupid when you think about how someone from a Non-English-Speaking-Background would pronounce it.
My surname in particular is a bit of a problem. B R Y A N. Pronounced br-EYE-an. Learning Estonian and German (and dabbling in other language I'm not supposed to be learning) has lead me to believe that a name with a Y in it is just asking for trouble - especially if it's pronounced like EYE. I've been thinking for some time that I might try to go with either my middle name or my Grandmother's maiden name when I move to Estonia, just to make things easier on the people around me. My cousin switched to Alas for professional purposes when he moved to Estonia. Partly because "Dullroy" is even worse than "Bryan".
As for my first name? I'm just a little over the number of syllables in it. Two is getting to be too many - especially with the R in the middle of it. Do you know how many ways you can pronounce the letter R? Of course you do, I've rabbited on about it endlessly. Quite frankly, I don't think I could be bothered trilling it properly so that people would understand how to spell it based on my pronunciation.
I used to be called "Shazz" a fair amount in high school, which is easier on the tongue. I've often wondered, though, if I could get away with calling myself "Shan" (as in Sh-ah-n) - like the Irish "Sian", but without the crazy Celtic spelling. I've accidentally typed it that way a few times (or as "Sharn"), and every now and then when I get over-tired and a bit lazy I've caught myself saying it that way.
I think it would be good to have a name that sounds more-or-less right when you slur it incoherently. Having a name that requires annunciation is just old, man. I'm, like, totally over it.
I'm a little bit over it, to be frank. I never used to think it was that complicated, but lately I've started to notice how often I need to repeat myself when I say it, or how often I trip over the keys while typing it out, or how it's just stupid when you think about how someone from a Non-English-Speaking-Background would pronounce it.
My surname in particular is a bit of a problem. B R Y A N. Pronounced br-EYE-an. Learning Estonian and German (and dabbling in other language I'm not supposed to be learning) has lead me to believe that a name with a Y in it is just asking for trouble - especially if it's pronounced like EYE. I've been thinking for some time that I might try to go with either my middle name or my Grandmother's maiden name when I move to Estonia, just to make things easier on the people around me. My cousin switched to Alas for professional purposes when he moved to Estonia. Partly because "Dullroy" is even worse than "Bryan".
As for my first name? I'm just a little over the number of syllables in it. Two is getting to be too many - especially with the R in the middle of it. Do you know how many ways you can pronounce the letter R? Of course you do, I've rabbited on about it endlessly. Quite frankly, I don't think I could be bothered trilling it properly so that people would understand how to spell it based on my pronunciation.
I used to be called "Shazz" a fair amount in high school, which is easier on the tongue. I've often wondered, though, if I could get away with calling myself "Shan" (as in Sh-ah-n) - like the Irish "Sian", but without the crazy Celtic spelling. I've accidentally typed it that way a few times (or as "Sharn"), and every now and then when I get over-tired and a bit lazy I've caught myself saying it that way.
I think it would be good to have a name that sounds more-or-less right when you slur it incoherently. Having a name that requires annunciation is just old, man. I'm, like, totally over it.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Shoulda, coulda, woulda...
So, the other night I learnt that Estonian only has one conditional past tense form of verbs.
This is vaguely laughable. Estonian has fourteen cases while English barely has four (and only really uses them for personal pronouns). Estonian has two forms of the infinitive while we only have one, and 6 present tense forms while we only have two. Estonian has 32 letters in its alphabet, while we only have 26.
And yet, while English has four different past tense conditionals, Estonian only has one. I feel like saying: "Are you sure about that? You don't have another six conditionals tucked away somewhere?"
But, it's got me thinking about the PT conditionals we use. My Estonian teacher never learnt the difference between the three rhyming words (would, could, should). At TAFE, where she studied English, they never covered the variations between them. I don't know about "might" - we didn't talk about that one.
But, for anyone else who isn't sure about the difference, here's a simple(ish) explanation:
Should = shall
Would = will
Could = can
Might = may (sort of).
"I should have gone" is connected to "I shall go".
"I would have gone" is connected to "I will go".
Sadly, we don't really use "shall" as much as we used to, so a lot of people don't get the subtle difference between "shall" and "will". Think of it as the difference between destiny and desire. "I shall go" implies that it is supposed to happen, whereas "I will go" originally implied something that you want to happen. "Will" is a word we stole from the Germans and it originally meant "want" - think of the sentence: "it is my will that this should happen". We kinda stole "shall", too, from the German word "sollen".
Of course, in modern colloquial usage, "will" has long since subsumed the meaning of "shall", and now it covers both concepts - except in the past tense. I love the way we have the left-over remains of long-dead concepts still kicking around in our language.
But it's probably worth remembering the classic line from Cinderella: "You shall go to the ball!" There's something definite in that...
"I could have gone" is connected to "I can go".
"I might have gone" is connected to "I may go"... Except it really isn't.
"Can" and "may" are two more words where one has taken over the meaning of the other. "Can" is, of course, whether you are capable of doing something, while "may" is whether you are allowed to do something. These days, "can" is used to cover both meanings - and, even in the past tense, people often use "could" when they once would have meant "might".
"I should have gone to the ball..." (I was really supposed to go, but I didn't)
"I would have gone to the ball..." (I wanted to go, but I didn't)
"I could have gone to the ball..." (I had the opportunity/ability to go, but I didn't)
"I might have gone to the ball..." -- Okay, actually this one is a bit weird. While "might" is technically related to "may", it's actually slightly off kilter - more closely related to "maybe" than "may".
No one ever actually says "I might have gone to the ball" and means "I was allowed to go, but didn't". Usually, "might" is just a catch-all conditional - a way of saying it is/was/could be possible, but there are no guarantees. It has well and truly lost it's connection with "may" in this case, and is more of a pure and true conditional than the others.
While I could potentially say "Oh, yeah, I should have gone to the ball" and the sentence can stand on it's own, if I say "I might have gone to the ball" I really need to follow it with the reason why I didn't: "I might have gone to the ball, if not for those pesky kids!"
In this way, it could cover any of the meanings of should, could or would. It just shouldn't.
The strange thing is, that "might" often carries the meaning of "can" in practical use, while "could" often carries the meaning of "may". "I asked my mother if I could go to the ball, and she said I could - as long as I cleaned up my room, first." As opposed to "I might be able to go to the ball, if I can get a good dress."
The English language is an odd thing.
By the way, one last thing:
It's "would have" NEVER "would of". Same for the others.
This is vaguely laughable. Estonian has fourteen cases while English barely has four (and only really uses them for personal pronouns). Estonian has two forms of the infinitive while we only have one, and 6 present tense forms while we only have two. Estonian has 32 letters in its alphabet, while we only have 26.
And yet, while English has four different past tense conditionals, Estonian only has one. I feel like saying: "Are you sure about that? You don't have another six conditionals tucked away somewhere?"
But, it's got me thinking about the PT conditionals we use. My Estonian teacher never learnt the difference between the three rhyming words (would, could, should). At TAFE, where she studied English, they never covered the variations between them. I don't know about "might" - we didn't talk about that one.
But, for anyone else who isn't sure about the difference, here's a simple(ish) explanation:
Should = shall
Would = will
Could = can
Might = may (sort of).
"I should have gone" is connected to "I shall go".
"I would have gone" is connected to "I will go".
Sadly, we don't really use "shall" as much as we used to, so a lot of people don't get the subtle difference between "shall" and "will". Think of it as the difference between destiny and desire. "I shall go" implies that it is supposed to happen, whereas "I will go" originally implied something that you want to happen. "Will" is a word we stole from the Germans and it originally meant "want" - think of the sentence: "it is my will that this should happen". We kinda stole "shall", too, from the German word "sollen".
Of course, in modern colloquial usage, "will" has long since subsumed the meaning of "shall", and now it covers both concepts - except in the past tense. I love the way we have the left-over remains of long-dead concepts still kicking around in our language.
But it's probably worth remembering the classic line from Cinderella: "You shall go to the ball!" There's something definite in that...
"I could have gone" is connected to "I can go".
"I might have gone" is connected to "I may go"... Except it really isn't.
"Can" and "may" are two more words where one has taken over the meaning of the other. "Can" is, of course, whether you are capable of doing something, while "may" is whether you are allowed to do something. These days, "can" is used to cover both meanings - and, even in the past tense, people often use "could" when they once would have meant "might".
"I should have gone to the ball..." (I was really supposed to go, but I didn't)
"I would have gone to the ball..." (I wanted to go, but I didn't)
"I could have gone to the ball..." (I had the opportunity/ability to go, but I didn't)
"I might have gone to the ball..." -- Okay, actually this one is a bit weird. While "might" is technically related to "may", it's actually slightly off kilter - more closely related to "maybe" than "may".
No one ever actually says "I might have gone to the ball" and means "I was allowed to go, but didn't". Usually, "might" is just a catch-all conditional - a way of saying it is/was/could be possible, but there are no guarantees. It has well and truly lost it's connection with "may" in this case, and is more of a pure and true conditional than the others.
While I could potentially say "Oh, yeah, I should have gone to the ball" and the sentence can stand on it's own, if I say "I might have gone to the ball" I really need to follow it with the reason why I didn't: "I might have gone to the ball, if not for those pesky kids!"
In this way, it could cover any of the meanings of should, could or would. It just shouldn't.
The strange thing is, that "might" often carries the meaning of "can" in practical use, while "could" often carries the meaning of "may". "I asked my mother if I could go to the ball, and she said I could - as long as I cleaned up my room, first." As opposed to "I might be able to go to the ball, if I can get a good dress."
The English language is an odd thing.
By the way, one last thing:
It's "would have" NEVER "would of". Same for the others.
Monday, May 16, 2011
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