My head looks like a pingpong ball.

Just had to get that out of my system.

It should also be noted that your head looks like a pingpong ball.

Hodiaŭ pluvas

Ni havas ŝtormoj, kaj la Bureau of Meteorology diras:

* Avoid driving, walking or riding through flood waters.
* Seek shelter, preferably indoors and never under trees.
* Avoid using the telephone during a thunderstorm.
* Beware of fallen trees and powerlines.

It does not specify whether you should avoid all telephones or just landlines (I thought the cables were the "killer" aspect of phones in bad weather).  It also does not recommend that you don't take showers during thunderstorms.

My mother suggested I take a shower during the last thunderstorm (I had just finished a work-out and was in need of one).  I thought she could find more subtle ways for trying to get rid of me.

Don't Speak Estonian to the Swiss

I'm having a bit of trouble getting my head into the game, German wise.  It feels as if German is a place I visit briefly, but never long enough to really get my bearings.  The long break between German subjects, during which I abjectly failed to do any serious Autonomous Learning (even though I had grand plans and plenty of resources), didn't help.  I really need better self-control - my self-motivation doesn't seem to be cutting it.

I'm starting to wish I could swing a proper stay in Germany.  Even being there for just a week last year felt like it was making a huge difference   Within days I found myself understanding shop-keepers and asking questions in German without resorting to English (at least, half the time).

Then I had two weeks in Estonia, learning Estonian in an intensive class, and found my grasp on German seriously slipping.

Straight after my course I went on a tour of Switzerland, and I had great difficulty answering people.  I would understand something someone said in German, and go to answer them in Estonian.  Heck, I sometimes found myself trying to answer in Estonian even if they said something in English.  Or, occasionally, French or Italian.

With the French and Italian, it was usually something like "Vabandust, kas te räägite Inglise keelt?"  Which, of course, makes perfect sense.

Usually, though, it was the little words like "hello", "please", "thank you" and "sorry" that I was constantly saying in Estonian before scrambling to remember the German or English equivalent.  Oddly, no one in Switzerland seemed to understand me, but at the same time they didn't seem to care.  They were probably happy as long as I bought something.

By the time I got to Italy I was starting to remember my German again - and fat lot of good it did me there.

Of course, when I got to Austria, I was saying "grazie" to everyone, wasn't I?  It was good to have those few days in the German speaking world again, though.  It helped while it lasted.

Now I really need some quality German time.  I'm just really bad at arranging to get it on my own.

And... I'm a Geek

So, today I was in the middle of showing a group of students how to limit a search in Medline (via Ovid) for use in their Pharmacy Honours research project when I suddenly noticed that you can now limit to results in Esperanto.

This makes Medline (via Ovid) the second major database I know of that will give Esperanto as a language option (Proquest is the other one).

I may have stopped briefly in the middle of my class to indulge in a small happy dance and an exclamation of "Oooh!"

They may have been so used to my saying crazy stupid things just to keep their attention that they didn't even bat an eyelid.

I can't help but wonder how much medical research is written in Esperanto.  Near as I can figure out, most of the research conducted in Esperanto is also about Esperanto.

I'd love to know what the major areas of Esperanta medical research might be, so I can try a search.  I have a feeling that if I just start looking for my "normal" search tests, like "constraint induced movement therapy" or "rotator-cuff injuries in overarm sports" I might just be wasting my time.  It's a bit like googlewacking, I guess - searching for random things just to see if you actually get a result.

Now, if it was Interlingua, on the other hand, I know I'd at least get some articles about spectroscopy...

Ooooh!  I've just discovered Medline (via Ovid) also offers Interlingua as an option...

Curso, kurso

This is a little bit brilliant:

http://www.interlingua.com/an/curso (Curso de interlingua pro comenciantes/Course in Interlingua for beginners)

The genius behind this course decided to make each lesson fit on a single A4 sheet of paper.  Most of the time it's even just one side of the page.  This makes it perfect for breakfast reading, or for those moments where you want to do something kind of intelligent, but not very taxing.

It's text-heavy in a good way, too.  Each page has a few paragraphs and a bit of vocabulary, so that you spend most of your ten minutes reading the language.  Then there are a couple of grammar points to note, and a handful of exercises to do.  The design is simple, but enjoyably so.

I have a few suggestions for improvement, though.  The vocabulary should be compiled at the end in summary - like the grammar points are.  The current vocabulary sheet just tells you which lesson glosses the word in question, when it would be so much nicer if it would lay out the word and some variations (like conjugating the verbs).  It would also be nice if the vocabulary in each lesson was listed either alphabetically or in order of appearance.  At the moment, it's neither.

If I could, I'd change the lessons' vocabulary to "proper" order of appearance (it's mostly order of appearance, but not exactly) and then have the whole list assembled in alphabetical order at the end.

It would also be nice if you could download the whole thing at once, instead of having each page as a separate file - that way you could have the thing as a "proper" eBook (and shorten the time spent downloading the course considerably).

I'd love to have something similar in Esperanto to accompany Kurso de Esperanto - just like I'd love to have something like Kurso to accompany Curso de Interlingua.  Somewhere between the two of them is a very comfortable way to ease yourself into the first steps of learning a language.

I still haven't found any introduction to a language that's quite as good as the Easy German/French/Spanish books published by Usborne (although I still liked their earlier incarnation as Learn German/French/Spanish).  Nicole Irvine's basic concept was quite fantastic.  I just wish someone made a DVD of the thing - that would be awesome.  Also, a version for Estonian.

There are dozens of great little courses and programmes out there where the creators/designers are getting little things so very right.  It's a shame we can't suck them all into lovely multi-format introductions to every language.

How not to study for a Linguistics exam

"Oh, my god, Becky - look at her pants
they're so big - they're like one of those grandma undies
Why do grandmas wear those pants
They only wear them because they totally can't wear g-strings
I mean, her pants
They're just so big
I can't believe they're so full
They're just out there
I mean, they're just gross
Look, they're just so... big"

I like big smalls and I cannot lie
You other women can't deny
With your derriere in big underwear
You have a comfy, fully clothed bum...

I'm starting to think I might be easily distracted...

So, as a result of reading "In the Land of Invented Languages" by Okrent (so much to like, and yet... Oh, well, that's for another post), I felt like looking a little further into Interlingua.

The irony of it is that I wasn't terribly interested in Interlingua until I realised Okrent hadn't given any examples of the language in her book.  She'd shown snippets of most of the languages that had warranted a few paragraphs, but not Interlingua.  I noticed she had touched on a bit of the history, but hardly told us anything about the language at all.

So, I looked it up (well, I *am* a librarian)...

And now I'm thinking that Interlingua is pretty cool, and probably worth learning.  I had figured one auxiliary language was probably enough, and Esperanto is the biggest ship in that fleet, but now I see that Interlingua has a lot going for it.

Interlingua was created by a committee of language people who had the job of evaluating the currently existing auxiliary languages and finding the best one.  Instead they just made their own.  It's based on Latin and Greek roots common for most of the Romance languages - which is kind of like Esperanto, only where Esperanto has tried to "spread the love" when it comes to borrowing from other languages and then install a structure that is unique to Esperanto, Interlingua is almost an updated Latin.

This means that if you speak one of the Romance languages (or you've had a lot of exposure to English words from Latin roots), you have a good chance of picking up Interlingua really quickly.  It also means that, if you learn Interlingua, you have a fighting chance of being understood by some passing peasant in the back streets of Italy, Spain, Portugal or Peru.  The language is different to the language spoken in all of these countries, but close enough that you could probably come to an understanding as long as everyone was speaking slowly.

Esperanto seems less "I'm lost, can you help me?" useful than Interlingua, in this regard.  Then again, if you are wondering around the back roads of Europe and trying to find the key to your hotel, I honestly don't know if "Io ha perdite mi clave!" or "Mi perdis mian ŝlosilon!" is going to get you more assistance.  It depends on how far North or West you are, I suppose.

I am still quite taken with the way Esperanto is structured, too.  I love the table of correlatives (I have them on a mug (actually, three mugs (long story))).  And I like the patterns it follows.  I haven't looked far enough into Interlingua, but I know it is trying to be less "artificial", so it is less likely to have that rigidly-consistent-even-when-it's-slightly-ridiculous thing going on.

Yet, I can't help but wonder which of the two languages would be the pick of the crop, if they were equal in all other regards.  They aren't.  Not by a long shot.  Esperanto has enough speakers to populate a (very) small country (Liechtenstein, for example), while Interlingua doesn't have enough speakers to populate a small town.  A hamlet, maybe.  Esperanto has a large body of texts and a large network of connections.  Interlingua has a tiny fraction of that.  Oh, and Esperanto has over 125 years of use behind it, while Interlingua is just over 50 years old.

Still, I can't help but feel learning Interlingua would be totally worth it if I ever decided to travel in Western Europe again (or South America, for that matter) - if for no other reason than it would be a better foundation for learning Italian, Spanish, French or Portuguese.

So, right now I kind of want to learn both.

I think I just heard my Estonian text books whimper.