In other words, not a good sign for the code output.
]]>In other words, not a good sign for the code output.
So, sure, I've been doing the most anti-American activity I can think of: concentrating on language studies. Call me insane. (I'll wait for the chorus, and if you miss it this time, it'll come back around again, never fear.) I have this novel and un-American idea of being able to understand languages other than my mother tongue. Since someone was really nice and tossed a bit of fundage my way as some thanks for a tutorial and some code I'd written, I decided to put that money toward something non-code-related.
See, I had this bizarro idea. Call me overly constructive (it comes up in the chorus too; just be patient) but as the New Year approached, I started asking myself what goals I had for the rest of my life. Aside from realizing that I had a shameful lack of overall goals that didn't involve writing The Best American Novel Ever and Seeing The Entire World, I decided to think...smaller.
Language studies sounded appealing.
There are two great reasons for doing this.
One: despite what your neighbors say, your quest to See The Entire World will generally go much more smoothly if you can actually speak more than a few words of the language. There are few things worse than contracting a potentially-lethal case of Montezuma's Revenge and realizing that you don't know how to ask for a bathroom so that your colon can detonate in peace.
(Similarly, not knowing that the guy jabbering at you is saying "You ran over my sister you inconsiderate American capitalist pig! I am now going to slit your throat and take your Visa card as a trophy to be shown to my entire village!" It's always nice to have prior warning about one's death in a foreign country; makes it far easier to notify next of kin.)
Two: hauteur. See? I used it right there. Nothing says "I am a learned author with many important things to say" than someone who sprinkles their writing with completely unnecessary (albeit apropos) phrases. Their usage is twofold: to reinforce the author's already elevated self-esteem, and to intimidate the reader.
After all, if the author knows more words in more languages than you do, doesn't that imply that they are smarter than you and, therefore, their opinions should be held more highly than your own?
So, in the hopes of a) preventing my untimely death in some non-English-speaking nation (like America?) and b) impressing my future readers with my command of various languages, I decided to dive back into language studies.
Somewhere in this house is a list of languages I'd like to be at least partially conversant in. English is, of course, at the forefront. I suspect French may be a lost cause, as I seem to have this physical inability to pronounce more than four vowels or silent letters at one time. Spanish, just because there's that country to the south of me that's undoubtedly worth visiting. German because I've studied it for several years, still retain things here and there, and it would be silly to give up now after learning all that grammar.
I mean, they're just words, right? Sure, there's an art and a syntax and structure and all that rot, but surely I'm capable of at least learning how not to publicly humiliate myself. With that said, German and Spanish quickly landed at the top of my list. I desperately need a refresher course to regain any semblance of German competency, and I can't even say "I am a cheeseburger" in Spanish yet, so I've got a good way to go there.
Most people, when I mention that I'm starting up language studies - on my own, no less - have the standard "are you insane?" response.
Ooops, there comes the chorus again - "she's overly constructive and a little insane" - did you catch it this time?
Colter, however, proved once again why the quirks and quibbles of his personality still fascinate me after all these years. Given the statement "I'm picking up language studies again," only he would reply "La mantequilla esta en la biblioteca."
To which my only reply was the flapping of my dictionary's pages. Mantequilla? What the heck was 'mantequilla'?
Butter? The butter is in the library?
Can we point that chorus at Colter? I think he needs it more than I do.
]]>"This 1883 book is without question the worst phrasebook ever written. The writer, Pedro Carolino, who was Portuguese, did not particularly speak English, nor did he have a Portuguese-English dictionary available. Instead, he worked with a French-English phrasebook and a Portuguese-French dictionary. The results, I'm sure you'll agree, are staggering."Today's snippet-o-joy from Danno:
*** Message (#64) from Divide By Zero at 16:05 ***
]]>"This 1883 book is without question the worst phrasebook ever written. The writer, Pedro Carolino, who was Portuguese, did not particularly speak English, nor did he have a Portuguese-English dictionary available. Instead, he worked with a French-English phrasebook and a Portuguese-French dictionary. The results, I'm sure you'll agree, are staggering."Today's snippet-o-joy from Danno:
*** Message (#64) from Divide By Zero at 16:05 ***
>you are geek, hear you roar. mew.
*laugh* Yep, that's what domesticats do.
I have got to get geek-chick.net up and running. I guess I need to put in a good solid night's worth of work before I go on vacation.
Speaking of excruciatingly funny…the Breast Cancer Society of Canada actually found a way to make a commercial about breast self-exams funny…
]]>Over the past year or so, I've stated one thing repeatedly: I'm not a coder. I'm a graphic designer and a writer. With the listing of writing comes one small caveat—'linguist.' Languages—their similarities, differences, pronunciations, and etymologies—are a source of endless fascination for me. Everyone carries around useless and random tidbits in their heads. One of the tidbits in mine: I know that 'avalanche' is the only commonly-used word in the English language that is derived from Romansh (the fourth official language of Switzerland). Another: that both Hungarian and Finnish, while Indo-European languages, branched off so early from the rest of the common Indo-European languages (think French, English, Spanish, Italian, etc.) that they bear almost no resemblance whatsoever to the rest of the Indo-European languages.
When I offered to host the greymatter hacks site, I asked myself—'What can I offer to the site, since I'm not a coder?'
I decided to put my linguistic and investigative skills to work. Since the days of the week and months of the year were hard-coded into greymatter's scripts, several users had requested special versions of greymatter that provided versions for their preferred language.
I got started—and the further I dug, the more interested I became. I realized that the chances of someone actually needing a Hungarian or Scotch Gaelic version of greymatter were slim, but that I was doing this research more for my own benefit than for the hacked versions of greymatter that resulted.
A few days ago, I decided to put my results into tabular form and make them available on the web. I had been chagrined to discover that no one, it seems, has bothered to do this and do it right.
What is doing it right, you ask? For me, it's using Unicode characters to correctly represent alphabetical characters. Using é instead of e'. Using escaped characters, not graphics, to display Cyrillic and Greek letters.
I've posted my results on this page. I admit it's a partial list; I'm missing languages that should be there, but which I'm having trouble finding reliable dictionaries or listings for on the Web. If I know that a language makes extensive use of accented characters and the available listings have none, I have chosen to assume that the dictionary's been dumbed down for the diacritical-afraid English-speakers, and have chosen not to use it until I find one that correctly reflects the source language.
Then again, what feels partial to me may be exhaustive to others!
Some random comments from creating this page:
Side note 1: spouse and I are currently discussing music. Did Foreigner ever write any song that wasn't specifically about sex?
Side note 2: Geof has loaned me an album of Dave Brubeck songs. This is some seriously fascinating stuff—look for plenty of Brubeck and Thelonious Monk to appear regularly on the playlist for a while.
That's all. Carry on.
]]>Some people have drugs, booze, or chocolate. In the end, I have words. Think of that as you will.
]]>Some people have drugs, booze, or chocolate. In the end, I have words. Think of that as you will.
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