From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V16 #318 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Wednesday, September 5 2007 Volume 16 : Number 318 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Fwd: Online Slovak Slideshow [Eleanore Adams ] Re: Tom, was that you? ["Michael Sweeney" ] Re: jawohl, mein Herr (war: Re: von David Duchovny gebumst) [2fs ] Re: jawohl, mein Herr (war: Re: von David Duchovny gebumst) [Rex ] Re: Tom, was that you? [Rex ] Re: yes, sir (was: Re: fucked by David Duchovny) [Jeff Dwarf ] Re: fegmaniax-digest V16 #317 [Benjamin Lukoff ] Re: Yr daily (really? damn!) TL;DR [2fs ] Re: jawohl, mein Herr (war: Re: von David Duchovny gebumst) [grutness@sli] Re: jawohl, mein Herr (war: Re: von David Duchovny gebumst) [Benjamin Luk] I gotta cut down on my verbosity [Jill Brand ] Re: I gotta cut down on my verbosity [2fs ] Re: I gotta cut down on my verbosity [Benjamin Lukoff Subject: Fwd: Online Slovak Slideshow Begin forwarded message: > From: Hugh Caley > Date: September 5, 2007 12:49:08 PM PDT > To: Eleanore Adams > Subject: Online Slovak Slideshow > > http://homepage.mac.com/batmensch/PhotoAlbum1.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 05 Sep 2007 21:32:57 +0000 From: "Michael Sweeney" Subject: Re: Tom, was that you? Tom Clark wrote: >On Sep 4, 2007, at 11:13 PM, Stacked Crooked wrote: >>from : >> >>Hello! Would you do me a favor? How do I do for to talk with Peter Buck, >>How I make for find him? some contact or do you know anybody has it? I >>tried to talk with some peoples but I got confused with so many different >>ideas.. I am Danielli and I need to talk with Peter, Peter Buck. It is >>very >>important for me. Okay? Please I hope count on you. Danielli >I find embarrassment that you see letter from paper I write. Mr. Buck run >when I say Hello him and ask to try why he hate me. Is just fair he >explain story side is his! Please to be making fuck with yourself, Mr. Clark Tom! Michael "Peter Buck certainly didn't seem to mind me" Sweeney _________________________________________________________________ Share your special parenting moments! http://www.reallivemoms.com?ocid=TXT_TAGHM&loc=us ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2007 14:31:05 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: jawohl, mein Herr (war: Re: von David Duchovny gebumst) On 9/5/07, Benjamin Lukoff wrote: > > On Wed, 5 Sep 2007 grutness@slingshot.co.nz wrote: > > > >What would the world do, I wonder, if Americans started insisting > > >California be called California, regardless of its name in other > > >languages? Well, they'd have to start with their own governor... > > > Hey, that's what Ivory Co.., um, Cote d'Ivoire did! > > See, I don't get it. It's one thing to say "Our name is now Myanmar, not > Burma." It's another thing to say "Keep calling us the same thing, but use > French, not your native language." At least I think it is. I'm not sure what the point is. Is Cote d'Ivoire going to send over monitors to make sure no one says "Ivory Coast" instead? Names of countries (and names generally) have always been a bit localized: "Germany" is English for that country, whatever else it might be called in other languages: Deutschland, Allemagne, etc. Then again, even if we keep the names, that doesn't mean we pronounce them the same: it might be "Paris, France" here too, but neither word is pronounced the way the French do. It's a bit amusing: rather like overpunctilious announcers at classical-music radio stations who get all Russian in saying "Tchaikovsky" to the extent it's hard to recognize which composer's being referred to. The further names travel, the more they get "translated" into the local language. And inevitably, they get translated first into the local phonemes (if we don't have that ending diphthong represented in Cyrillic by the last two letters naming that composer), we'll just pronounce it with whatever's closest in our own language (roughly, a "long e"). It's interesting, as a teacher, running into students' surnames of different ethnicity and trying to guess how close to the source pronunciation the person prefers. Is that Polish name with a "w" in it supposed to be pronounced with sort of a "v" sound, or do they anglicize it to a "w" sound? (Recall that for a long time, "Tchaikowsky" was the accepted spelling - and pronunciation. That Russian batch of consonants at the beginning...I'm surprised it hasn't been whittled down to a mere "T" - and if Tchaikovsky were as popular as the Beatles, he'd be "Tie-COW-ski" in English, I'll bet.) I mean, I'd like it if someone I just met whose native language doesn't have a "J" sound pronounced my first name exactly in the way I do...but if it comes out "Deff" or "Zeff" or "Yeff" or just "hey you," well, I probably am not pronouncing their name correctly (i.e., as they pronounce it) either. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2007 16:13:39 -0700 (GMT-07:00) From: kevin Subject: Re: lyric question >p.p.p.s. btw, apropos of recent discussions, the only reason i write >things like "i know that ms. dickenson played..." is that janet maslin >always wrote things like "ms. novak " and "mr. stewart " >and ms. maslin is so damn cool (i think it's actually a general NYT >thing.) Kim Novak references are always appreciated. The original bomb. NP: Here comes that damn Briggs again... ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2007 17:09:30 -0700 From: Rex Subject: Re: jawohl, mein Herr (war: Re: von David Duchovny gebumst) On 9/5/07, kevin wrote: > > >I was pretty amused to discover that the French called my home state > >"Virginie Occidentale". Sounds so very classical for such a hillbilly > >place. > > But "Virginny Occidental" would be a great title for some kind of > countrypolitan instrumental full of fiddles and maybe some Floyd Cramer > piano - somewhere in the neighborhood of Neil Young's "The Emperoro Of > Wyoming" but with a heap of echo... Well, see, I'd need a copy of that. Presumably Jack Nitszche would've been somewhere in the vicinity. - -Rex ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2007 17:11:17 -0700 From: Rex Subject: Yr daily (really? damn!) TL;DR The Long Ryders, "Two-Fisted Tales". This is really excellent. On the rootsier side of the LA scene, but with plenty of Byrdsisms, paired up with kind Blasters-style energetic rockers. Totally embarrassed not to have heard their records before, but really happy that they live up to their reputation. The songs are solid and diverse (some roots-rock records sound off-puttingly samey to me, but not this one). There's even a song about the "LA lifestyle" that doesn't suck at all great melody, very pretty mandolin and, hey, a literal Tom Verlaine reference! There's really no reason that these guys couldn't have been as big as Tom Petty they do at least as good a job of synthesizing most of the same influences. It's too short, but I have a few more records by them in the queue, too. The Shins, "Wincing the Night Away". I picked this up back when it was released and conquered the charts and everything, but for some reason never listened to it all the way through. It seems pretty good sounds like it goes off in a few new directions before settling down and getting nicely Shinsy. I may never develop a total mania for The Shins, but I'm glad they're around and reliably sharp at what they do. I guess that means they sort of occupy the same link in the food chain as Foo Fighters or maybe like The Smithereens or something. The usual sharp lyrics that manage to walk up to the line of Morrissey-ness without ever, thankfully, stepping over. Squeeze, "Argybargy". I'm belatedly trying to listen to actual Squeeze albums, having gotten by with compilations until now. I caught them sort of at the tail end of their original run when just starting to delve into music; I recall having "Babylon and On" on cassette (because the "Hourglass" video was so visually clever, and that always means the music is good, right?) and being underwhelmed, but years later being bowled over by the singles compilation, and then never, for whatever reason, following up on it. This is pretty damned terrific, an old-school songwriting partnership at a creative peak, and the other songs hold up to the singles, which, in this case, is really saying something. Is "East Side Story" really better than this? It has eluded my browser thus far. The Postal Service, "Give Up". At one time or another I've probably heard this whole thing, just not as an album qua album. It, too, is good quite the hit machine, eh? I really do like Ben Gibbard's lyrics (and voice, for that matter). There are a ton of those indie bands that I kind of ignored for years, or failed to distinguish from each other while slowly some of them became huge and others died out, and it's just been maybe over the past few years that I've tried to sort out who the songs I've been hearing all along were actually by. DCFC turns out to have done a great deal of the ones that I'd liked, and their albums have turned out to be pretty welcoming as well; Modest Mouse by contrast ends up bugging the shit out of me, while others occupy slots on the scale from "very nice" to "meh" to "DO NOT WANT" (you'd have to toss the names at me and let me call 'em as I see 'em). There are quite a few others I've yet to file you know, the Granddaddies and Built to Spills of this world, legends to some but practically unheard by me. Erm, but back to this disc, the semi-twee synth settings are actually totally fine by me they seem to support the songs quite well, thanks, and good songs they are. Green on Red, "Here Come the Snakes". This is a bit of a surprise again. I'd always guessed, based on the name and artworl, I guess, the this would be among the more psychedelic of the Paisley bands. But the previous Green on Red album I listened to skewed towards country/folk rock, rootsy in a mostly Crazy Horse kind of way, with mostly good songs, a few sort of rote numbers for the genre and others more inspired. This one is yet another switcheroo for me: way more bluesy and Stonesy. Very Stonesy, in fact, with a high "fun" quotient in the performances, which are loose and punchy. And it works pretty well. Basically, if someone came up to me and said, hey, you wanna listen to a record by some guys that sound like the Stones, I'd probably picture The Black Crowes and give it a pass, but when something matching that description happens to arrive under the Paisley Underground label, and it's good, I can go for it. Some almost Robyn-esque witty, offhand lyrics don't hurt, either. Comsat Angels, "Sleep No More". Part of my project to make sure I've heard all of the original post-punk albums before the current deluge of recycling ends, these guys and The Sound are among the last stones unturned. I like both bands but find they come in somewhere behind the Chameleons in the pantheon. Of the two I'd expected to like The Sound better, but the Comsats keep edging them out maybe it's because the lyrics seem a little more subtle, or a better reflection of their times, or maybe it's because the keyboard sounds are better integrated into their sound. Plus, you've gotta love a band that says they modeled themselves after Pere Ubu. Either way, I wouldn't call this a lost classic or anything, but it's many cuts above most of the trendier New Wave of the era, and kicks Interpol's ass any day. Certainly no worse than contemporaneous U2: less melodic, but also less melodramatic, so I call it a draw (whereas early Chameleons records are, to me, actually better than early U2). This record sounds pretty good I think the band's strongest songs are on "Waiting for a Miracle", though. Grizzly Bear, "The Yellow House". One of the other "bear" indie bands I'm meant to check out, after Panda Bear but before um, Bear Club or Bear Trap or whatever the other one is. More chamber-pop? I didn't realize there was still that much of it around, but it's like there's this whole ultra-wimpy underground of which I was unaware, and compared to whom Robyn is a Glen Danzig-level Hard Rawker this is all Belle and Sebastian's fault, isn't it? Hmm, I was going to say the vocalist was sort of undistinguished, but right now he sounds a bit like Eno, which I suppose could suggest another way of looking at these soundscapes, but doesn't make the lyrical content easy to glean. And now we get to song-suites with like different "movements" and stuff and I see a 30-minute finale coming up oh noes, is it teh pr0g? (A: actually it's just a "hidden track" after 20 minutes of silencecan we quit with that now? We've had 20-some years to come up with ways to play with the CD-equivalent of the run-out groove, and no true good has come of it.) I think I will have to look up the lyrics in order to determine if this is substantial or merely cute (although one thing is for sure: Miles, if you're reading this, stay far, far away), and stipulate that, on my scoresheet, the Panda wins this round. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2007 17:06:14 -0700 From: Rex Subject: Re: Tom, was that you? On 9/4/07, Stacked Crooked wrote: The best part is "I need to talk with Peter, Peter Buck." Kind of a sideways variant on "Bond, James Bond". - -Rex, Rex Broome ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2007 17:42:57 -0700 (PDT) From: Jeff Dwarf Subject: Re: yes, sir (was: Re: fucked by David Duchovny) 2fs wrote: > There's probably some wild, slangy street term for [hubcaps] - > this is a crowd of young, incredibly hip people, so obviously > someone here will know it. Rims only applies to those goofy spinning ones, right? "Children have always enjoyed my movies. They are just not allowed to watch many of them." -- John Waters . ____________________________________________________________________________________ Take the Internet to Go: Yahoo!Go puts the Internet in your pocket: mail, news, photos & more. http://mobile.yahoo.com/go?refer=1GNXIC ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2007 12:48:58 +1200 From: grutness@slingshot.co.nz Subject: Re: fegmaniax-digest V16 #317 > > English is a fucking pain in the ass because of the bulk of its > > vocabulary and its wealth of idioms > >Of course that's exactly why I love it! English is a very lucky language, in that it has been influenced by so many other languages. Basically Britain was the last place in Europe that the marauding hordes came to (many of them stayed there as football hooligans, but I digress). So it was invaded from several different directions in its early history. English is a basically Germanic tongue, overlaid with Norse and then with Norman French, all retaining a smattering of pre-conquest Celtic. And English still forms new words based on all of these forms. Then after that the English themselves took off around the world borrowing from the places they came to. Because of that, it's perhaps the world's most nuanced language - it uses words which meant the same things in Germany, Norway and Normandy and gave them all subtly different meanings - so we have: lager, ale and beer; infants and children; houses, bungalows, mansions, and dwellings; aeroplanes and aircraft. It's also why we can have know-how without having savoir-faire, and vice versa. It may be a bugger of a language to learn, but it's all the more useful because of it. James - -- James Dignan, Dunedin, New Zealand -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.- =-.-=-.-=-.- You talk to me as if from a distance .-=-.-=-.-=-. -=-. And I reply with impressions chosen from another time .-=- .-=-.-=-.-=-.-=- (Brian Eno - "By this River") -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-= ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2007 12:50:26 +1200 From: grutness@slingshot.co.nz Subject: Re: Hot hot sibilant action >Gene Hopstetter Jr. said: > > >Robyn should have traded his Cadillac for a microphone. > >...Hey, I got that semi-obscure reference! > > >Michael "Fix the cigarette lighter" Sweeney So, what's your opinion on Illinois nazis? James - -- James Dignan, Dunedin, New Zealand -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.- =-.-=-.-=-.- You talk to me as if from a distance .-=-.-=-.-=-. -=-. And I reply with impressions chosen from another time .-=- .-=-.-=-.-=-.-=- (Brian Eno - "By this River") -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-= ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 05 Sep 2007 20:03:02 -0500 From: "Aaron L." Subject: Re: lyric question At 15:59 9/5/2007, lep wrote: >there's this line in "putting the damage on" that goes: >"and now i'm wishing for my best impression >of my best angie dickinson" I'm probably completely wrong, but I've always interpreted that line to mean that she is just trying to project an air of emotional strength or ... unaffectedness. Angie Dickinson typically played sort of strong, feminist-y characters. Not someone to let a man affect her the way Tori has been affected in that song. I've tried to come up with a better way to word that, but it's just not coming out very eloquently. Hopefully you get my gist. I've just discovered font smoothing a la Apple, quite by accident, by downloading the beta of Apple's Safari web browser. I fully expected to download it, check it out for a few minutes, and then delete it, but... wow, text looks so much more attractive when rendered in Safari. I've been reading various posts on various personal webpages and such about various people's opinions re: Microsoft's ClearType vs. Apple's font smoothing, and it's an amazingly polarizing issue. There are plenty of people who seem to think that font smoothing is something Apple got wrong and MS does better. There are even some avid Mac fans who seem to think so. For me, there is no comparison, and I've been using MS's version of font smoothing on both CRT and LCD monitors for many years, with little to no Mac experience. I wish there was a way to integrate Apple's smoothing scheme into the entire Windows OS. Safari has an ugly interface, and isn't nearly as configurable or easy to use as Firefox, but it just makes pages look so much clearer and easier to use, that I'm tempted to keep using it, despite its limitations. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2007 18:00:01 -0700 (PDT) From: Benjamin Lukoff Subject: Re: fegmaniax-digest V16 #317 On Thu, 6 Sep 2007 grutness@slingshot.co.nz wrote: > > > English is a fucking pain in the ass because of the bulk of its > > > vocabulary and its wealth of idioms > > > >Of course that's exactly why I love it! > > English is a very lucky language, in that it has been influenced by > so many other languages. Basically Britain was the last place in > Europe that the marauding hordes came to (many of them stayed there > as football hooligans, but I digress). So it was invaded from several > different directions in its early history. English is a basically > Germanic tongue, overlaid with Norse and then with Norman French, all > retaining a smattering of pre-conquest Celtic. And English still > forms new words based on all of these forms. Then after that the > English themselves took off around the world borrowing from the > places they came to. Because of that, it's perhaps the world's most > nuanced language - it uses words which meant the same things in > Germany, Norway and Normandy and gave them all subtly different > meanings - so we have: lager, ale and beer; infants and children; > houses, bungalows, mansions, and dwellings; aeroplanes and aircraft. > It's also why we can have know-how without having savoir-faire, and > vice versa. It may be a bugger of a language to learn, but it's all > the more useful because of it. Extremely well put. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2007 20:17:09 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: Yr daily (really? damn!) TL;DR On 9/5/07, Rex wrote: > > The Long Ryders, "Two-Fisted Tales". Don'[t know this particular one - I have the number one (10-XX-60 or whatever it's called) and, uh, whichever other one was paired w/it on CD at one point (a s/t release mebbe? Can you tell I don't feel like digging in the database right now?) - but I like the band pretty well also. > > Squeeze, "Argybargy". Is "East Side Story" really better > than this? To me, yes: it's pretty much their peak in my ears. I like this one also - before they got a bit too mannered & into the plastic-soul thing, but after the somewhat jokey earlier stuff (I blame Jools Holland). It's a pretty steady, quick downhill slide after ESS though... The Postal Service, "Give Up". DCFC turns out to have done a great deal of > the > ones that I'd liked, and their albums have turned out to be pretty > welcoming > as well; Modest Mouse by contrast ends up bugging the shit out of me, > while > others occupy slots on the scale from "very nice" to "meh" to "DO NOT > WANT" > (you'd have to toss the names at me and let me call 'em as I see > 'em). There > are quite a few others I've yet to file you know, the Granddaddies and > Built to Spills of this world, legends to some but practically unheard by > me. It's funny: I was just listening to DCFC today in the car, and they're one of those bands I like but whose songs somehow fail to distinguish themselves as songs for quite a while. It's a high average, but a flattish one. (Similar to the Shins, although I like them better.) Grandaddy - pretty good. Built to Spill - eh. Modest Mouse - like some earlier stuff, don't like the new one. I like the Grizzly Bears CD a lot, though - a bit of a grower, in that it's built on subtleties. - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2007 12:25:30 +1200 From: grutness@slingshot.co.nz Subject: Re: jawohl, mein Herr (war: Re: von David Duchovny gebumst) >It's a bit amusing: rather like overpunctilious announcers at >classical-music radio stations who get all Russian in saying >"Tchaikovsky" to the extent it's hard to recognize which composer's >being referred to. The further names travel, the more they get >"translated" into the local language. And inevitably, they get >translated first into the local phonemes (if we don't have that >ending diphthong represented in Cyrillic by the last two letters >naming that composer), we'll just pronounce it with whatever's >closest in our own language (roughly, a "long e"). Surnames, sure, it makes some sense to pronounce as close as practical to how the user would actually say them - we say Vorzhak not Dvorak. But place names are rarely attached to one person or family who would have the right to object to other pronunciations. That one's a particular problems in countries (like NZ) with two official languages. Personally I don't mind if a Maori place name, for instance, is given a purely Maori pronunciation or a purely pakeha (i.e., Euopean settler) one, as long as it's not garbled half way between the two. So, f'rinstance, Taupo is okay as "Toh-paw" or as "Taow-poh" - just not "Toh-poh". It sounds like someone has made a sloppy attempt at being PC without actually knowing anything about the language. James - -- James Dignan, Dunedin, New Zealand -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.- =-.-=-.-=-.- You talk to me as if from a distance .-=-.-=-.-=-. -=-. And I reply with impressions chosen from another time .-=- .-=-.-=-.-=-.-=- (Brian Eno - "By this River") -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-= ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2007 18:59:03 -0700 (PDT) From: Benjamin Lukoff Subject: Re: jawohl, mein Herr (war: Re: von David Duchovny gebumst) On Thu, 6 Sep 2007 grutness@slingshot.co.nz wrote: > >It's a bit amusing: rather like overpunctilious announcers at > >classical-music radio stations who get all Russian in saying > >"Tchaikovsky" to the extent it's hard to recognize which composer's > >being referred to. The further names travel, the more they get > >"translated" into the local language. And inevitably, they get > >translated first into the local phonemes (if we don't have that > >ending diphthong represented in Cyrillic by the last two letters > >naming that composer), we'll just pronounce it with whatever's > >closest in our own language (roughly, a "long e"). > > Surnames, sure, it makes some sense to pronounce as close as > practical to how the user would actually say them - we say Vorzhak > not Dvorak. But place names are rarely attached to one person or > family who would have the right to object to other pronunciations. > That one's a particular problems in countries (like NZ) with two > official languages. Personally I don't mind if a Maori place name, > for instance, is given a purely Maori pronunciation or a purely > pakeha (i.e., Euopean settler) one, as long as it's not garbled half > way between the two. So, f'rinstance, Taupo is okay as "Toh-paw" or > as "Taow-poh" - just not "Toh-poh". It sounds like someone has made a > sloppy attempt at being PC without actually knowing anything about > the language. I've always wondered how to pronounce Bath. /ae/ makes me really sound American (and I take pains to do, for example, Leicester correctly), but /a/ makes me sound oh so affected. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2007 22:05:56 -0400 (EDT) From: Jill Brand Subject: I gotta cut down on my verbosity Wow, James, you just gave my 3-day "history of the English language" lecture in one paragraph. I mean, you left out the doubled vocabulary due to the Anglo-Saxon wave followed later by a Viking wave (hence shirt/skirt, shatter/scatter, dish/disk), but, I couldn't have asked for more in such little space! Seriously, when I teach advanced-level students who need a lot of work in note-taking from lectures, one of the high points of the semester (for me, at least) is the amazing history of English, the language I lovingly call "the trashcan of European tongues." I figure if my poor students have to confront 25 new words or expressions every time they read a Boston Globe article, they should at least know why these words even exist. God, I love English. Jill On Thu, 6 Sep 2007, grutness@slingshot.co.nz wrote: >> > English is a fucking pain in the ass because of the bulk of its >> > vocabulary and its wealth of idioms >> >> Of course that's exactly why I love it! > > English is a very lucky language, in that it has been influenced by so many > other languages. Basically Britain was the last place in Europe that the > marauding hordes came to (many of them stayed there as football hooligans, > but I digress). So it was invaded from several different directions in its > early history. English is a basically Germanic tongue, overlaid with Norse > and then with Norman French, all retaining a smattering of pre-conquest > Celtic. And English still forms new words based on all of these forms. Then > after that the English themselves took off around the world borrowing from > the places they came to. Because of that, it's perhaps the world's most > nuanced language - it uses words which meant the same things in Germany, > Norway and Normandy and gave them all subtly different meanings - so we have: > lager, ale and beer; infants and children; houses, bungalows, mansions, and > dwellings; aeroplanes and aircraft. It's also why we can have know-how > without having savoir-faire, and vice versa. It may be a bugger of a language > to learn, but it's all the more useful because of it. > > James > -- > James Dignan, Dunedin, New Zealand currently down - stay tuned> > -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.- > =-.-=-.-=-.- You talk to me as if from a distance .-=-.-=-.-=-. > -=-. And I reply with impressions chosen from another time .-=- > .-=-.-=-.-=-.-=- (Brian Eno - "By this River") -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-= ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2007 21:15:24 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: I gotta cut down on my verbosity On 9/5/07, Jill Brand wrote: > > Wow, James, you just gave my 3-day "history of the English language" > lecture in one paragraph. > > God, I love English. Which allows you to exploit those sorts of things in, well, I'll call it "humor" - such as the sentence "I would like my cheeseburger cloven in twain"... Wonder how you'd translate that into a language with a more monochromatic etymological history...? Unrelatedly: what is the deal with the recording of Costello/Toussaint's _River in Reverse_? Half the instruments sound as if they wrapped a thick towel around the mic before recording them... - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 5 Sep 2007 19:18:47 -0700 (PDT) From: Benjamin Lukoff Subject: Re: I gotta cut down on my verbosity What classes do you teach? On Wed, 5 Sep 2007, Jill Brand wrote: > Wow, James, you just gave my 3-day "history of the English language" > lecture in one paragraph. I mean, you left out the doubled vocabulary due > to the Anglo-Saxon wave followed later by a Viking wave (hence > shirt/skirt, shatter/scatter, dish/disk), but, I couldn't have asked for > more in such little space! > > Seriously, when I teach advanced-level students who need a lot of work in > note-taking from lectures, one of the high points of the semester (for me, > at least) is the amazing history of English, the language I lovingly call > "the trashcan of European tongues." I figure if my poor students have to > confront 25 new words or expressions every time they read a Boston Globe > article, they should at least know why these words even exist. > > God, I love English. > > Jill > > > On Thu, 6 Sep 2007, grutness@slingshot.co.nz wrote: > > >> > English is a fucking pain in the ass because of the bulk of its > >> > vocabulary and its wealth of idioms > >> > >> Of course that's exactly why I love it! > > > > English is a very lucky language, in that it has been influenced by so many > > other languages. Basically Britain was the last place in Europe that the > > marauding hordes came to (many of them stayed there as football hooligans, > > but I digress). So it was invaded from several different directions in its > > early history. English is a basically Germanic tongue, overlaid with Norse > > and then with Norman French, all retaining a smattering of pre-conquest > > Celtic. And English still forms new words based on all of these forms. Then > > after that the English themselves took off around the world borrowing from > > the places they came to. Because of that, it's perhaps the world's most > > nuanced language - it uses words which meant the same things in Germany, > > Norway and Normandy and gave them all subtly different meanings - so we have: > > lager, ale and beer; infants and children; houses, bungalows, mansions, and > > dwellings; aeroplanes and aircraft. It's also why we can have know-how > > without having savoir-faire, and vice versa. It may be a bugger of a language > > to learn, but it's all the more useful because of it. > > > > James > > -- > > James Dignan, Dunedin, New Zealand > currently down - stay tuned> > > -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.-=-.- > > =-.-=-.-=-.- You talk to me as if from a distance .-=-.-=-.-=-. > > -=-. And I reply with impressions chosen from another time .-=- > > .-=-.-=-.-=-.-=- (Brian Eno - "By this River") -.-=-.-=-.-=-.-= ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V16 #318 ********************************