Author: Heather Meadows

This guy is amazing.

Critics of Gerard Kennedy are having a field day with the fact that the Ontario Education Minister mistakenly said there were five letters in the word “strike”. The flub has drawn comparisons to former U.S. vice president Dan Quayle.

“But then again, at least no one put Dan Quayle in charge of educating over a million schoolchildren,” said legislator John Baird, of the opposition Conservative Party.

Mr. Kennedy made his error in speech, rather than in writing. Human beings in general are bad at counting the letters of words while they are talking–at least, that’s my impression. It’s pretty obvious why that would be.

The idea of an alphabet is to have one character to represent one sound. However, languages change over time. The older your writing system is, the more differences there are going to be between what is written and how it is pronounced. I don’t know the particular etymology of the word “strike”, but I can tell you right now that the final “e” is not pronounced. In the IPA, the word “strike” would be written

/straik/

The /ai/ there is a diphthong. (I don’t know that I make the diphthong mark show up in Shift_JIS, or even in a regular font. Also, note that by /r/ I actually mean the American English r, not the normal IPA /r/.) If you consider a diphthong to be one “letter”, you could argue that “strike” actually is a five-letter word–in terms of pronunciation.

Ultimately, I’ve thought way too much about this, writing a bunch of baseless conjecture and then deleting it all :> The upshot is that I don’t think people should be judged too seriously on grammar value judgments they make out loud.

But it’s, like, hard! She just wrote a love story.

o_o

…yeah, this is a great place to live!

(From WAGT News.)

(Also, that quote is ungrammatical. The objects of the verb “are” should be in parallel; to correct the problem, simply add “on” before the word “probation”. Otherwise, it’s like they’re saying some Georgians “are on already in prison”. Yes, I am anal, but I also point these things out because of a paranoid fear that one of you will notice one that I didn’t mention, and think that I missed it. I didn’t miss it!!!)

A man injured and trapped in the Los Angeles commuter train collision scrawled a message of love to his wife and children in his own blood. The man survived and was rescued by firefighters.

“I am here today because these guys deserve the credit. All I did was just lay there,” Phipps said, choking back tears.

“I don’t know whether I did it because I thought I would not make it out alive or because I was just being a maudlin dope,” Phipps said, walking on crutches and wearing a Los Angeles Fire Department cap and shirt.

Here’s the story, at Yahoo.

Check out today’s PA–aptly titled “Linguaphiles Unite“.

Those guys really do give each other shit all the time. I love it.

Paula finds Judy, who is “unhurt but frightened.” That’s one way to interpret it. Another title might be: blow-up Love Doll is strangled by psychopathic glee-gibbon as they drive thorugh the blank, red expanse of Hell itself.

James Lileks is a fucking genius. (Via BoingBoing)

I mean, oh my god. Just read this. An excerpt:

These word sequences are not prepositions (they are not words at all), and they are not phrasal (they are sequences of independent words that are commonly kept adjacent, and in some cases they are associated with special meanings, but they don’t make up a single part or constituent of a sentence: some bits are in one phrase and some in the next). If that does not suggest to you that talking about “phrasal prepositions” is the wrong way to talk about them, then I hardly know what to say, given this new and unfamiliar policy of keeping a civil tongue in my head.

I adore this man.

God. I’m a fangirl of linguistics professors.

Dalton Hammond has written a brief, beautiful, and surprising tale about a fiddler crab.

Lots of cool/bizarre/interesting stuff in the news today.

Via Slashdot, a guy who makes sushi with an inkjet printer.

Via BoingBoing, a mermaid baby.

Also via BoingBoing, strappy shoes with spring-loaded heels. I like these!

I am offended! I bought this painting, maybe 10 years ago! It’s in my parents’ family room at this very moment. “Thrift store painting improvement”, says Mark Frauenfelder. Improvement? Bah!

Oh my god, moles are ugly.

Just shut up, Crown Prince Phillipe. You’re a hood ornament! How dare you interfere in the affairs of your country?

So there’s a guy who wrote a book about the Age of Anxiety:

His often acerbic dictionary-style guide is an indictment of the self absorption of the affluent West, and the growing tendency to categorize rather than celebrate eccentricity.

“In this country, we just have so much of everything and so much time to analyse ourselves. We seem to medicalise oddity and quirkiness.”

In other news, Japan rules. I want to go to the observation bath! (Hmm…is it co-ed?)

Education is important.

It’s Setsubun, so let’s scatter some soybeans around and eat some futomaki.

And that’s it for now :>

From “Let Me Explain Something“, Penny Arcade, February 2, 2005 (why don’t webcomic authors use blogging software for their rants?!):

Tycho seems near death which is a real problem since he is my gravy train. There has been a lot of talk recently about creative teams breaking up, but I assure you that will never happen here as long as I can help it. It’s really not even fair to describe us as a creative team since that implies a level of comradery that just isn’t present in our relationship. You see I recognized his talent for writing years ago while the two of us were still in high school. It seemed that his suicidal pessimism and fierce inner demons drove him to create some pretty incredible creative works. It was then that I developed a plan to harness his crippling depression and ride it to financial success, even if it killed him in the process. For the twelve years that I’ve known him I’ve treated him like a powerful creative furnace that I must feed with insults and contempt in order to produce clean, warm creativity. My greatest fear is that he will one day die or feel true joy.

:D :D :D :D

(Also, Linguistics Nerd Alert! See Gabe’s eggcorn? …no? Okay, fine, I’ll tell you what it is. He’s transmogrified camaraderie into comradery!)

Katsu wa yo, kitto.

Ahem.

David linked me to this cool story about Kit Kats in Japan :)

I was depressed yesterday, and Monday. Really depressed. But last night I decided I wasn’t going to just roll over. I wrote back to the lady who rejected my application and expressed to her passionately that Sean and I are committed to living in Japan. I illustrated for her how I grew to love Japan and to think of it as a home. When I was finished with my arguments, I stated that this would be the last such message I sent her, unless she had questions for me, and I apologized for taking so much of her time.

When she wrote back, it was not to dismiss me outright. Instead, she actually asked questions!

They were hard, pointed questions, but they were good questions, and I was impressed by her frankness. The questions were about Sean, how he feels about Japan, whether or not he speaks Japanese, what he does for a living, and how we felt about living on minimum wage. (She cited a figure in a later message…it’s actually more than minimum wage, but it’s not a princely salary.)

I told Sean what she’d asked and he said, “She’s smart.”

After the questions she elaborated on her point. Many employees have been lost because their families were unhappy living in Japan. She went on to say that I did not really have the experience and skillset she was looking for. She said I was a “potential diamond in the rough”, and that she would prefer that I be chipped out of the rock first, so that her company could then do the polishing.

As you may be able to tell, I’m trying not to quote her directly, as this was a private conversation between the two of us. I’m also not going to say which company it is. But I have to quote one thing that absolutely made my day.

I only gave you consideration at all because you wrote a damn fine cover letter and that’s a rare thing to find. I respect the ability to make a case in writing, it’s what I look for and you have done it well.

Ah, my ego, she is satisfied…

I responded to this letter thanking her for her honesty and answering the questions she put to me. By that point I knew I wasn’t going to get the job, but I still wanted to answer her, to keep myself in her thoughts. I was frank in my response, as she was to me. I didn’t shy away from truthful responses, even when they hurt my case. But I did go into Sean’s personality, job, and habits a little, to try and explain why he is willing to move to Japan.

She surprised me with her response.

Rather than simply saying, “Well, thank you, but you’re not the candidate we’re looking for,” she responded to my thoughts with suggestions about how I could parlay Sean’s and my experience into jobs in Japan. Her tone by this point had become very friendly. She told us to enroll Sean in Japanese lessons and get him up to intermediate level within a year, and that if we were able to get over to Japan for a year she would happily reconsider my application at that point. And in her PS, she listed literally dozens of websites that help people get jobs in Japan.

I was amazed and touched by her generosity and kindness. While she couldn’t hire me, she treated me with the utmost respect. She was honest. She told me exactly where I was lacking. And she gave every indication that she believed I am worth something, that I can bring myself up to the level the company needs.

She closed the letter with the following: “in time, maybe we’ll see a good position that matches you open up at [our company]”. I don’t believe that was flattery or an attempt to placate me. Not from someone as frank as this lady.

This is the first time I have ever been rejected for a job and yet felt good about it. I feel like I know where I’m strong and where I need to improve, and I feel that my abilities have been recognized.

It’s a great feeling.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to apply for another job. Local this time…extra income so we can afford those Japanese lessons ;>

I just said aloud to myself, “I wish people would stop thinking I’m stupid. I’m the only smart one here.”

God. :>

Well, not here.

Joanne has a beautiful post up today about snowfall in Nagoya, where she lives. All her posts are beautiful, really; I’m going to have to get out of the habit of highlighting them, or I’ll have to highlight them all. But I had to mention this one.

I miss snow.