Dancing

The Dunedin night that Jen and I ran together was a big success. The dances were quite manic but most people appeared to cope. Afterwards we got lots of thanks and compliments for a good programme, which was nice. The best was this old frail-looking woman who first asked me where my accent is from, and then said the programme was very nice, and that she'd also said this to 'the Jen girl'.

I don't know where my accent is from. I know where I am from, but my accent is a mutt. I have been playing with the idea of having Warren record me and put my realizations in the NeighborNet programme, to see what I come out closest to, but transcribing 110 words is a lot of work and it's not really benefiting anyone, so thus far I have been reluctant to ask.

I have now also been social convenor for New Scotland for about a month. It's quite good fun to puzzle the programmes together, and to make sure that it's not too repetitive, too difficult or too boring, to make sure that the most important dances from the most important upcoming dance programmes are covered, etc. Finding callers is maybe a bit more of a challenge, but I try to cover a couple of weeks at a time in an e-mail and I also wave the social programme around on Thursday nights and press people into calling.

This Saturday is SUSCDF. It's going to be in Edinburgh, which is conveniently close. I'm sure it's going to be a ball.

There is also a dem. We shall not talk about that. People might not survive.

Sir Bob was wrong

The good news is that I don't have to teach discourse analysis and computer-mediated communication for at least another year. And that's assuming I'll still be here next year, and that I'll still be teaching English Language 1. If I'm not, I mightn't have to teach these things for even longer.

However, in general, Fridays are not very good days. They consist of a lot of running around. I'm teaching from 10 to 12, then there's the postgraduate lunch in Teviot (something that over a year into the project still doesn't want to take off, but we keep trying), and then there's usually a research group meeting of some description from 1 to 2. Which means that by the time I come to my office ready to actually do some work, I'm completely drained of energy, and like fuck am I going to start anything new.

Mondays, in comparison, are much better. Freshly re-energized from the weekend, I do not have teaching in the morning, and the fortnightly research group is at the sensible time of 3pm. Once you get back from that, there just is not really any time to start anything new anyway, so it's okay to just sit and answer some e-mails. So I actually quite like Mondays.

Not only Bob Geldof and his Boomtown Rats had the wrong end of the stick with their I don't like Mondays. It also appears that Fridays get a much more positive review in popular culture: I remember Friday on my mind by the Easybeats, and Friday I'm in love by the Cure. Of course this is not likely to be a representative sample of the weekday song population, but as it's a Friday afternoon, I'm really not going to research this in depth.

On average, though, this year's lot appears to be a bit more on the ball than last year's, although they may not necessarily speak a whole lot more. I'm also not sure of their ontheballness comes out of a general interest in the topic – I suspect this to be the case for some of them – or out of an obsession with high marks and wanting to know exactly what to say in an exam and how to say it, rather than wanting to understand what a phoneme actually is or what the point is of conversation analysis – I am quite sure a number of my kiddies fall into this category.

Do I know what the point is of conversation analysis? No. Do I care? Not really.

By this time last year, I had seven of my then first-years having befriended me on Facebook. One group even had a tutorial group reunion (well, the people that they could remember, anyway – and quite frankly, I had forgotten about a fair number of them as well) two weeks ago, for which I was invited as well. I had expected it to be slightly awkward, but it was actually quite good fun. This year, I have more students, but none of them have tried to befriend me on Facebook yet. There was a vague attempt in one group (the Thursday group) to have a tutorial outing, but that never got properly organized. There was mention of the Big Cheese though, so I'm not exactly sorry it came to nothing...

I'm looking forward to teaching starting again in the first week of next semester, with some interesting topics: social and geographical variation in English, and history of English. The days will be getting longer by then, so Fridays may no longer be as depressing.

Dunedin Dancers

Courtesy of Jen and myself tonight:

1. Minard Castle (R 8x40)
2. Campbeltown Loch (J 4x48)
3. Schiehallion (S 64 + R 64)
4. Gothenburg's Welcome (J 8x32)
5. Neidpath Castle (S 3x32)
6. Rest and Be Thankful (R 8x32)
7. The Bees of Maggieknockater (J 4x32)
8. Caddam Wood (R 5x32)
9. Bonnie Lass of Bon Accord (S 64)
10. Glens of Angus (R 4x32)
11. The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh (R 8x40)

Nationalities

This bit from the Sportgeschiedenis Weblog made me smile:

In 1997 klopte de Oekraïner Andrej Tsjmil (de Moldavische Belg had op dat moment de Oekraïense nationaliteit) de Italiaanse Engelsman Maximillian Sciandri in Parijs - Tours in een sprint met twee. De Australische Nederlander Henk Vogels werd trouwens knap derde. De gemiddelde snelheid werd vastgesteld op 48,929 (!) km/u.

A Ukrainian who is actually a Moldavian Belgian, an Italian Englishman and an Australian Dutchman (who at other points in his career was a Dutch Australian, to make things even more transparent). Fluent identities, or something.

Important issues

Why, pray tell, did the International Olympic Committee decide to change their country code for Romania from ROM to ROU in January 2007? It doesn't make sense. The country is called România in its own language, and Romania in English, both of which would give ROM. Only French (Roumanie) would give ROU. So why change a code that makes perfect sense into something that makes less sense?

It looks ugly too.

Mess

The package of stir fry vegetables wasn't supposed to fall over and knock over the pot of yoghurt that then rolled off the worktop and made a big "thud", splashing yoghurt all over the kitchen floor and lower regions of the kitchen cupboard.

However, I don't think it was aware of that.

Myshele said it wasn't very cooperative yoghurt. This is true. It was Tesco's.

A bit of Language Log

This is probably evidence of me being such a geek that I can't even help doing linguistics in my spare time. But oh well, here goes.

The ferry from Norway to the Faroes got into a spell of bad weather over the weekend. One of the propellor engines ended up above water, turned itself off in an emergency procedure, another engine gave up because it couldn't deal with the extra demand, the whole ship turned at a right angle to the direction of the waves and started tilting back and forth, oscillating between 45 degrees either side. Not nice, and I don't think I'll take a ferry across the North Atlantic any time soon.

Today, Faroese news carries a story about two Danish for whom this was their first ferry experience, and who thought the whole ordeal was unpleasant, but apparently a necessary part of the trip. (Subtext: silly Danes who've never been on a boat before!)

Tvey av ferðafólkunum við Norrönu hendan nú famøsa túrin vóru ikki serliga bangin. Tað var nevniliga fyrstu ferð tey sigldu, og tí vistu tey ikki, at tey upplivdu nakað út yvir tað vanliga.

The bit in red took a while to parse. I wanted it to read "on Norröna's now famous trip", but couldn't figure out the possessive construction. Whether you use a defunct genitive or a way cooler accusative possessive construction, the possessor would typically follow the possessed NP, and that NP would not be definite (as the possessive construction itself makes it definite). The accusative one also doesn't work because it's restricted to familial relations – although it would be cool to see it spread to other relations as well...

After a while I realized, slightly disappointed, that we have two separate adjuncts, a PP við Norrönu and a temporal accusative NP hendan nú famøsa túrin. Maybe it's still cool that they're using a noun with very little temporal semantic content in that way? (Trying desperately to salvage the situation.)

Also,

Donsku hjúnini ætla sær at sigla niður aftur til Danmarkar.

"Down to Denmark" – now would that be because it's further South, or because Denmark (highest point 120 metres or so) is actually a lot lower than the Faroes (880 m)? Or actually, seeing as they still do directions with Norway as a point of reference (útnyrðingur 'north-west', landsynningur 'south-east'), might it have to do with Norway being even higher (2400 m, I think it was)?

And,

Tey eru annars komin heim at vitja vinfólk í Føroyum.

Interesting use of the word heim there. Obviously, the Faroes are not "home" to our friends, because if it were, they would most certainly have been on a boat before. They did not come home to visit friends in the Faroes, but they left home to do so. But apparently, the Faroes are "home" whichever way you look at it.


* Finally, samstundis sum dótturin spýið maga og merg úr sær which is a cool expression: to spit stomach and marrow out of yourself. I was wondering why there was a past participle spýið, because surely this was not a counterfactual and the little girl actually sicked all over the North Atlantic, but it's a typo for spýði, which is a boring past tense. (The infinitive is spýggja, which in turn is cool because of the skerping.)
** Bedtime now.

Urban exploring

I went for a walk along the Water of Leith with Christina yesterday.


On the way to the point where we met (which was an hour's walk, and I later found out Christina had thought I would probably take a bus) I finally took a picture of the road sign that had grabbed my attention a couple of times before. I was never a real fan of rap music, but somehow this grafitti conveys a nice nostalgic feeling...


Slateford isn't the most inspiring area of Edinburgh, and it got worse the further south I walked, but sometimes there were nice views to be had. Somehow I like this railway going toward the Pentlands.


Nice autumnal colours.


Some local fauna in the Water of Leith. Spotting the heron would be a lot easier if I had had a proper camera on me, but as I only remembered that I should have taken it when I was already more than ten minutes from home, I decided the camera on my phone would do.


Really, there was nowhere else to go.


Or was there? We just soldiered on anyway.


The Edinburgh Street Naming Committee does not discriminate.


Some more local fauna.

After that it was Apfelstrudel and vanilla ice cream at Christina's flat, and there was much tiredness.

I'm speaking foreign

A silly advertising website by Philips for their new range of electric razors. It's filled with non-sequiturs, or perhaps I'm just too thick to understand what's going on. On their main website you have to choose your country and language to proceed. The option for the Netherlands was ‘Netherlands: English’. What the fuck?

So I chose ‘Belgium: Nederlands’. I'm not sure if that was wise.

I've heard people saying that Dutch is turning into English, what with us having our own Great Vowel Shift and all, but this takes the cake.

Not very amused.

The desert is a sea of sand

In between marking first-year assignments on phonology and morphology (some people need to be very afraid), I managed to finish another book that I bought in my September shopping spree. Paul Torday's Salmon fishing in the Yemen took three baths and an hour on the futon to finish.

The book isn't written in a normal narrative style. I seem to have a sixth sense for picking up books that are slightly odd like that. This one is a collection of diary entries, e-mails, letters, interviews, interrogations and extracts from an unpublished autobiography. It makes for a very dynamic read, which is probably why it didn't take that long to read (although I do take very long baths and slightly lose track of time).

Main character in the book is Dr Alfred Jones of the National Centre for Fisheries Excellence. He lives for his work, has no social life to speak of apart from a loveless marriage of convenience, and is slightly detached from reality. Sounds familiar. He is approached by a Yemeni sheikh who is interested in introducing salmon into a wadi in (the)* Yemen. This is of course a ridiculous project but after the British government gets involved Jones is put under sufficient pressure that he does some feasibility studies. He gets more and more convinced that it can be done, and while the government – influenced by the sketchy communications officer at No 10 who sees electoral opportunities everywhere, a very dislikeable chap – get(s)** uninvolved and involved again, salmon is being introduced into the desert. It doesn't all go exactly according to plan, but oh well, and it supposedly shows that the sheikh was right that everything can be done if you believe in it enough.

I'm not sure that that is the lesson I'm supposed to learn from this. I guess it's one, the other one being that political spin doctors are evil – but we knew that already. Still, I'm kind of sad that I finished the book already, and I would have liked to see what would have happened to the salmon. (They got netted and eaten, but what would have happened to them if they had been allowed to do their business? Would they colonize the Indian Ocean and diverge into a separate subspecies? I am way too Dr Jonesy for my own good.)


* No article for me here.
** If this was a formal piece of writing, the s would be dropped.
Footnoting your own blog posts for linguistic variation is a bit sad.

Purposeful phrasing

Much back-blogging needed. Meanwhile...

Yvette Lont, councillor in Amsterdam-Zuidoost for the Christian Union, is putting in a motion for a change in the bye-laws of her party, to the effect that openly gay members of the party should no longer be allowed to represent the party in official positions. Now she's been sued by a VVD (liberal) councillor for inciting hatred and discrimination. Eddy Meyer's phrasing cannot be incidental:

Met deze actie werpt zij haar schaapskleren af en komt zij uit de kast met haar ultraorthodoxe karakter.

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