Got out, got wet, came back
Just about 45 minutes ago, I realised I have nothing to eat and I need to do some shopping. So I went out, minutes after it started raining, heavily, with thunder and everything. There I was standing, under the bus stop shield, holding an umbrella, and I still got soaked from head to toe. I just hope I don't get a cold, aachoo.., out of it.
And the latest from the linguistic world, someone recently noted that:
Outside the ivory tower, a "linguist" is somebody who speaks a foreign language, and there's no perceived need for a "science" of language because language is thought to be a phenomenon that is utterly transparent to everybody.
Disappointing, but probably true. I remember a certain someone saying, when I told him I will be working on referring expressions like a, the, this, etc. in my PhD: "the? you are writing a PhD thesis on the? (with a very sarcastic tone)" :)))
And the latest from the normal world, a couple of days ago I had a very nice cultural experience. My Pakistani flatmate brought a video of her brother's wedding and we all watched it. Actually it featured two events: the night before the wedding, "henna night" (like what we have in Egypt) and then the wedding party. It was very interesting to see a traditional Pakistani wedding, with the dresses, the dances and of course the strange rituals of the groom sitting down, being fed sweet things and getting his hair soaked with oil by the older women who take turns to do that and then put a paper money bill in his hand and pieces of henna. Then the bride comes in, all covered so that even her face does not show and sits in the same place for the same ritual, except that it looks really funny when every woman comes to her, bends over and reaches with her hand under the veil to feed her the sweets. :) The dances were nice too, very much similar to Indian dancing where all the action is in the shoulders, the hands and the hips. To my surprise, at some point an Arabic song started playing, and guess who was signing? Our very own Amr Diab, so I started translating for them the song for a change.
That's it for now.
Mai
And the latest from the linguistic world, someone recently noted that:
Outside the ivory tower, a "linguist" is somebody who speaks a foreign language, and there's no perceived need for a "science" of language because language is thought to be a phenomenon that is utterly transparent to everybody.
Disappointing, but probably true. I remember a certain someone saying, when I told him I will be working on referring expressions like a, the, this, etc. in my PhD: "the? you are writing a PhD thesis on the? (with a very sarcastic tone)" :)))
And the latest from the normal world, a couple of days ago I had a very nice cultural experience. My Pakistani flatmate brought a video of her brother's wedding and we all watched it. Actually it featured two events: the night before the wedding, "henna night" (like what we have in Egypt) and then the wedding party. It was very interesting to see a traditional Pakistani wedding, with the dresses, the dances and of course the strange rituals of the groom sitting down, being fed sweet things and getting his hair soaked with oil by the older women who take turns to do that and then put a paper money bill in his hand and pieces of henna. Then the bride comes in, all covered so that even her face does not show and sits in the same place for the same ritual, except that it looks really funny when every woman comes to her, bends over and reaches with her hand under the veil to feed her the sweets. :) The dances were nice too, very much similar to Indian dancing where all the action is in the shoulders, the hands and the hips. To my surprise, at some point an Arabic song started playing, and guess who was signing? Our very own Amr Diab, so I started translating for them the song for a change.
That's it for now.
Mai
posted by Mai at 6:26 PM
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