a viste pgire af dir

This is Yiddish, which I was just reading about here, and this literally means "a dismal animal death on you" but actually communicates something like "you should spend the rest of your tiny life in a Colorado feedlot, then be herded off to some nonunion slaughterhouse to be turned, painfully, into fast-food burgers for one of the less prominent chains" (or simply, drop dead).

The NYT article is about a new book on the Yiddish language and culture by Michael Wex, a Yiddish translator, university teacher, novelist and stand-up comic (so can he do some stand up comedy in class or his students have to go see him in whatever place he's performing?). It sounds like an interesting language, especially that the author describes it as "a language in which you can't open your mouth without finding out that, no matter what you're saying, you're saying it wrong". I guess this relieves the pressure off the learning process.

Anyway, if you happen to be fed up with my interest in languages, I can help. You can simply say in Yiddish:

A: (frowning) HAK MIR NISHT KEN TSHAYNIK

which literally means: 'don't knock me a teakettle'

but you actually mean: 'you don't have to shut up completely, but I'd really appreciate it if you'd stop rattling on about the same damned thing all the time'

Hey, you don't have to shout.. :)

Mai

happy IVGLDSW day

I had this email today:

Today is International Very Good Looking, Damn Smart Woman's Day, so please send this message to someone you think fits this description. And remeber this motto to live by: Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, wine in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO what a ride!

I love the chocolate part, that's the way to go :)

But the best part of the email is the quotation at the end:

"A chicken is a device created by an egg to produce another egg" Samuel Butler

There you go, problem solved.

Mai
(a very good looking, damn smart woman who had this email from another very good looking, damn smart woman who happens to be Mai too, I knew this name is special ;-) )

the after(weekend)life

Do you know what is the bad thing about spending a very nice weekend at a house warming party on saturday and meeting a very interesting bunch of egyptians studying/living in London and even sleeping over and chatting some more till sunday afternoon?

It's leaving..

Shepherd, what ails thee, then?
Sheperd, why mute?
Forth with thy joyous song!
Forth with thy flute!
Tempts not the revel blithe?
Lure not their cries?
Glow not their shoulders smooth?
Melt not their eyes?
Is not, on cheeks like those,
Lovely the flush?
- Ah, so the quiet was!
So was the hush!

Matthew Arnold, "Bacchanalia"

Mai

linguistic insomnia

I still can't sleep. Since the movie ended, I have been drinking coffee (maybe that's why I can't sleep?), working a bit, downloading songs for a while, and then listening to the songs I downloaded :) Before forcing myself into bed I thought I'd let you chew on this for a while:

"Not only are natural languages social institutions, they are social institutions." H. K. Wettsein, 1984.

I like the way he puts it, because, you see, languages are not only social but cognitive instit... good night.

Mai

egypt is in danger!!

Relax.. it's a game :) I just found out that there is a new game on yahoo with the following description:

"Egypt is in danger ! Isis, the mysterious Goddess has asked for your help against evildoers, if you fail, all of Egypt will be cursed! Aim true and align together balls of the same color in groups of 3 or more. Above all, don’t let them reach the pyramid, and collect the most bonuses possible."

Isn't that interesting? ancient Egypt, goddesses, curses, pyramids.. it all adds up!! Oh, and the name of the game is Luxor. Hey, don't we have a copyright of this name or what?

p.s.
i am watching "Scent of a Woman" on tv. isn't it a great movie? i love the tango scene.. howaaa :)

Mai

go figure

A: Go ....... (inaudible)
B: Go where?
A: Go figure
B: What figure?
A: grrr...

My point is "go figure" is an idiomatic expression in English which has a meaning as a whole not predictable from its individual parts, and which would be interesting to see how to translate it. I thought of that because 10 minutes ago I was bored and decided to spend some time playing around online. So I got into Google language tools and started translating my blog page into different languages to see how it would look like. I have to say seeing my blog in Chinese is very.. impressive. Anyway, I was reading my blog in Spanish when I started paying attention to the translation of "go figure" that I wrote in yesterday's long post. So, the translations were as follows:

"Va la figura" (Spanish/Italian)

"Disparaissent la figure" (French)

"Gehen Abbildung" (German)

Now, in Spanish (and Italian) that doesn't make any sense because it's just the literal translation of the expression, and, as far as I remember French, this is no good either (and an interesting choice of verb, I might add). And although I have no idea what the German one says, it just can't be right :) This is of course typical of any automatic translation system, idiomatic expressions like that always remain a problem. So what we need is an equivalent expression of "go figure" that would convey the same meaning in these languages. Actually, when I come to think of it, it's rather hard too to find an Arabic equivalent for this expression. Ideas, anyone, any language?

p.s.
just read about this new release The Handbook of Bloggers and Cyber-dissidents. So what exactly do bloggers and cyber-dissidents have in common (besides the web thing)? actually, what is a cyber-dissident?

Mai

a year younger

Hey, just now, the lady working at the computer center thought I was a first-year student and she even said I look like I am 19 :) It's probably because they only see first-year students these days, but I don't care.. this morning I was 20 and now I am 19. Do you think maybe linguistics can make you look younger? :)

Mai

doing a phd in linguistics from different points of view

So apparently there are different points of view here, as you have probably seen from the comments: some think that doing a PhD in linguistics is very interesting, and some think it's a mistake. Obviously it wont help if I start telling you how linguists analyse the meaning of the word "some" in the previous sentence :) In the spirit of this debate, I actually had quite interesting reactions today from people I've met on campus since it's the beginning of the term and it's getting busy around here. Again the reactions varied: one thought that it was impressive that I have the guts to do it, while another commented that "it's probably a lonely line of work". Well, it will make a lot of sense to know that the first was a young British undergrad just starting her first year of studies (and who actually guessed that I am 20 years old, very flattering but a bit too wild), while the second was a bitter, overworked Italian lady in her second year of a part-time PGC who kept on whining for 10 minutes about how hard it is to study and work at the same time. Go figure :)

Anyway, whatever other people think, I believe that doing a PhD in linguistics, like every thing else in life, has its ups and downs, but when it's up, it can be real fun. Plus I won't be doing it in the first place if I didn't enjoy it. So where am I now exactly on the ups-downs scale? Well, given that I am in my first year, I am still leaning towards the up side. Or am I really? You see, one thing I didn't tell you about doing a PhD in linguistics is that you tend to be confused about lots of things, or did I tell you that already? ;-)

Mai

i am still enthusiastic

Of course I am, it's been only 2 days :) I was at TP today since early morning, with a very heavy backpack carrying my laptop and papers and books and everything, planning on a long productive day when I discovered that I forgot the stupid adaptor. Of course I didn't think of it as my fault and kept thinking why can't this country use the normal 2-pin plugs like the rest of the world? :) Anyway, I worked on my laptop till the battery died and then went on to read a few things under my spooky tree.

To spare you the philosophical mumbo jumbo about reference and language, let me just tell you that the main example in one of the articles I was reading today, was about someone called Ahern, an insane historian who believes he is Charles de Gaulle and then says in a class: "I marched triumphantly into Paris" so the question is should we analyse the pronoun "I" here as referring to the deranged Mr. Ahern or to refer to de Gaulle. "What kind of an example is this?", you're saying? My thoughts exactly. Well.. I guess the answer is, no one said doing a PhD in linguistics is going to be easy.

Oh, and I am still enthusiastic :)

Mai

wow

I just came back half an hour ago and here it is: personally and academically this was one of the best experiences I ever had. The conference was great, the presentations were great, and the venue was.. well, great. To be more specific, on the academic level, it was very useful to listen and learn from the presentations and discussions. With the exception of two presentations which I didn't really get (one on mental verbs in children's language and another on logical concepts, they sound complicated, don't they?), the topics presented were very interesting, even if some were not directly related to my work. From the really deep thoughts on 'conventional meaning' and 'concepts' to the more practical analyses of metaphors and idioms in corpora, to the more cute insights on the use of 'uh' and 'um' in everyday language (esp. when you have George Bush as an example :) ), it was all very thought-provoking. And of course it was nice to actually see the faces behind the names I read on books covers many times before.

And on the personal level, well.. let me just say that a certain someone told me that a certain someone told her that he is pleased with my work so far :), and then this second certain someone told me that when another certain someone says in an email that my proposal is excellent he really means it :) How about that for reference assingment? :) I am just really excited about all this :)

Finally, I really enjoyed the Lodge a lot, the view and the gardens were amazing, and as a plus the weather was perfect for going on short walks. And let me tell you that walking around those gardens listening to Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata just gives a whole new meaning to (probably an ad hoc concept of) the word 'serenity'.

Ok, so now it's time to translate all this excitement to work. And I can surely say that I have both the psychological enthusiasm and the mental database to drive me on.

Mai

on the move

So, I am on the move again tomorrow in another quest for knowledge. And yes, I have to pack again, but not much this time since it's just 2 and a half days (of course how you define 'much' is relative, esp. for us girls :) ).

What makes this conference extra special is the amazing venue, Cumberland Lodge, check out its website and you'll get the picture (hope I can get more pictures while I am there). I mean, when you read on the website the words "Queen" and "Shakespeare" you know it's going to be great. But of course, let's not forget the academic reasons for going there in the first place, where some of the biggest names in the linguistic society will be under the same roof. But to tell you the truth, as much as I look forward to this, I hope I wont get confused with all the ideas that will be flying around. I'll tell you all about it when I come back.

Mai

two tickets and a cramp

I am not claiming to be athletic or anything, but I had a painful cramp while I was walking down Snake's Lane. After resting for a while, I had to carry on and I went all the way to Waterloo station to get train tickets for this conference I am going to on Friday. I even had a little walk around the area, which now I realise was a stupid idea. So all I need now is to lie on the couch for the rest of the day.

p.s.

according to NYT, Bush is quoted saying:

"Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government, and to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility."

while he's on the topic of responsibility, can he ever say:

"The deadly bombings in Iraq and the hundreds of innocent people dying every day expose serious problems in our response capability to bring peace to this country that we invaded looking for invisible WMDs, and to the extent that the federal government screwed up big time, I take responsibility."

yeh, right..

Mai

euro english

The European Commission has just announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the European Union rather than German, which was the other possibility. As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement and has accepted a 5- year phase-in plan that would become known as "Euro-English". In the first year, "s" will replace the soft "c". Sertainly, this will make the sivil servants jump with joy. The hard "c" will be dropped in favour of "k". This should klear up konfusion, and keyboards kan have one less letter. There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome "ph" will be replaced with"f". This will make words like fotograf 20% shorter. In the 3rd year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horibl mes of the silent "e" in the languag is disgrasful and it should go away. By the 4th yer people wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing "th" with "z" and "w" with "v". During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary "o" kan be dropd from vords containing "ou" and after ziz fifz yer, ve vil hav a reil sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubl or difikultis and evri vun vil find it ezi tu understand ech oza. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali kum tru. Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German like zey vunted in ze forst plas.

I got this in an email :) And I have to admit, the only time I like German is when I hear German-like English.

Mai

my 'fearless' youth

A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,
While from the bounded level of our mind
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind

Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism

Mai

yaaaaaaaaaaaaay?!!!

England has won The Ashes after 18 years.. yaaaaaaaaaaaay.

Wait a minute.. I don't understand how cricket is played, I don't know why it is called 'the ashes', I am not sure if a 'wicket' equals a 'goal' or not, and I have no idea why cricket fans were singing for Jerusalem.

Ok, never mind then :)

Mai

my Eminem dilemma

Yeh, believe it or not I actually can't make up my mind how to describe the latest Eminem 'fascinating' song I heard. The problem starts right with the title "Ass like that" and goes all the way through the "doings" and the "chongs" and all the other rhyming nonsense. So is it more of a funny song or is it more disgusting or is it just a totally meaningless thing that is not worth listening to not to mention blog about? Maybe there is a message in repeating "I joke I joke I kid I kid"? hmm.. the only true message I see in this song is semantically encoded in the word "psych", better still when you add an "o" at the end :)

Mai

by the way..

As I was forced by the spam attack to change something in the settings (as you will notice when you post a comment), I also thought of doing some changes in the sidebar. I just added a few links here and there, and categorised them. Hope you'll find them interesting.

Mai

you can blog or you can vlog

Ok, I admit.. I didn't know there is such a word as 'vlog' until recently, mmm... very recently. In case you are lagging behind in the world of high-tech communication like me, 'vlogging' is 'video blogging'. But what puzzles me now is there is also the term 'photo blogging', so can't we say 'phlog'? In this way we will be preserving a trend that can become handy in future developments when, say, we will be 'slogging' as in 'space blogging' or even 'mlogging' as in 'mind blogging'.

Oh I can't wait to reach the time when I can mlog your head off, literally :)

Mai

ever wondered..?

While it's pouring outside, let me tell you about the frequency of names of days in English. According to the British National Corpus (100 million words of English), the most frequently mentioned days are (occurrences per million words):

1. Sunday 93
2. Saturday 83
3. Friday 55
4. Monday 53
5. Wednesday 44
6. Thursday 37
7. Tuesday 36

So, it seems that there is an understandable appreciation of the weekend days, an expected attention to the first and last working days, and a special place for the middle of the week. And if saying the words tells us anything about the view of the world, then we can say that people are apparently more dedicated to their leisure time than their work time :) People mention Sundays and Saturdays frequently when planning their outings and short breaks, and they probably mention Fridays and Mondays often in excitement, for the former, and in agony, for the latter, as they are discussing their potential plans, again, for the next weekend. Then there is an apparent peak at Wednesday since it's the middle of the week and a hopeful vantage point to look forward to the weekend coming soon. Thursday falls behind a bit because it's when people are probably too tired to be enthusiastic about anything, while Tuesday is the worst day of the week since it's all about unfinished work from Monday when people are too busy to think about the weekend at all.

Of course, if it wasn't a Saturday today, I wouldn't be blogging about this in the first place. Don't you just love weekends? :)

Mai

breaking news, breaking news

Landslide win for Egyptian leader (bbc), le président Hosni Moubarak a remporté la première élection présidentielle multipartite d'Egypte avec 88,5 % des voix (le monde), sin embargo, la participación ha sido de las más bajas de la historia de Egipto, de solo un 23% del electorado (el mundo).

So.. ain't "democracy" dandy?

Mai

art in an unlikely place

This graffiti is done by British artist Banksy on the Israeli Wall imprisoning the Palestinians in their own land. What do you think of the idea? Personally, I believe that nothing expresses unjustness (or justness), pain (or joy) , resentment (or excitement) like art. On the other hand, there is this point of view:

Old Palestinian man: You paint the wall, you make it look beautiful.
Banksy: Thanks
Old Palestinian man: We don't want it to be beautiful, we hate this wall, go home.

You can find more pictures on Banksy's website and you can read more about this here.

Mai

Joey, Ross and Egypt's elections

I remebered one episode of Friends when Joey and Ross were having an argument and Ross used the " " hand sign (what I call the two-finger two-finger sign) obviously to add a certain connotation to a word, then Joey said "ok, when people do that, I don't really get it". Actually I think people sometimes get this sign differently, which is a matter of pragmatic interest of course. Let's try this example:

Today is a "historical" day in Egypt because we have presidential "elections" where Egyptians actually get to "choose" between different people for the first time since the "glorious" 1952 revolution.

So, how do the adjectives, verbs and nouns between inverted commas affect your interpretation of this utterance? If you are still unsure, wait till the results are out and you'll know "what I mean".

Mai

under the spooky tree

I tried to spend some time today in the visiting lecturer's room but that turned out to be a bad idea. The computer is slow, and the room is literally and figuratively suffocating. So I took my things and went to sit under the spooky tree (I don't remember if I told you this before, but one day Billy and I were sitting on a bench facing that tree and Billy made the perceptive comment that this tree is making a scary face at us :) I made a point of not sitting under its big open mouth, just in case :) ). This is definitely a much better setting, with the trees and the lake, but the only problem is I keep getting distracted by my ipod. Like when Pink Floyd start singing "High Hopes" and say:

Encumbered forever by desire and ambition
There's a hunger still unsatisfied
Our weary eyes still stray to the horizon
Though down this road we've been so many times

The grass was greener
The light was brighter
The taste was sweeter
The nights of wonder
With friends surrounded
The dawn mist glowing
The water flowing
The endless river
Forever and ever

you have to stop reading and just lay back and listen, and sing along, and think. Well.. I was just asking for it really, I am not exactly in the mood of complete focus yet. At least I have 'high hopes'.

Oh, and the first thing I started reading under the spooky tree was a Guardian article Billy gave me today. It's about how to establish a good student-supervisor relationship. It is actually useful, with some nice pointers and very important tips like "do not become romantically involved with your supervisor". Ok then.. :)))))))))

Anyway, I decided that tomorrow I will finish all the unpacking and sort out my stuff. It's messy and I'm getting sick of it, plus I need some order around here to get going on work again. So wish me luck.

Mai

back on track

And I am blogging from Trent Park again. It's good to be back to the great view and the nice walk. The only bad thing today is when I discovered that we don't have a graduate room anymore, apparently they are setting up a new one, but where or when, no one knows. So if anyone needs me, I'll be sitting under a tree somewhere.. just yell maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaai :)

To get right back into business, I got a book from the library today that I didn't know was here before (it must be newly purchased, although it's a 1999 publication, since I am the first one to borrow it). I am just starting it, but right in the introduction I found this very nice comment about use of the word " theory" that sometimes you just feel like finding an alternative for. So the author Ken Turner says in a footnote:

"If the word 'theory' here and elsewhere in what follows seems to overdignify the positions labeled then the Kripke Strategy is recommended: Replace the word 'theory' with the word 'picture'." (p. 2)

How about that? Ok.. I better go think of a couple of 'pictures' because not all 'pictures' are equally clear and when you take one 'picture' and find it a bit hazy then try to make your own 'picture' you find out that you still need to compare 'pictures' to decide on the perfect one. Got the 'picture'? :)

p.s.
i found a weird comment on the previous post that is just commercial. are they advertising on blogs now? anyway, i deleted it.

Mai

home I back tired is feeling

This what would the Pirahã probably say in their language.. apparently they are nice Amazonian people who talk, hum, yell, sing and whistle to communicate but don't have numbers, colour words or comparatives. I knew those and other discovery-channel-like things about Pirahã people and language at the conference I just returned from. The American linguist who lived with them for 7 years had all sorts of nice stories about them, in addition to the linguistic stuff, but I guess one of the nicest is when they asked him "do Americans die?" since he looked old to them. Interestingly, the Pirahã have no concept of fiction but have the ability to lie and joke, and they would be disoriented if they don't know where the river is but can accept the idea of talking over the phone! Billy suggested that maybe they're not human :) Personally, I think I should go there on a linguistic mission to verify the data known about them, and maybe have a couple of pictures of an anaconda :)

Anyway, here I am again, just coming back, hopping on trains, dragging a bag, and returning to an empty flat in a deja vous kind of experience where you don't know exactly if you're happy or sad. The conference itself was very good. I got to attend presentations in many areas of linguistics and they all confirmed my 'liking' of pragmatics, my 'disliking' of syntax and my 'half-liking' of phonology. I also got to meet new people, and as a plus I got to hear some Egyptian Arabic at one presentation today and speak some Arabic with a Syrian PhD student. But I guess the best part was last night, when I was walking around the gardens, then lying down on the grass looking at the stars, and listening to music at 1 am for an hour. You know what, we never spend enough time looking at the stars.. aren't they amazing?

So, the question is: now what? Well, lots of things to do. The headlines: Get Back To Thesis Work and Do The Stupid Unpacking.

Right now, I am too physically and mentally worn out to do anything, even prepare dinner.

Mai