the ALI system :)

Well, before you start picturing Ali doing something of a system, this has nothing to do with him :) But the ALI system does exist.. it's the Arabic Language Interactive system. I don't know how good it is but I thought it might be useful for some.. plus, I got a kick out of the name :)

I love the ALI system :)

Mai

ali-g and noam chomsk-y

Billy posted this on his blog, it's hilarious.. check it out.

Mai

100% english, 50% racist?

Monday night, there was this program "100% English" on Channel 4. I don't know if other people who watched it felt the same uneasiness that I felt. Let me give you an idea what it was about. Basically, it was posing the question whether there are people who are 100% English through dealing with 8 case studies and a sophisticated DNA test to breakdown their ethnic background. I'm not against the idea of being proud of your ethniciy, but I just couldn't help feeling that there were very strong racist undertones. And this got me thinking, "so what's really the point of this show anyway?" Does it just prove that some people who might have thought they are purely English have been living a lie and shows them how wrong they were through taking this DNA test which, I might add, we have not been told how reliable it is or how reliable are its interpretations by the geneticist they used whom they didn't even mention his/her name? Or does the program have a hidden agenda? Well, I have to say that, against the background of the heated debates about multicultural Britain recently, this program was doing a little more than promoting xenophobia. The worst case was that old lady from Kent who haven't been to London since the sixties (and never had a spring roll which turned out to be ironic since some of her ethnic origin turned out to be Chinese). I tried to sympathize with her but she was openly saying that she hates the fact that all those 'other' people are filling her country. When she went to see the neighbourhood where her family's old shop was and saw that one building was replaced by a mosque and said "how terrible", I was gobsmacked. "Why do you have to drag religion into this?", I thought. Again the media very cleverly managed to impose the idea that it's Muslims who are the source of trouble. It's really sad. But as I said, after watching the program I tried to put myslef in the same position. What if Cairo became overcrowded with people from other countries, other cultures and other faiths, wouldn't it bother me? Well, to be honest, I think it would a little bit. So I guess the question now is: does 100% tolerance really exist?

Overall, I think this program has revealed that everyone has his own little prejudices, whether we acknowledge it or not. But the point will always be, how justified are those prejudices? I mean, you should have seen the faces of the people on this show when they were told about their ethnic breakdown which includes a class called "MiddleEastern". I bet when those people heard this, images of backward war-stricken poorly-dressed Arab terrorists with guns in their hands sprung to their minds. This is the sad state of the world we are living in.

p.s.
if you are by any chance tempted to take this DNA test, check this out.

Mai

6 months anniversary

I really can't believe that I've been married for 6 months.. it feels like only last week we got married and only yesterday we were on our honeymoon.. wow, time flies.. but, as we say in Egypt, only happy times pass by quickly.

Our celebration this time had to be very limited due to career-related issues (i.e. Ali has an exam). So there were no fancy meals or romantic outings.. but we did celebrate in a very special place, our own home.. our own home that we chose together and loved together after viewing it twice.. our home that we furnished together piece by piece and still think together of what else we need to put here and there.. our home that we spent one night in after being married for 2 days and slept on a mattress on the floor.. I loved our quiet celebration at home..

And in order to cheer Ali up from the boring mood of studying and to express what I really think about my husband I love, I gave him a very nice card, and with the card came the thing you see him wearing in this picture.



Perhaps a close up will make things clearer:


Happy anniversary Ali.. looking forward to our first year anniversary :)

Mai

hmmm... interesting

I just had a CfP for a conference on "Globalisation and Writing". It started like this:

"We live in interesting times.."

Well.. things looking good, yep, it's good to know that I'm living in an interesting time.. I have to say though that I've always wished to live in another time.. if I can only go back a limited number of years, I would definitely want to live in the 60s.. if my time machine is unstoppable, then I would defenitely go to the time of the pharoas and preferrably be a queen :) Anyway, let's get back to the conference.. so the email goes on to say:

"In the last twenty-five years neoliberalism and globalisation have transformed the world. People live under the shadows of climate change, wars, AIDS and poverty."

Hello.. not exactly my idea of interesting. I want my time machine.

Mai

is bush a normal, educated human being?

This is interesting to read, John Sowa analyses Bush's language:

George W. is an interesting example of the issues involved in
characterizing a dialect. He was born in Connecticut, went
to prep school and college in Connecticut, went to Harvard
Business School, and spent his summers in Maine. Later he
tried to run for Congress in Texas and lost because he sounded
like a Connecticut Yankee.

So he hired a Texan to teach him how to say "bidness" and
some Bible Belters to teach him how to talk "Christian".
Meanwhile, he has Karl Rove telling him what words and
phrases to use and avoid.

As a result, he sounds as if he's listening to an internal
tape in one dialect and trying to do a simultaneous translation
to another. (Some people have suggested that it's not a tape,
but an actual radio transmission from Karl Rove.)

His brother Jeb, by contrast, talks like a normal, educated
human being. Instead of running for office in Texas, Jeb
went to Florida, where a Connecticut accent is almost
indistinguishable from a southern Florida accent (as opposed
to northern Florida, which is part of the "Deep South").

For me, the inevitable conclusion is that Bush is not a normal, educated human being. Oh, who am I kidding, we all knew that already :)

Mai

test your english

A recent debate on the Corpora list was discussing the differences between British and American English. It started when someone was asking if there is a tool to do automatic conversion of texts/words from British English to American English and vice versa. An important point is that the differences between the two varieties extends beyond the well known spelling differences (eg. bahaviour vs. behavior, centre vs. center). The more interesting, and perhaps less known, differences are in fact lexical, grammatical and idiomatic. I thought it would be nice to mention some of the examples and to.. well, test your English. So which of those words/constructions are British and which are American?

• lift vs. elevator
• "do you have" vs. "have you got"
• "the government is" vs. "the government are"
• "half four" vs. "4:30"
• "go to the hospital" vs. "go to hospital"
• "commoner" vs. "more common"
• "her skin has spots on it" vs. "her skin has spots on"

Of course if you think that the answers are straightforward, well.. think again.

Mai

wiki wiki

This is a Wiki for computational linguistics. It just started but I think it would be a good source of all sorts of information about computational linguistics. Check it out.

Mai

chacarron

bede de bede de bededidi de bede de bede bededidi de, chacarron chacarron, debididi de... bla bla bla yata yata yata...

check it out: Chacarron
sometimes you just want to enjoy nonsense.. :)

Mai