twincityhacker

I was writing a comment, and I used "you" to refer to two people. I love that English can do that, and it's fascinating informal English is losing single/plural distinction in it's pronouns.

I also love washing machines and dryers today. I can be productive even when I'm taking a nap!

My presentation went well. Judging from the questions in class and talking with the professor afterwords, I think my biggest problems was that I dumped too much information too quickly and I'm not very good at transcription.

Also during the presentation, the professor made the comment that it was interesting choice of attempting to find regularity in an area that seemingly had none. Which is odd, because I think one of the bedrock assumptions of science was to look into chaos and see the order in it.

I thought I did 1000x better than the guy that went after me, because he made the unfortunate choice to try to condense an explanation predictive English syllable structure in 15 minutes. And while portions of my discussion were speculative and my data sheet had errors, his data sheet was flatly contradictory.

That night Margo wanted us to meet and greet her girlfriend, who was flying in for spring break. I thought we were meeting at the Runcible Spoon an hour earlier than we were actually going to, so I had some spare time. Since Vintage Phoenix ( the comic book shop ) and Boxcar Books are both on 6th street, and indeed Boxcar Books is right next door to the Runcible Spoon I poked about in those two stores.

I was still early for the meeting, but B had also arrived early so I chilled with her on the back porch of the restaurant while we waited for Margo and the guest of honor Sarah. Since I was bundled up, I was just slightly frozen from the chin to where my trusty IU ( ball cap ) hat perched.

It went from us two to about ten very quickly, and I had a great time. I went halfvies with Becca, so we shared our ravioli and breakfast sandwich. It was all very good. The company was much better - though my slice of apple pie, which I very pointedly shared only a bite of with Athena, was one of the most delicious things I have ever tasted.

After paid my bill, I got trapped next to the counter by the other girls, so I had to wait until everyone else filled out -- and then ended up at Becky's to hang out as everyone thought I was going anyway. Also good time, as there was impromptu yoga and the retelling of relationship drama which explained some awkwardness that was bubbling though dinner. We also played I never, which is a joke for me because I never do anything so it became a running gag when people said something really outrageous was that I was finally taking a sip.

Since I hadn't slept in about thirty hours I was a wee-bit silly that also had people asking what the hell was in Becky's water. As I was a bit stiff and sitting up straight hurts my back, I ended upside down on the counch and so on.

In the end, had a good time but didn't sleep for thirty nine hours. I was going to do laundry, but I took a nap as soon as I got home instead, so my sleep total is about 14 hours so far.

I'm getting to the point where I can turn in most of the books I have checked out from the library. I have most of the paper written, but I need to put down the citations and beta the hell out of it. Comparing my paper to the dozens of drafts I drew up, my original effort would have netted me a small book.

Also, I have a bunch more books I have checked out for a completely different project. It's still on Welsh so now I have about half of the IU libraries books about the Welsh language living in my room. Only now it's books on grammar and initial consonant mutation and not social history books.

OH! And I'm giving a 20 minute presentation on verb inflection soon. So I have word lists of English verbs lying around too. But it's become clear to me I really love linguistics since I don't hate what I'm doing even though I'm thinking about it all the time. I'm still not sure what I can do with a linguistics degree, but I'm not regretting taking one.

The day did not continue to get better.

Linguistic structures will not be canceled, because it's mostly filled with grad students. I still have to learn the entire hiragana system in two weeks. But since I had my copy sheets out before my GLU meeting, someone who took Japanese kindly pronounced a few characters and I was able to note down the pronunciation in IPA, which makes things easier. Especially since the professor wrote "r = D, like in pity" and I finally realized it was a flap he was talking about. I'm still freaked out about the class, but not as much as I was this afternoon.

So it's been a nerve wracking day. I have some tea, and I'll watch Rachel, then go to bed. Considering an hour ago, that list included "taking a xanax and curling up in my duvet" I'm doing better.

I was watching bits of John McCain speaking at the third presidential debate and a rally he held in Indianapolis on election day for a group project on discourse during the presidential race. Other people are doing Obama, Biden, and Palin - I volunteered for McCain so I wouldn't get stuck with Palin.

It's been much easier doing this project after the race ended. I have no desire to push my fist though the screen into someone's face!

The project, btw, is to list out when someone uses -ing or -in'. It took a half hour of speech to use 50 tokens of ing or 'in, and seven of those were -in'. And five of those occurrences were in the debate.

By the time I finish this languages of the world project, I'm either going to really hate or really love Welsh and the other Celtic languages that survived into the first millennium. My project is a study into the status of Welsh and comparing it to the other Celtic languages to see how the status got to be that way.

I know for the "other Celtic languages" I'm going to be comparing Welsh to Cornish, Manx, and Gaelic as they were conquered by the same people ( or the descendents of the same people at least ) and are still politically tied to the same people. I'm not sure about whether to include Irish, and Breton is even more uncertain.

At the very least I'm learning lots of colorful turns of phrase in Welsh, such as "un o dafodieithoedd Datguddiad Duw" which means "one of the dialects of God's Revelation." Geraint H. Jenkkins edited a series of books on the status of Welsh from the Middle Ages to now, and is fond of quoting the sources directly and following it with an translation.

Yesterday I checked out a book on Anglo-Saxon magic. It's exactly the sort of book I'd been looking for on region/magic in the British Isles: a book saying what people during a ceriten period did, or thought-out conjectures that's based on archaeological sources and more-or-less first hand sources.

Though there is a occasional snigger when it comes to some of the charms. There's a few where the writer mentions how obvious it is that the enchanter swapped out verbal references to a pagan god to Jesus. I say pagen, since as long as the enchanter got the results they were looking for they'd borrow from anywhere so it would be hard to pin it down to just one pantheon: Roman, Greek, Hindu, Arabian, Jewish, ect.

It's also interesting from an lingustic perspective, because there's a very time-lapse photography feel to it with the enchantments running from Old High German to Middle English.

Does anyone want to volunteer to be part of my phonology project? All you would have to do would be to record yourself reading a list of words that I'll be putting up in the next few days, and post the recording where I can get at it.

I have found the One True Evil Of word processes:

Try writing phonetic transcriptions. It's bad enough that I have trouble thinking of the correct character in the first transcription system I learned, but now I can't even find the symbols for a unstressed u or a open o. *head desk*

And this is even with the font specifically - -ic to -ical! - made to write phonetic transcriptions with! So I'm cutting and pasting the damm things from a unicode site, as at least I know that the characters are supported, because I just love my rhotacized schwa. (&025A;, if you're wondering what it looks like.)

It's like learning to type all over again. And that sucked, because I kept losing keys and for instance was not able to locate where the c or the the o key was until someone pointed it out to me. Then I promptly lost another key and had to start hunting that one.

Did I mention it snowed here the other day? And it's even sort of sticking, but it's just a light dusting. But you can distinctly see where the steam pipes run under the sidewalks, as there's white stuff on the ground and then there's a big rectangular swatch that is just wet. = )

I DO NOT SAY POP, BITCH! Other than THAT WORD THAT SHALL NOT BE NAMED, I'm still a little confused. Because... yeah. I lived three whole years in the Upper Midwest, and I didn't think it had that much effect on my speech. Though my accent changes randomly and without warning, so that may be why. Uhm, yeah. Ethics got axed today because the lecturer was voicelss, and I ache all over from fencing. Time for supper! EDIT: And I just got invited to join the Facebook group for my graduation class. IN ALTOONA. By Sasha. WTF Universe? I'm trying to get back as fast as I can, okay?

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Inland North You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop."
Philadelphia
The Northeast
The South
The Midland
North Central
The West
Boston
What American accent do you have?