When I was in Germany a few months ago, I bought a German-English dictionary. Foolishly, I didn’t look inside it very carefully, and therefore didn’t notice that it has a pretty fatal flaw: it doesn’t include the genders of any nouns, and as such is only useful for fluent German speakers. WTF? If you have any use for it, let me know. Information about it is available at amazon.de.
I found two interesting sites today. www.etymonline.com has information about the etymology of many English words. A similar site, etimologias.dechile.net is similar in intent, but for Spanish instead.
When writing is translated to English and where credit is given, the credit is usually phrased similar to this: “translated from the Japanese by Jay Rubin”.
Why the “the”? Nobody says “I speak the Japanese”. Is the word “language” implicit? That is, should it be read as “translated from the Japanese [language] by Jay Rubin”? Or could the word “original” be implicit? Or is it a holdover from the past when the definite article was used more often? (Was the definite article even used more often in English in the past?) I have no idea; googling this is proving to be difficult.
I have not read this book. However, due to reasons I’d rather not get into, I’ve found myself with a second copy of it. It’s a mass market paperback, brand new, Barnes & Noble imprint.
If you’re in Mexico and want it, let me know and the next time we see each other I’ll bring it along.
If you’re in the US and want it, don’t be such a cheapskate — it costs under four bucks. Go buy it yourself.
A blog I enjoy reading, Separated by a Common Language, today linked to a blog of similar interest, English, Jack. Interesting stuff.
I particularly liked this post, largely because of its conclusion, which is how I feel about a lot of stuff that ends up being wrongly censored:
I can’t say I find it offensive, but it does strike me as gratuitous and puerile.
That is a concise way of saying something that I wrote years ago: “I think Howard Stern’s radio program sucks. It’s not offensive, it’s not obscene, and it’s not indecent, but it is boring and trite. I didn’t even like it when I was in high school.”
Me gustaría volver a leer la revista The New Yorker. ¿Alguién sabe si se vende en México, y dónde?
Introducción a la literatura norteamericana by Jorge Luis Borges. Emecé.
A review of Northamerican literature, up to 1970 or so. Borges mentions several authors that I haven’t read and probably should.
I wonder if this book was ever translated into English.
The book has lots of errors; many English words and placenames are misspelt. I like to think the errors are due to the editor or publisher, not Borges, who learned English in his childhood and presumably wouldn’t have made such mistakes. I made a list of all the errors I noticed, and plan to send Emecé mail. Pedantic mail.
The chapter on Native American literature seems a bit forced. Political correctness in Borges - who’d have guessed? But then again, I usually take a dim view towards poetry. And it’s not all political correctness; Borges calls the Indians los pieles rojas (redskins).
Not the greatest of Borges’ works by any stretch, but it was quite cheap at the Gandhi in Querétaro. And more Borges of course looks good on the bookshelf.
Well, do you?
JB: I still think “to steal” and “theft” are the wrong words to use. Regardless of whether illegal copying is morally wrong or right, it isn’t really stealing in the traditional sense.
Calling it stealing is good for the MPAA and RIAA: simple enough for anybody to understand, and it frames the discussion in their terms. I don’t think that’s good for anybody else.
We need a non-loaded term to describe illegal copying. Maybe “illegal copying” is sufficient, or maybe we can come up with something more succinct. I don’t know. But I do know that as long as everybody calls it stealing, which it isn’t, copyright law will never be satisfactorally reformed.
Are the words querer and care derived from a common root?
“Te quiero” means “I like/love/care for you”.
“¿Quieres un café?” can be translated to “Care for a coffee?”
I’ve complained before about bookstores in Mexico. I’ll try not to complain today. I read Spanish a lot faster than I once did, I guess. I also have a crapload of unread books in English, so I’m not so desperate to buy new ones. Although that doesn’t seem to stop me from going a bit crazy whenever I’m in a bookstore north of the Rio Grande Bravo.
Some bookstores, such as El Sotano on Miguel Angel de Quevedo, organize books by publisher. This has a few interesting effects.
Other authors are published by various publishing houses. Cervantes’ work has long since fallen into the public domain, so basically anybody is free to publish it, and, being Cervantes, lots of people do. So if you want to buy Don Quijote, what do you do? You have to check out upwards of half a dozen editions, located more or less randomly throughout the store, and either take notes or hope you can remember things like each edition’s price, size of print, whether it’s hardcover or trade paperback or mass market paperback, whether you think it looks attractive, how long you think it’ll last before falling apart, and so on.
I think the second two outweigh the first in importance if not in length describing them.
One new bookstore has a surprisingly large selection of books in French. Supposedly, a comparable selection of books in English and in German and/or Italian (reports vary) is coming. If true, it’ll be awesome. Already, the place gives Gandhi a run for its money; when polyglottic, it will 0wn.
[0] Editorial Diana’s editions of García Márquez’ books are unusual. They’re printed on nice paper, in big, attractive fonts, and are generally a pleasure to read. However, the covers of the books often contain no information other than the author and the title, and are butt ugly to boot! Published by a different publisher, the back of a GGM book might look like this:
“Esta obra - la más famosa de García Márquez - cuenta la historia de una familia durante un siglo de isolación.
‘la neta del pinche planeta güey !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’ - El Naco Times”
. Published by Diana, the back cover of a GGM book looks like this:
“”
.
I guess that what happens when an author’s reputation precedes him to to such a large extent, but it’s still strange. I’ve never seen it with any other publisher / author combination.
Here’s a question I’ve been pondering for a few days, and I’m curious if anybody in my large (not likely) and globally distributed (this is more likely) readership has any insight.
A lot of writing styleguides suggest that it’s usually better to use a word of Germanic origin rather than one of Latin origin.
The Economist Style Guide is one example (I’m not sure what language “following” ultimately derives from, but all the rest are definitely Germanic vs Latin). Other style guides offer similar advice.
I think it’s a good rule, but why? Is it just because the Germanic words tend to be shorter and that, all else being equal, saying something in fewer and/or shorter words leads to clearer writing? Or is there something else going on that I’m missing?
Any thoughts? Let me know.
Ton(ne)s of fun, if you’re into this sort of thing.
On a somewhat related note, I’ve heard and read that until relatively recently French and German were the most common second languages to be taught in Mexico, just as they were in the United States. Today, the most commonly taught second languages in Mexico and the US are English and Spanish, respectively. I don’t know why.
I’m not a racist, nor am I a racist protectionist, nor am I
racist completely economically ignorant.
But I don’t like being lied to.
So I was rather annoyed when my call to IBM hardware support center (something
in my laptop’s video recently crapped out, you see) in “Atlanta, Georgia” was
answered by someone with a very thick Indian accent.
Still, as I said, I’m not racist, and I have nothing against Indian people.
I am, however, regionist. So, in that respect, not having to talk to a
Southerner was a pleasant surprise.
I want to try riding an all
wheel drive bike.
Is The Conservative Voice a parody? Holy crap.
Which is, of course, the only reasonable and responsible thing to do.
The author of the article didn’t know what nuance meant. So he found out. It’s a French word! Those awful French people, they have it in their genes (hmm) to surrender at every point.
Of course, something like half of the words in English derive from French. Most of the rest are Germanic.
That doesn’t leave this brainwave much left to say; Northern Europeans weren’t wild about the invasion of Iraq either. –>
There’s a site called The Daily WTF that shows snippets of (sometimes) bad code and makes fun of it. But who’s the real idiot here? From the description of today’s WTF: “suffice it to say that while most people would simply use sprintf….” WTF?
At Subway, the sub chain, napkins and packaging and all that are only
printed in English. If they could get away with it, I bet the posted menus
would be in English too. Lame.
Yesterday, on the way to a book fair (where Alma and I ended up buying 7
books that, someday, we may read. At least they were inexpensive.) we ran
into some people zipping around on Segways. There’s a company that offers
guided tours of the city - well, parts of it - on Segways, with guides
speaking Spanish, English, and French. Sounds fun, although at $500 MXN
it’s a bit steep.
I think they’re affiliated with Segway.
Anyway, their website uses flash, which can only mean that they don’t want
you to visit it, so I won’t link to it.
Yesterday, Paul left Mexico. Now he’s in Cuba for a few days. He’s a
programmer by training, but a theatre tech by occupation. So he had a nice
WTF? moment when we were wandering through the Zócalo and saw totally
uncovered wires going to lighting and sound equipment.
Par for the course.
On Saturday, we went to Teotuihacán, which was fun, and then to some
boring bar/club place which was less fun.
Most packaged products sold in Mexico are labelled in Spanish only, and only
show Mexican contact information. Some are
labelled in Spanish and English. Some of those were originally labelled in
English only, with a halfassed, white sticker with fonts that don’t match
the original and with information in Spanish (meeting Mexican regulations?)
pasted on. I see this most often on well-known American food brands.
Cambell’s New England Clam Chowdah, for instance.
(Sometimes the white stickers cover the relevant English information. So
when I have my “did they really mean that?”, “this makes no sense; it must be
poorly translated”, and “I just plain can’t understand this” moments, it’s
annoying, because the stickers aren’t designed to be easy or clean to remove.)
Sometimes, the sticker
isn’t so halfassed, and it matches aesthetically. Some frozen pizza brand
whose name I can’t remember
comes to mind.
Sometimes product information is printed on the original
package in both English and Spanish. Some juices are like this, for example.
Some products are
labelled only in English, which makes me wonder exactly what the regulations
are, if they exist at all. Maybe they’re different for food and non-food
products, but it’s also possible that they’re just not followed in many
cases.
Some of the
Spanish-only products have contact and productinformation for various
Central American
countries. Glade air freshener comes to mind.
Some products are labelled
in English, French, and Spanish. I can’t think of any, but I know I’ve seen
them. I guess they’re destined to be sold all over the NAFTA area.
Still
other goods are sold for the market that starts at the Rio Bravo/Grande and
goes South, and
are labelled in Spanish and Portuguese, and have contact information for
countries ranging from Mexico to Brazil to Argentina. Toothbrushes (Reach?
Oral-B? I can’t remember), for example.
I’ve never seen anything
labelled in Quechua, nor have I noticed anything labelled in English, French,
Portuguese, and Spanish, nor have I seen anything labelled in Nahuatl.
When I went on the Mad Nürnberg Curry Paste Rampage of 2005, I bought
jars labelled in English only and in French, German, and Italian but not
English. Or Spanish or Portuguese.
Curry enchiladas. How delicious do those sound? Got to try it out.
Australia down 2-1 in the Ashes. Oh, the schadenfreude.
Alma resumed English classes yesterday morning. She understands most people
speaking English, apparently, except me. Hmm. I’ve been told more than once
that I speak faster than most people. There are exceptions, of course. People who
speak slowly drive me nuts. By speaking rapidly, I’m just following
the golden rule. That makes me a good person, or something.
When I was in Puebla last month, I picked up Catholic propaganda in a
cathedral. It was all about the Mormons. So I guess you could call it
anti-propaganda propaganda. Thing is, it makes the Catholics look really bad,
and the Mormons look great by comparison. It’s full of unbacked assertions
and “that’s bogus because it’s not how we define the term in Catholisism”.
Kind of disappointing, I guess. I’m a pretty devout atheist, but reading
about religion is still interesting, and I was let down. Maybe my hopes
were too high.
Been too tired to write much lately. Lots and lots of work.
On Sunday, the
Metrobús
opened. My observation is that the new buses, with their dedicated lanes, are
considerably faster than those that used to service Insurgentes. They are
also far more crowded - the passenger to bus space ratio has not improved.
That works out ok for me: I’m willing to be a bit more uncomfortable if
it means less of my time is wasted. Others, especially those who travel in
different directions or during different times of the day, are less
fortunate.
Or, they just don’t give a damn about their own time.
The media’s been quite critical of the Metrobús. Not surprising,
of course, given that the Metrobús is one of AMLO’s showcase
projects, and the media to a large extent represents established interests.
The other night, I bought a new keyboard for my mac. It has the feel of a
nice laptop keyboard, which of course means it sucks compared to my trusty
Model Ms. Still, being able to type accented characters is important
to me, and now I can. So I guess it’s worth it. Let’s hope it doesn’t
make my hands hurt.
Today, in a Chinese restaurant, I overheard some conversation between a
Chinese woman, an American woman, and a Mexican woman. Their conversation
was a mixture of Cantonese, English, and Spanish. They also talked to
the owner, who said that he speaks, in addition to Cantonese and Spanish,
English and French. Jealous!
I bought more books I don’t know when I’ll read: García Márquez’
Memoria de mis Putas Tristes, a large hardcover of Don Quijote,
Ciudad de las Bestias by Isabel Allende, and The Name of the Rose
(Spanish title: El Nombre de la Rosa) by Umberto Eco. The queue
isn’t getting any shorter.
I’ve been thinking of organizing an Amazon club here in Mexico City.
Basically, as far as I can tell, every single bookstore in Mexico sucks,
so people who want good books in English, or in Spanish at reasonable prices,
are screwed. The idea is for a bunch of people to make an order to Amazon
once a month to share shipping costs. Among the people I know, and all the
people they know, there’d probably be enough interest to make it worthwhile.
Worthwhile for them, that is, because, as we’ve already established, I have
more books than I can read.
I’ve been thinking about writing a short piece called “In Defense of Good
Writing”, wherein I would make the case that things like grammar and spelling
are important, for a number of reasons. A few other points, too.
If nothing else, it might tick a relativist off.
For some reason, language reform, particularly English language
reform, is a relatively common topic of discussion among my friends. My
opinion on the matter: the only artificial changes
I would support making in English
are to get rid of the apostrophe and create a new kind of comma. I wouldn’t
be sad to see capital letters go either.
Getting rid of the apostrophe
needs little explanation; people worry about ambiguities created, but
in practice I don’t think it would be a very bad problem. Think of the
benefits! Nobody would be able to
misuse the apostrophe anymore.
The idea of adding a new comma
takes some more explaining: currently, the comma is used for two pretty
distinct things. First, it separates gramatical elements of sentences.
Second, it marks elements in a list. “I brought turkey, pb&j, and ham and
cheese sandwiches, and I’m going to eat them all.” It’s not confusing, but
it’s a bit ugly. Suppose that ^ is used to delimit elements of a list.
(Indulge me; I don’t actually think that character would make a good
choice.) “I
brought turkey ^ pb&j; ^ and ham and cheese sandwiches, and I’m going to eat
them all.”
Of course, languages evolve
naturally over time. I don’t have much of a problem with that, although
I can certainly understand why one would. The changes and the objections
are both inevitable. But it’s just not
worth getting bent out of shape over it, because there’s really very little
that can be done anyway.
On the other hand, my native language is American
English, which these days seems to influence more than be influenced. When
I lived in Australia, I viewed things a little bit differently; Australian
English is a language that is being colonised, not a colonising one. The
changes happening
there aren’t seen as objectionable because they make what people learned
in school becoming obsolete. Rather, as a friend put it, “That’s my
culture!”
(I happen to think that’s the best argument against the US moving to the
metric system, by the way.)
On a related note, I have a feeling, not supported by proper research or
anything, that Spanish will one day have a genetive case. You already
see it used often among Spanglish speakers and on restaurant signs.
I made a homepage (heh) for mnemosyne.
Met Arturo, Sandino, Mauro, and Daniel at the airport last night. Somehow
we managed to pack all of their luggage, and their bodies, into my tiny Saturn.
Just like a vocho.
Speaking Spanish is difficult when I haven’t done it in a while.
I’d start counting down the days until I move to Mexico, but I don’t know
how many days it will be yet - it looks like there’ll be some Novell de
México-induced delays in the process. Joyous.
My activity log is public now. Hooray.
How liberating and refreshing that feels. As though I’ve come out.
I just read Jeff Jacoby’s latest masterpiece.
Back when I was an angry suburban
conservative teenager (now I am an angry liberal city-dwelling twentysomething,
but I wonder how much really has changed sometimes) I agreed with Jacoby’s
writing.
I also considered the Boston Globe to be a liberal publication. (Time
outside the US showed me how very wrong I was about that illusion.) But
although I generally agreed with Jacoby’s views, I also realised that
he was at best intellectually dishonest, and at worst a complete fucking
moron. My theory, with which the people I shared it agreed, was that
the Globe, being liberal yet wishing to appear balanced, brought
in Jacoby who would provide the sought after balance yet also make
conservatives look like a bunch of imbeciles.
I still think that theory is true, with a change induced by greater
perspective: replace the “liberal” in my theory to “liberal by the standards
of the very conservative US media”.
Now, I’m older, and the nature of my arrogance has changed, and I
can’t remember the last time I’ve agreed with anything Jacoby’s written.
I don’t agree with him today.
A friend whose native language isn’t English asked me today to explain the
difference between dumb and silly. I resorted to drawing a
picture.
A silly picture. Simple enough to fit into two dimensions, unlike so
much of the real world. It has a nice Vennish flavour to it, too.
