So I’m sitting in my room, working on my linguistics home exam, and I’m trying to explain why the verb paint in the sentence his father was painting a picture is not the same verb as the paint in the sentence his father never painted again, right? My line of resoning is the kind I [...]
Posts filed in Words
The third most basic building block in a language, behind letters and vowels, if I remember what little lingustsics I’ve picked up from my sister correctly. Important things, in other words. And many of them are neat — just like that one (i.e. neat).
For better or worse, you just don’t get life stories like this anymore (Or, the only thing missing is piracy)
“Raised in an Ibo village (in modern Nigeria), Olaudah Equiano (ca 1745-1797) was kidnapped by African raiders and slod into slavery. He survived the horrors of the Middle Passage to the New World, where an English naval officer bought him ito serve as a cabin boy and renamed him Gustavus Vassa, after a sixteenth-century Swedish [...]
Not again!
Shit.
Here I turn my head for a second, and when I turn back towards the ‘net again, two months have passed. If I’d had a dollar for every time this has happened (or, perhaps more precise, for every time I’ve done this) in the last three years, I’d probably have… enough for a soda, anyway.
So, [...]
A Plague! A Plague on Our Houses!
In my Last.fm shoutbox, I was recently asked by one of my readers to post more frequently in my blog, and seeing as your whim is my law, I bring you this: an essay of sorts about the last topic you’d expected me to write about!
One of the things you might not know [...]
How to interpret a peculiar request
“‘Item I gyve unto my wife my second best bed …’
(from Shakespeare’s will)
The bed we loved in was a spinning world
of forests, castles, torchlight, clifftops, seas
where we would dive for pearls. My lover’s words
were shooting stars which fell to earth as kisses
on these lips; my body now a softer rhyme
to his, now echo, assonance; his [...]
2007-11-06 — Quote of the Day (or, Bloody Homosexuals)
“The remarkable unity of culture of the later Roman Empire is seen most clearly in its art and architechture. Roman temples and theatres, Roman baths and aqueducts did not differ greatly from Spain to Asia Minor. Roman villas with their gay floor mosaics were almost interchangeable from Britain to Syria.”
— H.G. Koeningsberger,
Medieval Europe 400-1500, [...]
Ullr, the onion of war!
From Wikipedia’s kenning article:
Bárum Ullr, of alla
ímunlauks, á hauka
fjöllum Fyrisvalla
fræ Hákonar ævi;
nú hefr fólkstríðir Fróða
fáglýjaðra þýja
meldr í móður holdi
mellu dolgs of folginn
Simply based on meaning, i.e. without kennings, the passage runs: “Accursed King Harald! We carried gold in our arms during all of Hakon’s life; now the enemy of the people has hidden gold in [...]
Gudenes Fall
Gudenes Fall, by Cornelius Jakhelln.
2007, 428 pages.
Now, this might be a little weird. Gudenes Fall (The Fall of the Gods) is a book that most likely never will be translated into English, and yet, I choose to review it in English. But hey, my English is still worse than my Norwegian.
In the year 1000 AD, [...]
Movies Galore: A Summary
It’s nearly two months since my last movie review — a review, I might add, where I was unreasonably hard on the reviewed movie, as the fact that I’m in a foul mood shouldn’t really count against it. Anyway, since then I’ve watched a lot of movies: excellent movies, great movies, good movies, mediocre movies, [...]
“Gaid”
I’ve finally taken my language-related snobbishness out into the open, primarily because the local newspaper recently titled me as “gaid” — a horrendous norwegianification of the English word “guide”, and an unnecessary one too, as we have the perfectly servicable synonym “omviser”.
So, it might be that the Norwegian Council of Language has given the go-ahead [...]
That’s it, then.
There’s dust on your guitar, you fuck, and it’s all your fault…
In four days, I am supposed to hand in a 25 pages long project paper in the pol.sci. course I’m taking. However, being a lazy, useless slob, I haven’t even begun reading for it yet. I tried to start working on it today, but [...]
Whenever I feel down…
I take a look at this one. And this one. And suddenly things seem a little brighter.
(And I am well aware that I’ve linked to these stripes almost ten times before, but they really are that… man, I got to get around to reading some Jack Vance soon, so that I can learn some new [...]
The Restoration Of What? The Gold Standard, or Erathia?
Maximum fourteen pages left to read before I can begin writing, and I’m dizzier than ever.
In fact, I am so dizzy that I have started to hallucinate. Whenever I read the phrase “the restoration of the gold standard”, the letters begin floating outwards, transforming themselves into the words “The Restoration of Erathia”, and I can [...]
Ungrateful bunch of fucking ingrates - BS7×19 Empty Places
Sure, the attack on the vineyard probably wasn’t too clever. But where the fuck does these people find the bloody nerve to criticise her for not earning anything!
How many times hasn’t Buffy saved Willow, Xander, Giles, Anya, Dawn(!!!) — every goddamned one of them! And one — ONE! — mistake, and they kick her out [...]
Mmmm.
Blueberry tea. Is anything as good? Nice words, too.
Tribute To A Tool
“I’m a tool. I’m a tool. A tool, tool, tool.”
A line from the first episode of Scrubs, season 1. But it’s not that tool I’ll praise here, but a much more useful one: The Google Define Search.
The what? you might ask. Well, the Google Define Search, is a practical little function of Google, where you [...]
Neat words, part 1
Okay, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m gonna start collecting neat words, that I use a lot. This’ll be a project for both improvement (seeing as I’ll hopefully find out what words I use too much, and what I can replace them with — suggestions are welcome, by the way) and self-insight. Two-in-one. Neat.
1. [...]
Posts