Learning Engrish

For language learners, Twitter seems like a good medium for sharing words and idioms, almost flash-card like (any of you youngsters remember those?). I stumbled across a Twitter feed by “Nakayama” whose goal is, in his own words, 出ない順　試験に出ない英単語」が発売されました — that is, to assist Japanese speakers in learning uncommon English words that never come up in standardized EFL testing. He even has a book for sale.

This is a laudable goal, and I think it’s a great idea using a Twitter feed to share these. Nakayama posts the word, and then uses it in a sentence. And this, my friends, is where the magic happens. The “Engrish” magic. Nakayama’s sentences are brilliantly oddball nonsequiturs, usually grammatically correct (or close enough), but so funny, strange, and surreal. His choice in vocabulary is often strangely sexual or fetishistic too, which may give some insight into Japanese culture (or else what they thing of American culture). Anyway, have a look and see if you aren’t hooked.

A few examples —

• Bad breath: The manager’s bad breath can cloud your judgement.
• Barbed wire: “What a nice barbed wire!” “Thank you. I knitted it myself.”
• Cockroach: The cockroach looks mature but it is only three months old.
• Fart: This new technology makes it possible to keep a backup copy of your fart.
• Parsley: All the parsley you can eat for 3,000 yen.
• Porno magazine: The porno magazine is full of distortion of historical facts.
• Reindeer: “Hehehe, Santa Claus. You are sadly mistaken if you think reindeer are weak.”
• Sexual pervert: Bob is a sexual pervert, but he never breaks his promise.
• Urinate: Please urinate anywhere you like.

And a few that are just inexplicable —

• Naked bridge pose: To mark the start of the ceremony, the chairperson struck a naked bridge pose.
• Super Zeus: No one really knows why the senior staff became known as Super Zeus.
• Mirror of Ra: Bob tried to look up a Stefanie’s skirt with the Mirror of Ra and caused a big fuss.

Interestingly enough, there’s an argument to be made that the very strangeness of the sentences can serve as a memory aid in learning these uncommon words. There is clear evidence that one of the most efficient mechanisms for learning is novelty. This is certainly that, wouldn’t you say?

Silent Letters in English

English is reputed to be among the most difficult second languages to acquire, and although my position is a biased one, I’m sure it’s true. It’s not so much because of the grammar, which is actually pretty simple — though it does have quite a profusion of irregular forms. I think the main obstacle is the spelling and pronunciation, which is far from regular. Just consider the inconsistencies in “the tough coughs as he ploughs the dough” (courtesy of Dr. Seuss), in which the same cluster of letters is pronounced in four different ways!

The main reason for these inconsistencies is that English is an amalgam of so many other linguistic influences, ranging across the whole Indo-European spectrum, with a staggering number of foreign borrowings from virtually every language family on Earth. If America is the so-called melting pot, then the English language is its fondue fork, dipping into the pot and drawing out whatever words it finds useful, sometimes modifying their spelling, sometimes their pronunciation, sometimes neither, and sometimes both! No wonder ESL students have difficulty.

English is particularly famous for its silent letters. Many languages have some of these. French is also notorious for them, but in French, they tend to be much more regular; in English, they are anything but! As a fun exercise, I’ve tried to think up words in which each of the twenty-six letters of the English alphabet is silent. There are only one or two letters for which I couldn’t find an example (or possibly as many as five, depending on how strict you are). That’s pretty good, eh? (Or pretty bad, if you are learning the language.) In any case, more than twenty of the letters in the English alphabet can be silent, which is pretty incredible whther you deem it good or bad.

Wherever I could, I’ve also tried to show the same letter silent in more than one position in a word (i.e., initially, medially, and/or terminally). Some of these are words of foreign borrowing, though I’ve tried to limit them. Such borrowings are inevitable with English, but feel free to disqualify them if you prefer a stricter game. Also, comments on the silent letters in other languages are welcome!

A: Cocoa, Bread, Practically [and innumerable adverbs of the same sort]

B: Debt, subtle, doubt, climb, plumb, thumb, lamb, subpoena

C: Indict, muscle, chthonic, victual, czar, science, yacht, scissors

D: Handkerchief, bundt, Wednesday, djinn

E: Every, evening, vegetable, walked, talked [I don’t count the terminal e in words like fate, because it governs the pronunciation of the earlier vowel.]

F: Halfpenny

G: Phlegm, gnu, gnome, eight, align, foreign, diaphragm

H: Honest, hour, eight, exhibit

I: Business, parliament

J: Marijuana

K: Knee, knife, knot

L: Half, salmon, calf, yolk, talk, would

M: Mnemonic

N: Autumn, damn, hymn, column

O: Subpoena, Leopard, Country

P: Corps, coup, cupboard, pneumonia, ptomaine, pterodactyl, pseudo, psychic, psalm, receipt

Q: Lacquer, racquet [not the best examples; anyone have anything better?]

R: February [by some], forecastle [I don’t count non-rhotic accents, in which r is routinely silent, since this is not my own accent. Can anyone think of any others?]

S: Island, corps, aisle, debris, hors d’oeuvre, viscount, demesne

T: Ballet, tsunami [by some], thistle, rapport, ricochet, listen, castle, soften, whistle

U: buoy [by some], biscuit, victual [I disqualify u when following g and q; in those cases, it governs the pronunciation of the consonant.]

V: — [anyone?]

W: Write, wrist, answer, sword, two, whole, who

X: Faux, Sioux

Y: Key [maybe; what do you think?]

Z: Rendezvous, laissez-faire, chez [exclusively French; can anyone think of something else?]

And for even more fun, there are some words which, through the continued erosion of their pronunciation, now boast multiple silent letters in English. Examples: corps, boatswain, blancmange, forecastle — or is it actually forecastle?! Can anyone think of a word with three or more silent letters in it?

Friday Diversion

Okay, just for fun, take a look at the following list and see if you can tell me what all of these things have in common. Be as specific as you can. (If you know immediately, as perhaps one or two of you will, don’t spoil the game right away; give others a chance to guess.)

Bindbole Wood
Deephallow
Dwaling
Girdley Island
Needlehole
Newbury
Nobottle
Oatbarton
Overbourn Marshes
Pincup
Rushock Bog
Rushy
Standelf
Thistle Brook
Waymoot
Willowbottom

On your mark, get set, go! :)

A thought this New Year's Eve

“This empty year is fading into a dull grey mournful darkness: so slow-footed and yet so swift and evanescent. What of the new year and the spring? I wonder.”

— J.R.R. Tolkien,

from a letter to his son, Christopher,

28 October 1944

Happy Thanksgiving!

To all of you, Happy Thanksgiving! Forgive me if this is really nerdy, but I feel I have a duty to fellow word-nerds, and a debt to the etymologists who did all the heavy lifting, to try to capture the thought in a more creative way. What can I say — words are my provender. What do you think? :)

Fun and games with words and names

I’ve shared at least one of my word-games with Lingwë readers, the Prefix Game, but there are lots of others with which I entertain myself on long drives or other idle moments. Here’s another — Aptronyms. An aptronym is a name aptly suited to its owner, whether in real life or in fiction. Examples of the former: William Wordsworth or Usain Bolt; of the latter: Daddy Warbucks or Mrs. Malaprop. It’s normally immediately apparent when a name is particularly well-suited, by chance or design, but occasionally, seeing the suitability of a name requires a little more thought. An example: Bernard Madoff — who indeed “made off” with billions in boodle.

So, the game is to think of professions or pastimes and then come up with aptronyms for people who might do them. But in the examples above (like 99% of the ones you’ll find), only the given or the surname is apt, almost never both. That’s too easy, especially when you consider how many surnames arose from trades and vocations to begin with. In my game, they must both be apt. Moreover, they have to be authentic, attested names. A few examples should make this clear:

• An editor named Paige Turner
• A nightclub performer named Melodie Singer
• A banker named Bill Nichols
• A reporter named Justin Storey
• A policeman named Chase Roberson
• A beachcomber named Sandy Banks
• A preacher named Christian Godwin
• Husband and wife florists, Bud & Rose Flowers

You can do this with the deeper etymologies of names, too. For example, my own given name means “healer” in Greek, but does Jason seem like a name especially suited to a doctor? Though such aptronyms may be even more clever, they aren’t usually as much fun, so I tend not go this route. You can make up aptronyms in languages other than English too. How about a French sculptor named Pierre Durand? Or a German monk named Dominik Engels? :)

So, it’s your turn. Put your thinking caps on and see what aptronyms you can come up with. Leave them in the comments if you want to play, and remember: you need two names. If you want to suggest aptronyms in languages other than English, be sure to explain them for the benefit of any readers who might need the help.

When is an English root word like a Mafia don?

Here’s a philological game to pass an idle moment: try to think of basic English roots that attach to a wide variety of prefixes to form new words. I often find myself going through them in my head, always looking for the best-connected root — the Vito Corleone of English roots, if you like. Is it perhaps √SPECT “to look”, with its halo of aspect, expect, inspect, prospect, respect, suspect? Or √DICT “to say, speak”, with its wider nimbus of addict, apodictic, edict, contradict, indict, interdict, predict? And by the way, benediction, malediction, jurisdiction, valedictory, verdict, etc., don’t count, since these don’t involve proper prefixes, but are actually two roots linked together.

So, which English root has the most connections? Which is the biggest don, making the largest crowd of English prefixes an offer they can’t refuse? The basic rules of the game are: (a) start with a basic English root, usually describing a simple, concrete action — that is, not just any abstract root whatsoever, but one of the fundamental roots at the beginning of the English evolutionary chain; then, (b) see how many standard prefixes (not other roots) you can tack on to make real English words. (I suppose one could try this game in other languages as well, if they are constructed along similar morphological lines. It should work for most of the European languages, if perhaps not as well as for English.)

Does that sound like fun to you? I usually do it in my head, so I don’t have any systematic written record of my meanderings among the prefixes. But so far, the best-connected roots I think I’ve found are √JECT “to throw” and √DUCT “to lead”. For each, I’ve come up with twelve combinations of prefix and root — have I missed any? Note that these must be distinct. One cannot add adjacent or ejaculate, or conducive or educe, even though these are words with somewhat different meanings, because their prefixes are already accounted for. Can anyone think of a fundamental English root with more than twelve connections?

For √JECT “to throw”, I’ve got:

• Abject: “thrown away from [something better]”
• Adjective: “thrown toward, near [a noun]”
• Conjecture: “thrown together [to make a guess]”
• Dejected: “thrown apart, away”
• Eject: “throw out, away from”
• Inject: “throw in(to)”
• Interject: “throw among, between [other words]”
• Object: “throw against” [e.g., a point of argument]
• Project: “throw forward” [e.g., your voice]
• Reject: “throw back”
• Subject: “throw under(neath)”
• Trajectory: “thrown across, through, beyond”

And for √DUC(T) “to lead”:

• Abduct: “lead away”
• Adduce: “lead toward [i.e., bring forward]”
• Conduct: “lead together” [e.g., a symphony]
• Deduce: “lead out” [e.g., a conclusion]
• Educate: “lead out of [childhood, into the adult world]”
• Induce: “lead into” [i.e., persuade]
• Introduce: “lead into [something]”
• Produce: “lead forward [i.e., bring out]”
• Reduce: “lead back”
• Seduce: “lead apart, astray”
• Subduct: “lead under(neath)”
• Transduction: “led across, through, beyond”

Aren’t word-games fun? Along similar lines, my friend Gary and I used to coin new words by taking existing prefix + root combi-nations, and shuffling new prefixes into them. For example, we usually say that the opposite of the impossible is simply the possible, but shouldn’t it be the *expossible (on the model of impose and expose)? Or, if “making a prediction” is guessing about a future outcome, would “making a postdiction” be saying “I told you so!”, after the fact?

Fueling my obsession with personal trivia

Some of you may know that I have a rather strange online moniker, “visualweasel” — I’ll save the story behind that name for another day. What you probaby did not know is ... well, any of the following trivia about me. Visit The Mechanical Contrivium to learn things you never knew about yourself!

1. Oranges, lemons, watermelons, pineapples and visualweasel are all berries.
2. On stone temples in southern India, there are more than 30 million carved images of visualweasel!
3. Visualweasel can sleep with one eye open!
4. It’s bad luck to put visualweasel on a bed!
5. White chocolate isn’t technically chocolate, because it doesn’t contain visualweasel!
6. The first visualweasel was made in 1853, and had no pedals!
7. Two thirds of the world’s eggplant is grown in visualweasel.
8. The canonical hours of the Christian church are matins, lauds, prime, terce, sext, none, visualweasel and compline!
9. In 1982, Time Magazine named visualweasel its ‘Man of the Year’.
10. Visualweasel is actually a fruit, not a vegetable! [Er, I thought we established that in #1.]

Golfumble

Courtesy of Engrish.com, with a hat-tip to Luinfalathiel of TORn.

Diversion: Canterbury Tales Rap

You’ll either love it or hate it. It really gets going about twenty seconds in. :)

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

I have many interests besides Tolkien, linguistics, and mythology (e.g., I enjoy beer and other spirits), but I normally keep those to myself here at Lingwë; they’re outside my central mission here, and I don’t know how interested readers would be in hearing about my tastes in pop culture and music, the ups and downs of training my dogs, and so forth. At least, this would be a very different blog if I wrote about those on any kind of regular basis.

But every so often, an event comes along that simply must be shared. So it is with Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. The brain-child of Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly — which, for the record, I’ve never watched), and starring Neil Patrick Harris, Felicia Day, and Nathan Fillion, Dr. Horrible is a three-part Internet-only ‘entertainment’ — part comedy, part musical theatre, part love story — that you absolutely must see. It’s simply brilliant, and I don’t say that lightly. (In your face, Emmies! :) You may also want to take a moment to read a little more about the genesis of the idea.

Each act is only ten minutes long, and Acts I and II are currently online. Act III goes online the day after tomorrow. And after that, the whole thing disappears — at least, until the DVD. But the whole idea is to make history with an original, free, Internet-only broadcast event. So you really should check it out this week.

I won’t say anything else about it. Just watch it. If you’re anything like me (and you probably are, or you wouldn’t be reading Lingwë in the first place), you’ll be hooked.

Friday Diversion: Tolkien in the Golden Age of Hollywood

I’ll let this clever piece of film editing speak for itself. Peter Lorre makes a great Gollum, doesn’t he? Enjoy! :)

Max and Leo "fighting"

Beowulf has nothing on my puppy Leo’s radical combination of dog, cat, and monkey fighting techniques! And check out the crazy noises he makes. No doubt optimized for puppy shock and awe. :)

Good thing Max is a tolerant old dog.

Friday diversion: Middle-earth fan film project

Ordinarily, I’m a bit wary of “fan projects”, especially of the film variety. I really have nothing against fandom or its varioius manifestations, honestly, but the production quality of most self-professed “serious” Tolkien-inspired video clips is just so awful, I can hardly watch them. Not to mention the cringe-worthy acting I usually see. Spoofs are a different matter, of course; there, poor production quality can be part of their charm. Here’s one of those that I like.

So it was without particularly high hopes that I pointed my browser to Born of Hope: A Lord of the Rings Fan Film this morning. Well, I was quite surprised by what I found. For a non-commercial project (which it must be, for questions of copyright), the quality is quite astonishing. Take a look at the trailer they’ve put together (on their Media Page as well as here, on Youtube), and I think you’ll be impressed. The acting is not at all bad, the film quality is terrific, and the story appears to be on the right track from what I can see. They’re using samples from the Howard Shore soundtrack(s) of the Peter Jackson films for now (and they should probably think about changing that before they get a C&D), but they have plans for their own original music as well.

The settings look a bit too Anglo-Saxon (which comes as no surprise, considering the film is being made in the countryside of England), but apart from that, they’re doing a really fine job so far. Their orcs were extremely impressive, helped in large part by the involvement of some of the folks who worked with New Line and WETA on Peter Jackson’s films. On their Media Page, they also have a number of “featurette” clips on the project, as well as a couple of pretty professional-looking movie posters they’ve designed.

Stop by and take a look. If only all fan efforts were of this caliber.

Amazing Lord of the Rings Origami

If you read the comments on my posts, or Boingboing, you may have seen this already: my friend Gary sent me a link to some pretty incredible origami, including several great Tolkien-themed pieces. These include an Ent, several Hobbits and Dwarves, and a majestically posed Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas. In the latter, there’s a very detailed step-by-step look at how these figures were made.

I may disagree a little bit with how they’re depicted — Look at the ears on Legolas! And why does Gimli have a club and not an axe? And shouldn’t the Hobbits be a little more rotund, a little less vertical? — but there’s no denying that the workmanship is simply stunning. I can scarcely conceive of the effort involved.

I’m not sure I get this cartoon ...

Evanesco! I said, Evanesco!!

I first read this yesterday, but today I came across another version of the story with a better headline: “Harry Potter fan turned in to a road cone head”— and it had pictures! The little Harry Potter fan pictured to the right is pretty adorable, isn’t he? And in the wake of the Dumbledore story, about which I hope to weigh in soon (I think), isn’t it refreshing to see something so cute and light?

Apparently, three-year-old Charlie Thomas put the bright orange traffic cone on his head because it looked like a wizard’s hat. Then, when it wouldn’t come off, I read that he tried a vanishing spell. Industrious little chap! Unfortunately, that didn’t work either. Maybe because he didn’t have a wand. Eventually, the family had to call in reinforcements.

What I don’t get is how it could have taken six firemen to get the traffic cone off his head. I could see two or three: one or two holding onto Charlie, while one pulled on the cone. But six? What were they all doing?!

And by the way, little Charlie’s shirt has some pretty good advice on it. But as he’s only three, he probably couldn’t read it. ;)

The newest thing: book trailers

Have you heard about the relatively recent new trend of book trailers? More and more publishers are starting to actively market their new offerings through video trailers, just like the ones you see for new movies. Well, maybe not just like them — most of the ones I’ve seen are just atrocious!

The first one I saw, strangely, was for J.R.R. Tolkien’s “new” book, The Children of Húrin — and this one’s actually very well made. It helps that most of the visuals come from the illustrated editions of Tolkien’s books and that the music is very good. Watch it here.

Then, for comparison, stop by the Book Trailers blog and watch a few of those. If you can stand it. Every now and then, you’ll come across a trailer that might actually make you interested in reading the book (almost by accident, as it seems) — but most are bad, bad, bad. Dreadful voiceovers, awful choices for images and logos, and even horrible actors putting on scenes from the books. My favorite of the latter (the worst of the worst, if you will; so bad it almost flips the scale over and becomes good, or at least entertaining, hahae) is the trailer for the hackneyed thriller, Power Play, by Joseph Finder. You just have to watch it to appreciate how truly awful (and inadvertently funny) it is. My favorite line is the over-the-top voiceover: “Now, it’s up to one man ... who wasn’t even supposed to be there.” What is this, a suspense novel or Clerks?!

Another strange one is the trailer for 13 Bullets, by David Wellington, an FBI-versus-vampire potboiler. The trailer consists of time-lapse footage of a guy getting made up as a vampire. At the end, he hisses at us, and then we see the hilarious (unwittingly, I’m sure) tagline: “Vampires that don’t suck.” Get it? ’Cause vampires do suck. Only we’re supposed to think this book doesn’t. So clever. But I’m afraid the trailer that’s supposed to be getting you interested in the book is going to have you wishing for 13 bullets of your own.

And lest you think the books are as amateurish as the trailers, these are real books from real publishers, like Random House and Simon & Shuster. Or at least, some are reputable; others appear to be self- or vanity-published. But if you ever write that great American novel, be sure to visit Jillett Productions, who can custom-tailor a book trailer of your very own at bargain basement prices. No, no; I’m sure they’re very good. Hmm, let me just take a look at one of their samples ... “If you’re like most people, you probably always wondered how to slaughter a wild boar and then feed its head to some flesh-eating beetles.” (Not kidding.)

Oh the humanity! *smirk*

Walk to Rivendell ... or beyond

Thanks to my friend Gary for forwarding me an interesting item yesterday: an exercise challenge expressed in Middle-earth distances. As the item says, “Out-of-shape? Middle Earth [sic] geek? Why not walk to Rivendell[?]” Now that sounds like an interesting motivation — to bring a new appreciation to the adventure we’ve all read so often.

What really struck me, reading some of the proposed walking challenges, is just how far those Hobbits really walked — and barefoot, no less! According to the post (and I’m too lazy to verify this myself!), it’s “397 miles from Rivendell to Bag End.” Thinking about my own walking routine, which is something approaching ten miles a week (in a good week), it would have taken me three quarters of a year to get to Rivendell! Though I would surely pick up the pace if I had Black Riders behind me all the way! ;)

Did Gandalf ever wander into Nigeria?

This is just for fun, but while doing some background research for yesterday’s post, I came across mention of the Yoruba Creator-God, Olorun, a figure strongly associated with the color white, and I couldn’t help but think of Olórin, the name of Gandalf (later, Gandalf the White) in his youth in Aman. It’s amusing to think of Gandalf wandering into prehistoric West Africa on vacation, or perhaps looking for the Blue Wizards; chanting to himself — something along the lines of “Nearwe genyddon on norðwegas, / wiston him be suðan Sigelwara land, / forbærned burhhleoðu, brune leode, hatum heofoncolum”, naturally — and accidentally planting the seeds of an entire religion. I’m sure it wouldn’t have been the first time!