I like to talk about words: groups of words, poems, sentences, paragraphs, stories, essays, chapters, books. Ask someone in one of my writers groups. I get intensely involved, and I enjoy the deep thought that surrounds seemingly small questions, such as whether to use a comma or not.
Fortunately, I have some company. Last week I read a New Yorker article called Holy Writ: Learning to love the house style by copyeditor Mary Norris. She's followed up this week with a video about commas in compound subjects and compound predicates. I earn money helping people out with that sort of thing. (Shh, don't let too many people know about the new video series.)
Comma Queen: Series Premiere (video)
Another site I came across this week is The Punctuation Guide. What could be more fun than mousing over a semicolon and clicking over to a page devoted to all there is to know?
Showing posts with label English language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label English language. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
Sunday, April 6, 2014
Best praise just about ever
On Friday morning, while rushing off to school, Miriam had a question. It was about putting an "s" on the words "experience" and "cheese". Her 8th grade English teacher (we're talking English for German kids) said those are both "non-count" nouns and you can't make them plural.
I gave her a quick answer, and Miriam said, "I asked my mom because she knows English better than anyone in the universe."
Now that feels totally good. I do enjoy language, and I spend a fair amount of time expressing my opinions about what works and what doesn't. Coming from my fourteen year old, the praise resonated around me as I scribbled her words onto a scrap of paper. "Better than anyone in the universe" is my credential for all the commentary I offer on this blog, I guess. I'll take it--thank you, Miriam!
What did I say in reply (with Markus backing me up)? Of course you can put an "s" on both those words. "I had many different experiences when I was in college." Or "I went to the market and purchased several expensive (whole) cheeses." True, the cheese one is less common. The problem with "experience" is the likelihood of German speakers to say, "I made many experiences at summer camp." (The real problem is how the words collocate.)
Why does an 8th grade English teacher forbid these words as plurals? Because it's too easy to use them incorrectly and because, most of the time, they are used as non-count nouns. "I had a lot of work experience before I went back to graduate school." Or "I bought several different kinds of cheese for the picnic." In a complex world, that's a good approximation of the truth.
Just don't go off making experiences, please (says one of the universe's foremost English authorities).
I gave her a quick answer, and Miriam said, "I asked my mom because she knows English better than anyone in the universe."
Now that feels totally good. I do enjoy language, and I spend a fair amount of time expressing my opinions about what works and what doesn't. Coming from my fourteen year old, the praise resonated around me as I scribbled her words onto a scrap of paper. "Better than anyone in the universe" is my credential for all the commentary I offer on this blog, I guess. I'll take it--thank you, Miriam!
What did I say in reply (with Markus backing me up)? Of course you can put an "s" on both those words. "I had many different experiences when I was in college." Or "I went to the market and purchased several expensive (whole) cheeses." True, the cheese one is less common. The problem with "experience" is the likelihood of German speakers to say, "I made many experiences at summer camp." (The real problem is how the words collocate.)
Why does an 8th grade English teacher forbid these words as plurals? Because it's too easy to use them incorrectly and because, most of the time, they are used as non-count nouns. "I had a lot of work experience before I went back to graduate school." Or "I bought several different kinds of cheese for the picnic." In a complex world, that's a good approximation of the truth.
Just don't go off making experiences, please (says one of the universe's foremost English authorities).
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Observed in town today
This morning I walked through Heilbronn at a time when I normally wouldn't. The city bus drivers, among other public service providers, are on strike for higher wages. We're a one-car family, and Markus hasn't yet replaced a recently stolen bike, his otherwise normal means of traveling six kilometers to work. So, we dropped Miriam and a neighbor at school and went into town to bring Markus to campus.
I walked in the city—returning DVDs at the library window, grabbing a coffee. The lady at the bakery remarked on the desertion in her store. Normally, school kids get off at Rathaus (City Hall) and flood her tucked away shop on their path to school. By contrast and for the same reason, I was the unlikely pedestrian/chauffeur this morning, and I was a solitary customer.
The walk along the Neckar River back to campus cooled my coffee, chilled my fingers. A flat-bed tow truck appeared in an ally off the wide pedestrian river walk. I worried about the planters edging a sidewalk café while the truck hurried around the corner onto the walkway. As I was wondering what his errand might be and reminding myself these drivers of large vehicles know what they’re doing, a business name appeared on the green and yellow vehicle’s side: geist-recycling.de.
Ha! Perhaps a family named “Geist” owns the business? Or maybe something more poetic is intended (there’s a little Casper-style ghost in the logo if you check out the web link). Regardless, the word’s associations are intriguing. “Geist” means spirit or mind or ghost. Der heilige Geist is the Holy Ghost. Just how are those recycled?
It bears mentioning, too, that a German person would pronounce that web address this way: “geist minus recycling punkt d e”. Any time a hyphen shows up in a web address, Germans call it a “Minus” and not a “Bindestrich” (the less pronounceable but correct word for hyphen). To my ear, amusing equations emerge. Another example from a call-in radio program with guest experts for various topics: “tausend minus fragen at swr punkt d e” (thousand minus questions). Folks here say it straight-voiced every time, so I assume it’s just me who’s amused.
On my way back to the car, I passed a peaceful cluster of people in yellow traffic vests holding signs against their thighs, drinking coffee, some smoking. They stood outside the city swimming pool and thermal bath, Soleo. Perhaps a strike is another form of recycling spirit?
~~I am inspired by writer/mentor/friend Abigail Thomas and her recently launched blog, which features short-shorts she's called "blogettes", to consider shorter posts. This one counts as short, for me.~~
I walked in the city—returning DVDs at the library window, grabbing a coffee. The lady at the bakery remarked on the desertion in her store. Normally, school kids get off at Rathaus (City Hall) and flood her tucked away shop on their path to school. By contrast and for the same reason, I was the unlikely pedestrian/chauffeur this morning, and I was a solitary customer.
The walk along the Neckar River back to campus cooled my coffee, chilled my fingers. A flat-bed tow truck appeared in an ally off the wide pedestrian river walk. I worried about the planters edging a sidewalk café while the truck hurried around the corner onto the walkway. As I was wondering what his errand might be and reminding myself these drivers of large vehicles know what they’re doing, a business name appeared on the green and yellow vehicle’s side: geist-recycling.de.
Ha! Perhaps a family named “Geist” owns the business? Or maybe something more poetic is intended (there’s a little Casper-style ghost in the logo if you check out the web link). Regardless, the word’s associations are intriguing. “Geist” means spirit or mind or ghost. Der heilige Geist is the Holy Ghost. Just how are those recycled?
It bears mentioning, too, that a German person would pronounce that web address this way: “geist minus recycling punkt d e”. Any time a hyphen shows up in a web address, Germans call it a “Minus” and not a “Bindestrich” (the less pronounceable but correct word for hyphen). To my ear, amusing equations emerge. Another example from a call-in radio program with guest experts for various topics: “tausend minus fragen at swr punkt d e” (thousand minus questions). Folks here say it straight-voiced every time, so I assume it’s just me who’s amused.
On my way back to the car, I passed a peaceful cluster of people in yellow traffic vests holding signs against their thighs, drinking coffee, some smoking. They stood outside the city swimming pool and thermal bath, Soleo. Perhaps a strike is another form of recycling spirit?
~~I am inspired by writer/mentor/friend Abigail Thomas and her recently launched blog, which features short-shorts she's called "blogettes", to consider shorter posts. This one counts as short, for me.~~
Sunday, July 15, 2012
English titles at my German library
Let's not ponder too long what makes for a gap of many months in the posts of a blogger (if I can call myself that). November to July? OK. I've had a few suggestions. Maybe Facebook is what happened. Yes, maybe. In any case, I'm pleased to be inspired to toss something out today, a sunny/rainy Sunday in quiet Flein.
I went to the library yesterday afternoon with Miriam. It's become a habit, one that is prescribed somewhat by due dates. For example, a "new" film on DVD can be checked out for one week only and always costs € 1.50. So, when we've borrowed a movie, we have to show up to return it to avoid late fees. Our most recent was an Adam Sandler/Jennifer Aniston goofy comedy called Just Go with It. It's always amusing, if not nauseating, to see how films are retitled in German. In this case: Meine erfundene Frau (or My Invented Wife). An all-time favorite (=nauseating) re-titling is a 1986 Robert Redford/Debra Winger movie called Legal Eagles. Granted, the rhyme and nuance of the original are hard to duplicate, but how about this: Staatsanwälte küßt man nicht (You don't kiss district attorneys).
We often have good, if very random, luck searching the DVD collection at the library. Because the German norm is to dub foreign films, we can't watch English movies in the original language in theaters (unless we travel about an hour to Stuttgart or Karlsruhe), so we rely on the marvel of the DVD. The newest films offer the soundtrack in dozens of languages. Stunning, really. Television in Germany is always dubbed, and SOMETIMES we can stand watching Tom Hanks or Meryl Streep spout rather neutral sounding German, but mostly we go to the library for DVDs and gratefully select English as the language before we press "play". Mind you, none of us is opposed to watching movies in German if they were made in German. It's just the slapping on of translated language that bugs us, that and seeing familiar actors with the wrong voice. In defense of the dubbing practice, German speakers have told me, "But they always use the same German voice every time it's John Wayne or Gary Cooper." How can you ever replace something that iconic?
The challenge of the DVD collection at the library in Heilbronn is that the discs are filed by director. How impossibly non-commercial. I was trained at Blockbuster and Hollywood to search by film title. Weren't you? So, browsing my library here goes a little like this. Hmm, no one's standing in front front of the "L" section. I'll flip through those. Do I know any directors? Oh, yeah, George Lucas. What did he direct? (Not very erudite, eh?) Then I remember the other directors whose names I know: Eastwood, Allen, Spielberg. Mostly it's an exercise in random flipping and everything seemingly mixed together: Japanese, French, German, British, American, and more. Currently, we've got American Beauty, Death of a Salesman (with Dustin Hoffmann and John Malkovich--never heard of it before), Woman of the Year, and Walk the Line. I do not know who directed any of them. Miriam is happily working her way through season two of Glee.
Before hitting the DVDs with Miriam, I habitually check in with the English language book section. There are about 8 shelves, 12 feet wide, filled with English titles. The first segment is exclusively "Crime Novels". The remainder is everything else that's in English, by author. I've been genuinely pleased at what I can find in the library. Last year I read Marilyn Robinson's Housekeeping, and I was thrilled to pull both Gilead and Home from the shelf in Heilbronn. My reading continues to be driven by what I can find there. Joan Didion's recent Blue Nights is on my nightstand stack. Right now I'm partway through Don DeLillo's Falling Man, which seemed to be the only title of his there (not in translation), and I'd grown curious about this author.
But it's a funny place to browse, the English collection. It puts Stephen Hawking just down the shelf from Ernest Hemingway. Yesterday I noticed a novel by Joyce Carol Oates right next to two nonfiction books by Barack Obama. Another interesting sequence: Alice Sebold, David Sedaris, and pretty close by, William Shakespeare. My favorite sighting, however, was several novels by Philip Roth followed by, what? The Harry Potter series. Of course, Rowling.
I love reading. And, all fun-making aside, I love libraries and especially the chance to find books in English at my local library. I see it as an interesting selection to work with. Once I've read what's here, I can find interlibrary loan or buy used on Amazon. Meanwhile, I've got plenty to read. Here's what jumped off the shelf and into my hands yesterday: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. Check back with me on that one (1000 pages, 400 Wallace-style footnotes, we'll see).
I went to the library yesterday afternoon with Miriam. It's become a habit, one that is prescribed somewhat by due dates. For example, a "new" film on DVD can be checked out for one week only and always costs € 1.50. So, when we've borrowed a movie, we have to show up to return it to avoid late fees. Our most recent was an Adam Sandler/Jennifer Aniston goofy comedy called Just Go with It. It's always amusing, if not nauseating, to see how films are retitled in German. In this case: Meine erfundene Frau (or My Invented Wife). An all-time favorite (=nauseating) re-titling is a 1986 Robert Redford/Debra Winger movie called Legal Eagles. Granted, the rhyme and nuance of the original are hard to duplicate, but how about this: Staatsanwälte küßt man nicht (You don't kiss district attorneys).
We often have good, if very random, luck searching the DVD collection at the library. Because the German norm is to dub foreign films, we can't watch English movies in the original language in theaters (unless we travel about an hour to Stuttgart or Karlsruhe), so we rely on the marvel of the DVD. The newest films offer the soundtrack in dozens of languages. Stunning, really. Television in Germany is always dubbed, and SOMETIMES we can stand watching Tom Hanks or Meryl Streep spout rather neutral sounding German, but mostly we go to the library for DVDs and gratefully select English as the language before we press "play". Mind you, none of us is opposed to watching movies in German if they were made in German. It's just the slapping on of translated language that bugs us, that and seeing familiar actors with the wrong voice. In defense of the dubbing practice, German speakers have told me, "But they always use the same German voice every time it's John Wayne or Gary Cooper." How can you ever replace something that iconic?
The challenge of the DVD collection at the library in Heilbronn is that the discs are filed by director. How impossibly non-commercial. I was trained at Blockbuster and Hollywood to search by film title. Weren't you? So, browsing my library here goes a little like this. Hmm, no one's standing in front front of the "L" section. I'll flip through those. Do I know any directors? Oh, yeah, George Lucas. What did he direct? (Not very erudite, eh?) Then I remember the other directors whose names I know: Eastwood, Allen, Spielberg. Mostly it's an exercise in random flipping and everything seemingly mixed together: Japanese, French, German, British, American, and more. Currently, we've got American Beauty, Death of a Salesman (with Dustin Hoffmann and John Malkovich--never heard of it before), Woman of the Year, and Walk the Line. I do not know who directed any of them. Miriam is happily working her way through season two of Glee.
Before hitting the DVDs with Miriam, I habitually check in with the English language book section. There are about 8 shelves, 12 feet wide, filled with English titles. The first segment is exclusively "Crime Novels". The remainder is everything else that's in English, by author. I've been genuinely pleased at what I can find in the library. Last year I read Marilyn Robinson's Housekeeping, and I was thrilled to pull both Gilead and Home from the shelf in Heilbronn. My reading continues to be driven by what I can find there. Joan Didion's recent Blue Nights is on my nightstand stack. Right now I'm partway through Don DeLillo's Falling Man, which seemed to be the only title of his there (not in translation), and I'd grown curious about this author.
But it's a funny place to browse, the English collection. It puts Stephen Hawking just down the shelf from Ernest Hemingway. Yesterday I noticed a novel by Joyce Carol Oates right next to two nonfiction books by Barack Obama. Another interesting sequence: Alice Sebold, David Sedaris, and pretty close by, William Shakespeare. My favorite sighting, however, was several novels by Philip Roth followed by, what? The Harry Potter series. Of course, Rowling.
I love reading. And, all fun-making aside, I love libraries and especially the chance to find books in English at my local library. I see it as an interesting selection to work with. Once I've read what's here, I can find interlibrary loan or buy used on Amazon. Meanwhile, I've got plenty to read. Here's what jumped off the shelf and into my hands yesterday: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. Check back with me on that one (1000 pages, 400 Wallace-style footnotes, we'll see).
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