Category Archives: quotes

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Friendship

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I’ve just come back from a couple of days in Somerset attending the funeral of one of my closest friends. Although old enough to be my father, Victor was 82 when he died a couple of weeks ago, we had been friends for almost 35 years since we met when we were both post-grad students: he doing an MA in Art History, me just starting on my doctorate in Chemical Spectroscopy. In the year we spent together at university we became close friends; so close that when Victor’s wife died a couple of years back I was asked to be the celebrant at her funeral, and this week I gave the funeral oration for Victor – which was well received.

How nice then to return to find the following quote (attributed to Muhammad Ali) in my email:

Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.

I’ll perhaps write more about Victor later; as I said in my eulogy, he was a great man.

amusements, memes, quotes, science, thoughts

Zen Mischievous Moments #130

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Another piece from this week’s New Scientist but this time from a mainline article.

The article is titled The Last Place on Earth … and gives 17 examples of the last place you can find various “things”. I print the whole of number 7 below, it is so off the wall.

The last place on earth where you can still hear the strangest languages
ever spoken

The death of any language is a tragedy, but some are a more distressing loss than others. A handful of endangered languages are the last refuges of odd linguistic features that, once their host language disappears, will be gone forever.

One is Tofa, spoken by a handful of nomads in the Eastern Sayan mountains of southern Siberia. Starting in the 1950s, the Soviet government forced the Tofa people to learn Russian and abandon their traditional ways of life. Now, there are only 25 Tofa speakers left, all elderly. When they die, one utterly unique feature of Tofa will disappear: a suffix, -sig, that means “to smell like”. In Tofa you can add -sig to the word ivi-, (reindeer) to describe someone who smells like a reindeer. No other language in the world is known to have this kind of suffix.

Linguist K David Harrison of Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania has documented similar examples of endangered “information packaging” systems in his book When Languages Die. One of these is the body counting system used in an estimated 40 languages in Papua New Guinea. In languages like Kaluli and Kobon, the words for numbers are the names of body parts. So 1 to 10 in Kobon are “little finger, ring finger, middle finger, forefinger, thumb, wrist, forearm, inside elbow, bicep, shoulder”. To count higher, you count the collarbone and the hollow at the base of the throat – and then right down the other side, all the way to 23. You can count to 46 by counting back the other way and even higher by starting over and doing it all again. So 61 in Kobon is “hand turn around second time go back biceps other side”.

amusements, quotes, thoughts

Zen Mischievous Moments #128

More on English …

Thanks to Riannan (aka “In the Headlights“) we bring you the translations of some common words, phrases and silences used by women, but rarely understood by men:

Fine: A word used by women to end an argument when they are right and you need to shut up.

Five minutes: If she is getting dressed, this means half an hour. Five minutes means five minutes if you have been told you have five more minutes to watch the game before helping her with chores.

Nothing: This is the calm before the storm. This actually means something, and should alert you to be on your toes. Arguments beginning with nothing usually end in “fine”. Nothing can refer to silence, or can actually be a comment, as in “What’s wrong?”, “Nothing”.

Go ahead: This is a dare, not permission. Whatever it is, don’t do it.

Audible sigh: This is not a word, but a non-verbal statement, often misunderstood by men. A loud sigh means she thinks you are an idiot and wonders why she is wasting her time standing here arguing with you about nothing (qv).

That’s okay: One of the most dangerous things a woman can say to a man. “That’s okay” means she wants to think long and hard before deciding how and when you will pay for your mistake.

Thanks: A woman is thanking you. Don’t ask why or faint. Just say “you’re welcome.”

Whatever: Her way of saying f*** you.

Don’t worry about it, I’ve got it: Another dangerous statement. This refers to something a woman has asked a man to do several times but is now doing herself. This will lead to a man’s asking “what’s wrong?” which is answered by “nothing.”

amusements, quotes, thoughts

English is a B*gg*er of a Language

Following on from yesterday’s post about the difficulties of the English language, Noreen came across the following letter from one David Truman of Fulham in the London Evening Standard of 18 November 1991:

Lines in honour of the rehabilitation of Frank Bough (by an inner-London primary school teacher trying to teach children English).

I take it you already know
of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through?
I write in case you wish perhaps
To learn of less familiar traps:
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead; it’s said like bed, not bead;
For goodness sake, don’t call it “deed”!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother.
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear for bear, or fear for pear.
There’s dose and rose, there’s also lose
(Just look them up) and goose and choose,
And cork and work, and card and ward,
And font and front, and word and sword,
And do and go, and thwart and cart
Come come, I’ve barely made a start!
A dreadful language?
Man alive, Who mastered it when I was five!