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The crack of dawn
And there are people who advocate getting rid of daylight savings? Madness. That would have the sun rise at 4:30 this time of year, which means I'd be up at 4. You know who gets up at 4? Tofu makers. No one else should be awake at that hour except the insomniacs like me who're about to go to bed.
Three days in a row awake before 6, two of them at 5 am. Awake. Unable to get back to sleep because my body says "Light! Look there's *light* in the east! The birds are singing! It's morning!!" Ohh for the wintertime when 5 am was the middle of the night and I got more than 5 or 6 hours rest (it doesn't have to be sleep-- an hour or two's float in the dark will do just as well.) And my eyes weren't too tired to read Japanese the rest of the day.
Because when I'm not too tired to read I can divert myself with these websites, so much more satisfying than fandom_wank or The Star:
The most common Chinese characters,
which is fun, borked pronunciation apart. I'm not trying to pronounce. I'm trying to read subtitles.
Chatty rooster's dictionary of Singlish
Certain sample sentences have the marvellous impenetrability of discussions of orthodox Jewish usage. 'Eh, if you do’wan to kena arrow, then you better tactical and take cover a bit, skarly the ossifer catch you then you kena.' Compare with: 'What is the bracha on the tallis gadol? On the tallis katan? Do we make brachot on both? What if the tallis katan is donned before sunrise?'
Or Lowland Scots:
COPYRICHT
Aw richts is pitten by. Nae pairt o this darg shuid be doobelt, hained in ony kin o seestem, or furthset in ony shape or by ony gate whitsomeiver, athoot haein leave frae the writer afore-haund.
A hae nae pleens whan the abuin is duin for tae fordle the Scots leid in eddication, sae lang's naebody is makkin siller oot o't. Ony speirins write us.
Only that the Scots makes sense to me. I knew all those undergrad tears I shed over Piers Plowman weren't wasted. But it reminds me of Alan Garner reading an edition of Gawain and the Green Knight and being angry that it required footnotes, because his father wouldn't have needed them. I resent the hegemony of modern English, which sucks the juice out of language (in this case itself) by flattening everything to TV sitcom's 2000 words. But at least it's constantly aborbing juices from elsewhere. If one can no longer use 18th century Latinate diction without being called purple (incorrectly) or pretentious (by those who've never read 18th century authors), maybe some day we'll be able to drop into an English that's 35% Hokkien, 20% Japanese, 10% Malay and 5% Hebrew. Seasoned with Gaelic and Spanish and roasted in a slow oven until done.
Three days in a row awake before 6, two of them at 5 am. Awake. Unable to get back to sleep because my body says "Light! Look there's *light* in the east! The birds are singing! It's morning!!" Ohh for the wintertime when 5 am was the middle of the night and I got more than 5 or 6 hours rest (it doesn't have to be sleep-- an hour or two's float in the dark will do just as well.) And my eyes weren't too tired to read Japanese the rest of the day.
Because when I'm not too tired to read I can divert myself with these websites, so much more satisfying than fandom_wank or The Star:
The most common Chinese characters,
which is fun, borked pronunciation apart. I'm not trying to pronounce. I'm trying to read subtitles.
Chatty rooster's dictionary of Singlish
Certain sample sentences have the marvellous impenetrability of discussions of orthodox Jewish usage. 'Eh, if you do’wan to kena arrow, then you better tactical and take cover a bit, skarly the ossifer catch you then you kena.' Compare with: 'What is the bracha on the tallis gadol? On the tallis katan? Do we make brachot on both? What if the tallis katan is donned before sunrise?'
Or Lowland Scots:
COPYRICHT
Aw richts is pitten by. Nae pairt o this darg shuid be doobelt, hained in ony kin o seestem, or furthset in ony shape or by ony gate whitsomeiver, athoot haein leave frae the writer afore-haund.
A hae nae pleens whan the abuin is duin for tae fordle the Scots leid in eddication, sae lang's naebody is makkin siller oot o't. Ony speirins write us.
Only that the Scots makes sense to me. I knew all those undergrad tears I shed over Piers Plowman weren't wasted. But it reminds me of Alan Garner reading an edition of Gawain and the Green Knight and being angry that it required footnotes, because his father wouldn't have needed them. I resent the hegemony of modern English, which sucks the juice out of language (in this case itself) by flattening everything to TV sitcom's 2000 words. But at least it's constantly aborbing juices from elsewhere. If one can no longer use 18th century Latinate diction without being called purple (incorrectly) or pretentious (by those who've never read 18th century authors), maybe some day we'll be able to drop into an English that's 35% Hokkien, 20% Japanese, 10% Malay and 5% Hebrew. Seasoned with Gaelic and Spanish and roasted in a slow oven until done.
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SHEER MADNESS!
I'm having trouble sleeping too. The only way I sleep past sunrise is if it is overcast or I swathe my head in blankets. I am looking at making myself a sleep mask.
maybe some day we'll be able to drop into an English that's 35% Hokkien, 20% Japanese, 10% Malay and 5% Hebrew. Seasoned with Gaelic and Spanish and roasted in a slow oven until done.
English is a lovely melting pot.
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the Scots makes sense to me too. But I have a love for the accent. Although I wouldn't able to place the different regions. ^__^ (except Glaswegian... I can normally pick out the Glasgow not sure why)
But languages, the headaches that they are, are fun though. ^_~
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(That btw is one reason The Powers That Be discourage the use of Singlish. "But our foreign visitors/INVESTORS can't understand you!")
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Have no fear... I speak like I write ..or is that a scarier prospect than me actually sounding Singlish...*hmmm ponders*
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Really, I'm all for standard English being kept reasonably, well, standard, precisely because you have to talk to so many people in it in business and online or both. It's not just second language speakers who won't get your particular American mid-west or Aussie usage: other English speakers will be confused by 'He drug the boxes into the basement.' But the stuff you talk at home, however home is defined: let the linguistic invasion run rampant. That's where English *came* from. We already have Chinese and Malay words in standard- typhoon, amok- a few more will hurt no one.
The real problem is the people (hem-hem mostly to the south of me) who don't want to accept that the English they speak isn't universally accepted, or that there can really be two separate entities known as colloquial and standard English.
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(explain explain!)
http://www.antimoon.com/forum/2003/2522.htm
The entries in the link above (first result returned by googling "dinna ken", heee) seem more recognizable than the example in this post. Are they a mix of the two?
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antimoon sounds to me like New World Scots, whichever new world he's in. A generation or so removed from the real thing.
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Frankly I'd be happy to have DST all year round. The extra hour is nice in November but suddenly it's getting dark at 5 and our kidlings can't go out to play after snack, no matter how nice the Indian summer weather. Except that in winter you'd get what I found in Amsterdam- dark at 8 am, not really light till 9.
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