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Monday, February 8th, 2010
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11:03 pm - [Hebrew] Dana International Nouns
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The next Hebrew language-only dinner is coming up next Thursday and I've been studying like mad. reading, listening to CDs. Hell, I even puilled out my old Rosetta Stone Hebrew edition (which, if you remember, I wasn't even all that fond of!). I've been doing studying six days a week now, and I must say I'm noticing quite a bit of improvement ...
Let me make it clear. I hate vowel points. Tiberian vowel pointing has a ton of redundancy AND it doesn't help that one of the most frequently used marks -- qamatz -- is either an a or and o, and the rules that guide this are vague at best, and in fact I've always been able to read MORE accurately without the points. Though I haven't really given any special focus to them, I noticed that I'm now able to read aloud in prayer books and the like much more accurately than I have before. They still suck, though. :: laugh ::
I've come to realize that my spelling is still horrible. I used to give Tzachi a hard time for his seemingly random English spelling, but you know what? I've come to realize via Rosetta Stone how bad my spelling IS, and the use of yod or vav to indicate i, o, and u is somewhat random and that's where I fall. Oh, and all of the soundalike consonants too. :: laugh ::
Oh transgender nouns, how I hate you. ביצה, beytza, "egg," though feminine, is ביצים, beyzim in the plural (with a masculine ending); the same with מילה, mila, "word", becoming מילים, milim. If there were only a few here and there this wouldn't be a problem but gender is amazingly random in the language, and it causes severe difficulty when it comes to number or adjective or even verb agreement. I'll get it right yet ...
I suggested bringing a game. I have Scrabble in Hebrew (which Carl kicked my ass at!), but now I'm looking at others that might be fun (which are all in Hebrew!). Clue? Boggle? Maybe Taboo? Decisions, decisions.
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12:46 pm - [Multilingual Monday] Understanding song lyrics
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I love music written in other languages -- obviously. There are styles, points of view, and more that I wouldn't hear otherwise if I just stuck to English music. Plus I'm a linguaphile, so really this is no shock. It's, in fact, what drew me initially to Eurovision -- before the free language rule, each country had to sing in one of its official languages. Though you can now sing in anything (meaning: everyone sings in English, even if said English isn't understandable in the least), some countries stick to one of their official languages, and Spain's entries have been predominantly in Spanish.
It's always humbling when you come across something that you can, literally, understand, but the true meaning is somewhat elusive, and in song lyrics this is probably going to be expected, with a more "poetic" mode of expression (sometimes!). Last year's Spanish Eurovision entry had a lyric, "Quiero clavarte mi cruz," or "I want to nail you to my cross." What?? At first I thought it was just an excuse to get a rhyme -- it followed "No hay tabus" -- so I started to ask around what this line meant, and I could never get a clear answer. "Oh, that saying is really popular because [another singer] sang that!" Okay, but what does it MEAN? What is this supposed to CONVEY?
The same happened years ago with a La Oreja de Van Gogh song which featured the lyric, "Un café con sal," or "A coffee with salt." Again, what???? I can understand the WORDS but what does this imply? I was reading around and someone stated that this combination was used to induce vomiting. So should I imply this line as "feeling nauseous"? It was never made clear, but I'm now half-tempted to call my chibi-Roger comic strip "Café Con Sal" :: laugh ::
So, can you explain the nuances of these lines? Or do you have other confusing song lyrics from other languages? I'd love to hear them!
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| Sunday, February 7th, 2010
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1:28 pm - [Obscure Crushes] Torfi Ólafsson
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Those who know me already know this little tale, but for those who are new (or like hearing the same story over and over): World's Strongest Man WAS my first porn. Though no cock was shown and no one was getting fucked (at least literally), I was instantly drawn to these larger-than-life men as they went through various events like pulling trucks with their bare hands. I used to dream of the men I saw on that show and exploring the vast expanses of their bodies. It was at this point that I became happy I was small, incidentally. :: laugh ::
One of the men I've come to lust after over the years? Iceland's Torfi Ólafsson.
And what's NOT to love? Tall (6'7"), big (420#), furry, bearded, built, strong ... sigh, and tragically, married with two kids. Oh well, no one's perfect, right? :: laugh :: He's still amazingly handsome and it's this exact TYPE of man that has influenced not just the kind of men I've looked for, but also the kind of men I illustrate -- these "larger than life" gents will always make my knees weak.
( See more of Torfi! )
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| Friday, February 5th, 2010
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4:22 pm - Ready to pounce
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| Thursday, February 4th, 2010
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10:07 am - 眼球に槍
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| Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
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11:33 pm - And that's the tooth!
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So last month I had to go get two temporary crowns put in. The good news is that those suckers got yanked out. Well, wait, that SHOULD have been the good part. After all, eating with temps, to be quite blunt, fucking blows goats. So the hygenist yanked one out, to which I was in quite a bit of pain. "Oh, we could get you some novacaine," she said. Well hell, you already yanked one out; why numb me now? So she attacks the other one and it comes out afte ten minutes of pulling.
Egad I was in so much pain.
So I waited with nothing but pulp in those two spots for twenty minutes while the dentist finished something up, and I got to watch the TV in the room. Wait, scratch that, I had no glasses, so I couldn't watch ANYTHING; instead I listened to Say Yes To The Dress as though it were a radio production. Holy crap, lady, your WEDDING DRESS budget is $10,000??? That's the down payment on a house!!
I was still pretty sore when the dentist finally came in, he plunked the crowns in ...
... and they feel wrong. I tell him this, and he adjusts, and I THINK it's better, they get cemented in, and then I try to eat a bowl of soup two hours later, and something definitely feels off. It COULD be simply that these crowns are nearly directly above and below one another, or I might need another adjustment. My boss has been kind enough to me about taking time for these teeth during our busy period, but we were already warned not to take time off in February.
Oy. -_- Maybe they'll feel better tomorrow?
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(comment on this)
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| Monday, February 1st, 2010
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11:44 pm - [Multilingual Monday] 日本手話
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| Sunday, January 31st, 2010
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10:21 pm - [Hebrew] Reading != Speaking
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So Readers' Digest version: my Hebrew language studies have the main focus in my (at least linguaphilic) life at the moment. There are a few reasons for this -- mainly, we have a shlixa in Peoria now who has been creating nights specifically for spoken Hebrew use (which means very little English is allowed), and I need to grab that opportunity. Outside of reciting Biblical Hebrew at temple, there is very little spoken Hebrew to be found anywhere here, particularly modern Hebrew.
Tzachi is also coming to the States in June, and though I've written him in Hebrew back and forth, we've almost never spoken in Hebrew, and I want to be able to feel somewhat at ease to speak to him in his own language, as he apparently has become in English. It will still be somewhat unbalanced -- he has far more experience in thinking and speaking in English than I have in Hebrew -- but damn it, I have a goal, and I'm going for it.
Our first Hebrew-language only dinner was Thursday, and I kept thinking to myself, "Don't make an ass of yourself. Don't make an ass of yourself. Don't make an ass of yourself." And I didn't, for the most part. But I certainly didn't start off well ...
"שלום! אני רגב, ואני בן שמונים ואחת." / Hi, I'm Regev and I'm 81 years old
"Well you sure look good considering!" I heard, and immediately I knew what I'd said. It doesn't help that "thirty" and "eighty" ARE somewhat close -- sloshim vs. shmonim. :: laugh :: I admit, I struggled more than I'd've liked, but our shlixa Lior was still impressed. "You do self-study, right???" And she had a great point -- beating myself over idiotic mistakes doesn't help me get better.
I sometimes had a harder time following what Lior said, which has been a HUGE problem in my attempts to improve my Hebrew. Though I can LOOK at text and understand it, hearing it spoken, particularly at a normal clip, is something different. Hebrew text, for starters, has no vowels save for a few instances where the needlessly-complicated Tiberian vowel points are used, and Hebrew has some tricky and hard-to-explain vowel shifts/omissions/elisions/collisions/&c. In standard text you see none of this so, unless you've heard the word in question, you may not recognize the spoken form of the word though you may be acquainted well with its written variant. I need to overcome this.
My goal: By July, to be speaking vastly more fluent and natural Hebrew. I'll make occasional updates and tag them with [Hebrew].
current mood:  blah
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| Friday, January 29th, 2010
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12:30 pm - [Obscure Crushes] Robert Maillet
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 I'm a big fan of the Sherlock Holmes series, and people who read this blog may remember my hesitance to see the film because it looked like a big whoopass explosion-thon. That being said, one thing DID catch my eyes: the (seemingly always typecast) Robert Maillet.
I first saw Mr. Maillet when he had a stint being the wrestler Kurrgan years back. Indeed, what most people find "intimidating" I find "sexually attractive." Tall? Check. Hot deep voice? Check. Strong beefy body? Check. Now if we have "loves to bottom for short guys" then we have a match! :: laugh ::
He also wins bonus points for punching Robert Downey, Jr. :: laugh ::
current mood:  curious
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| Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
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7:18 pm - The Jerb
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I make it no secret to say, that I very rarely enjoy my job. In fact, I complain about it quite a bit, to the point where several I know (sorry, guys) just roll their eyes, let out a sigh, and reply, "Well then FUCK, get a new goddamned job already!!"
What keeps me there? Well, having income is a great thing. :: laugh :: I admit to having perhaps poorly-placed loyalty to my current boss. I DO get projects I enjoy and I get to use what I went to school to do -- what I ENJOY to do. Mind you, this is somewhat uncommon. But the place itself irks the fuck out of me, and the pay has been described as "slave pay."
The guy who did our programme covers was let go about two weeks ago, and now they're looking for a replacement, and the layout manager has been interviewing, and someone in layout said, "YOU should try to get the position."
Hrm, perhaps. Pluses: I would be doing strictly design instead of a mix of typesetting, design, and graphic cleanup that I do now. I would have Fridays off, and instead work 7am-5:30pm Monday-Thursday, which is more ideal for me. Currently I'm on the cleaning crew (yeah, this was decided when I went to Atlanta in 2008!) but would no longer be the case if I moved to layout. Oh, and increase in pay!
Obvious negatives: The head of layout is unbearable. The position is prone to layoffs. While less overtime is a good thing, it's also a bad thing in that I'm paid hourly. Oh, and the last guy got canned so that the different layout teams could work on their own covers, but now they're looking for another cover guy -- this screams "UNSTABLE JOB."
I told my current boss that someone said I should try for the cover position. He genuinely looked a bit irked that I'd even consider it, and it's nice to see that I have some value in my department, and that the thought of me leaving would cause a bit of an "oh shit" reaction. I honestly don't think I'd take it, but it's certainly got me thinking. It'll obviously do nothing to alleviate the fact that it's the COMPANY that gets me.
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| Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
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1:19 pm - "Bad Hebrish Fonts"
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One of the articles I've recently come across is this article, talking about a Latinization of Hebrew fonts. This is referring to font creators have been more frequently mimicking Latin fonts in order to create similar Hebrew letters. Many fonts, particularly for brand names, seem to have been literally lifted from the original Latin letters and "hacked" into Hebrew text.
While I think the article goes a bit far -- there's a very conservative tone and I fail to see how mimicking Latin script will cause people to suddenly become non-fluent -- I also agree that some of the more recent conventions are just ugly, in particular the letter X to be used in lieu of א and the unnatural creation of ט by putting "cl" together and mirroring them, as seen in the Hebrew Sprite logo.
I'm curious to hear what any of my fontophile friends have to say!
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| Monday, January 25th, 2010
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6:27 pm - [Multilingual Monday] Nominative, Ergative, Plus A Bonus!
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One of my biggest stumbling blocks in learning Georgian was -- as stupid as this sounds -- the NOMINATIVE. The nominative is the case used -- in most languages -- for the subject of a sentence. In "I speak terrible Georgian," "I" is in the nominative. "The cat is urinating on top of the television" features "cat", in the nominative. In most languages, this is the dictionary form, and indeed, for most words words you would find in a dictionary this is true.
However, to indicate the nominative, Georgian affixes a ი, -i, no matter what. This means that most nouns in, say, Wikipedia, will also have this affixed. See: the Georgian Wikipedia article on Karl Jung, where his name is written as კარლ იუნგი, Karl Iungi. And then there's Maikl Jak'soni -- these nominative markers are so much like part of someone's name that some people won't know who you're talking about if, for example, you refer to "Maikl Jak'son". So I almost always forget to attach this and thus fuck up sentences when doing something simple like introducing myself (ჩემი სახელია, chemi sak'elia, "My name is ...", and forget to add the nominative marker and, though I'm understood, it's immediately wrong.
I learned that Georgian had an ergative case, and immediately thought that it would be like Basque, where the subject of a transitive verb gets put into a different case -- see Gizonak mutila ikusi du, "The man saw the boy," where "man", ginzon, is put into the ergative case, ginzonak, because the verb is transitive. If the verb were NOT transitive, this wouldn't be used -- Gizona etorri da, "The man arrived."
But that would be too easy, and of course Georgian has to have SPLIT ergativity, so the only time this is ever employed is in the past tense -- კაცი ვაშლს ჭამს, Katsi vashls chams, "The man is eating the food" (man = kats + i, the nominative marker), BUT კაცმა ვაშლი ჭამა, Katsma vashli chama, "He ate the food" (man - kats + ma, the ergative marker). Even MORE confusing is that, chama is the standard word for a meal or for food, but when you DON'T have an ergative subject the object is marked with -s, the DATIVE marker, but NO marker to refer to the object when an ergative noun exists.
I'm starting to think I must subconsciously hate myself since I insist on studying Georgian. :: laugh ::
So the bonus: I can't believe I never wrote about this, but I'm curious. A while back I had a coworker come up to me, he asked me, "Can you move the logo here up a skosh?"
"... as what now huh?"
"A skosh. Just this much," he explained, putting a rough measurement of how far I needed to move this logo with his fingers.
Immediately I recognized the word, but not from English. Sure enough, "skosh" seems to have crept into the English language from JAPANESE, coming from the word 少し, sukoshi, "a little". I'm amazed, with all of the English words that mean "a little bit", that sukoshi would pop up, and it must have SOME currency as I just heard it yesterday on a TV show as well. Has anyone else experienced this? Do you guys have any other examples of words that were imported, but the fact that they were imported and being used surprises or confuses you for some reason? It doesn't have to be in English either; I'd love to hear it!
current mood:  bored
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10:13 am - אמא היא כספומט
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My mother keeps trying to give me money, and I always refuse. She has offered to buy me a laptop, pay to fix Carl's car, and buy me a plane ticket, and while it's nice and I appreciate the gesture, my mother simply isn't in the position to be tossing money away. For starters, she doesn't work, and she hasn't worked as long as I can remember. She gets a pension from my dad's old employer and social security, but that's about it. In reality, it's not a lot money, as she needs to pay for her house, utilities, groceries, etc.
My brother has been managing her finances so she's not too bad. Thank God, as she recently tried to buy something off of a home shopping channel and my brother managed to intervene. She also still smokes like a chimney, so she spends way too much on cigarettes. As much as my brother (and my sister before him) tried to get her to quit, she fought them tooth and nail.
If I were to take her money? I'd feel like a complete asshole. I mean, in my mind it's almost elder abuse, as she NEEDS this money to keep living the way she lives; to keep the house, to keep power in her home, etc. She told me on the phone the other day that she finally realized that she had far less money than she thought in her savings, to which I replied, "EXACTLY! Which is why I don't want you buying me anything!"
"I am your MOTHER and I want to spend the money on my loved ones!"
Oy, I can't win.
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| Saturday, January 23rd, 2010
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1:42 pm - 沖縄スレイブアイランド
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I had wondered why I hadn't heard from Fujimoto-sensei in a bit. "Is he still doing illustrations?" Well apparently the answer is "yes", as he just did the drawings for Okinawa Slave Island, which is, as best as I can describe, a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book, but with cock. And, just like the CYOA books, you can choose poorly and the game ends up prematurely.
Oh, but the game gets BETTER, of course, because of what happens when you make the RIGHT decisions.
( For the love of GOD don't CLICK this if you're anywhere where bearmanga cock is a bad thing~! )
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| Thursday, January 21st, 2010
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10:49 pm - 児雷也
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Have I mentioned that I ADORE the artwork of Jiraiya? I recently got quite a bit of Japanese bear-themed stuff sent my way by a good friend who I met via Fujimoto's old message board back around 2001 or so.
My God he procured A LOT OF JAPANESE BEARPORN MANGA.
current mood:  awake
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3:22 pm - Pic repost: Just so we're all clear...
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12:57 pm - Oy of the Day
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| Tuesday, January 19th, 2010
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12:46 am - [Multilingual Monday] Children's Books in Cherokee
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So today I waited around forever for my Hebrew teacher to show up and then realized -- duh -- it's Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and thus no class. I'm stupid.
While killing time I tried reading through my latest book, Na Usdi Gigage Agisi Tsitaga, Ꮎ ᎤᏍᏗ ᎩᎦᎨ ᎠᎩᏏ. I'm amazed that, even with a KIDS' book, I struggle. It's really rather embarassing. But let me give you some sample sentences and you can see WHY.
( Regev gets anal! Again! )
Damn it, I WILL learn this language. :: laugh ::
Completely OT: For those learning Japanese, I'll point you to SpeedAnki, a flash card site for those prepping for the JLPT. Though the site seems a bit out of date -- there are five levels now instead of 4 -- there's still a decent amount of information there to be had.
current music: סינדרלה - סקסטה ורוני דלומי
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| Sunday, January 17th, 2010
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5:43 pm - Humour, The Confused Icon Edition
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It's supposed to be a "baby changing station." But to me? It looks like it's telling you to flush your baby down a really large toilet.
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5:17 pm - Humour At Times Like These: The Eurovision Edition
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So after tonight Carl can't eat or drink, as tomorrow he'll get to have another myriad of tests to find out what's happening to him. "I won't lie," he told me, "I might get admitted immediately."
At least knowing is SOMEWHAT better than coming in Friday to find him barely able to breathe with legs bigger around than my waist. He's stable -- certainly not "better" -- and we're still dealing with an obscene amount of fluid retention, shortness of breath, etc.
Which is why humour is a great thing at times like this. Two examples along the same lines:
Carl saw Albania's Eurovision entrant this year and immediately wondered why Florence Henderson was singing in Albanian. "Where's her Wesson oil???"
And easrlier today he was watching Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, and the subtitles announced that the title characters were in "410 B.C., ATHENS, GREECE."
"Even back then, Greece's 12 points went to Cyprus." :: nodnod ::
Wow, two in one weekend. :: laugh ::
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