Personal Blogs

“That’s a whole Pandora’s box of worms you’ve opened up.”

SPEECH! How Language Made Us Human, by Simon Prentis. 

I've only just started but finding it very interesting. As a professional translator he provides many examples of how other languages may do something is a way that seems strange or unnatural so English speakers, only to flip the perspective and show us that from the others point of view we English speakers are the strange ones.

On Page 53 I found this wonderful joke. I don't know where it came from originally and it pops up in several places on the internet. I've reproduced it from memory, this is no a direct quote.

A mother mouse and her baby mouse were going for a stroll when they were suddenly attacked by a cat. The mother mouse shouted "BARK, BARK!" and the cat ran away scared. "See" says the mother, "how useful it is to learn foreign languages."

“Learning is the power that lets us discover our ignorance.”  

Translated from Erne of Armingford, probably writing ca 700 CE.

What day comes after Fry-up day?

Fatter day!

Given an equilateral triangle LMN, let X lie on ML extended, and Y lie on MN, such that LX = NY.

Show that the point P where XY and LN intersect is the midpoint of XY.

In the last few years there has been a good deal of research into bumble bee behaviour. These astonishing insects are capable of quite complex learning, far more than was at one time recognised. For example they can learn to roll a wooden ball to a target in order to get a reward of dissolved sugar. An article very recent published reports that they also engage in behaviour that looks like playing; they spontaneously roll the wooden balls around even when no reward is associated.

For more about the research see

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003347222002366?via%3Dihub

The Slowcoach, by Ivan Tupotitov. An early 19th century classic about a Russian nobleman, who, like Hamlet, struggles with procrastination.

Gran refused to drive faster when we asked her to. She said she was putting her foot down.

My toilet takes 1,6 gallons to flush, that’s 7 litres in the metric cistern.

They laughed when I checked my ruler against a head of broccoli.

But I explained; I need to calibrate, see?

I bought some clogs three or four years ago, but they were uncomfortable on me. So I gave them away, wouldn’t you?