There’s a knotty question I never got into with Foreigner, and there’s a reason I’ve always had a time-gap inside the shuttle flights…because while Mother Earth and her satellites behave in a totally sensible way, the ways in which we get to orbit are varied and in technological evolution. So I don’t have a clear answer for how long that flight is in Bren’s time, and while he was the translator for the archive for that technology, he’s a linguist, after all, not an engineer or a physicist.
The station, in fact, has moved. The only way to effectively ‘mothball’ the station was to boost it from LEO (low earth orbit) into geosynchronous orbit, on autopilot, so to speak, which would put it out of reach for the ‘petal sail’ tech the rebels were using to reach the atevi Earth. There may be a short story in this, actually. One is trying to gel, but I have to finish the current book.
Boosting it up—way up—would mean that it could stay in orbit indefinitely—centuries would be no problem. A space station in LEO has to boost itself periodically, and while this could be done robotically, the chance of things going catastrophic would be greater.
Geosynchronous orbit means you need more shielding…but mothballed, far less problem. It also means that while you can observe the planet, you stare at the same spot as the world goes around. When you’re in LEO, you go round the world multiple times a day.
When Phoenix returned initially, not finding the station where they expected, they would have figured out part of what had happened in their absence. Getting aboard the station and getting at records answered other questions. And if they wanted to find out about the planet, their next job was to move the station back into LEO, a delicate job, from which other decisions were possible. But they had no landing craft. Sending a robot down was possible, but they wanted more than that. They wanted to stay safe while figuring out what had happened. And Jase and Yolande were already ‘purposed,’ in a sense.
So that is one of those little background bits that may find its way into the story, or not, but it is one of those things I try to deal with without getting too technical.
People working at the table with a gaslamp sometimes had a transparent green “sunshade” to shield their eyes from the glare, if I remember some old pictures.
Yes, putting your candle or oil or parafin lamp in front of a mirror really helps a lot to brighten the light. I’ve been on the lookout for an antique coachlantern or something like that ever since I ate at a restaurant that was lit by a row of coach lanterns on both long walls, and saw how much light they give. I’ve got a box of candles (and candlesticks) and a bag of waxinelights downstairs for emergencies, and 3 oil lamps and a bottle of parafin in the attic in case the emergency is a flood. We’ve not had more than a few hours of blackout maybe once per five years for as long as I can remember, and one that lasted nearly all day (in 30 years), either from lightning strike to the neighborhood electricity distribution station, or from a builder digging through a cable (except for the national grid of high voltage lines all ours are buried and should be correctly marked on a map that all professional diggers consult, but sometimes someone makes a mistake), but it’s still good to be prepared.
@BCS, I’d guess our “vroeg” for early is related to German “Frühling” i.e. springtime, which in Dutch is called “lente” (related to the Christiam Lent) or “voorjaar” (pre-year).
On the other hand, our word “vroeger” means “long ago”, i.e. a *lot* earlier ; Dutch has the same 3 steps of increase as English, with -er and -est (early, earlier, earliest) but in this case the middle word can also be used as “historically” and has aomost lost its place in this list except for the combination “iets vroeger”, a bit earlier. For just plain earlier I’d use “eerder” (before, or sometimes rather) – the third step of that is “eerst” (first), and it has no first step / base.
“Vroeg” is also, in a completely unrelated sense, the past tense singular of “vragen”, to ask, which in turn is identical to the plural noun for questions.
Sorry for any confusion, I forgot to look up the translation for “waxinelichtjes” before posting: those are tea lights in English, which I couldn’t recall last night.
I wondered about this, then forgot to ask. Thanks. A tea light. Oh, OK. 🙂 Hmm, and that looks like it would break down into English as something like, “waxen light” plus an “-y/-ie” diminutive suffix plus a plural, “-s.” It’s interesting to me that you can do plurals in “-es” and “-en,” common to English, Dutch, and German, and presumably back to Common Germanic.
Periodically, I look at behindthename.com for random names for inspiration on character names or word-forms and word-histories. So this morning, I found “Nand,” which, besides being a computer science word for an “and not” operator, also is a Hindi name from Sanskrit. I thought it was cool to share. (Note how very different the Indian subcontinent writing systems are so very different and unlike how the Latin alphabet works. These are all two or three symbols with consonant-vowel or vowel-consonant or consonant-minus-vowel combinations.)
Given Name NANDA
GENDER: Masculine
USAGE: Hinduism, Indian, Kannada, Tamil
OTHER SCRIPTS: नन्द (Sanskrit), ನಂದ (Kannada), நந்தா (Tamil)
Meaning & History
Means “joy” in Sanskrit. In Hindu texts this is a name of both Vishnu and the foster-father of Krishna, as well as various other characters. In Buddhist texts this is the name of a god and a disciple of Buddha. Nanda was also the name of a 4th-century BC king who founded a dynasty in Magadha in India.
See All Relations · Show Family Tree
Related Names
OTHER LANGUAGES/CULTURES: Nand (Hindi)
It seems to me that transit time would be flexible due to relative positions, some fixed on the planet, as well as the fact that nobody wants to fly in a lightning storm.
Off-Topic: The font draft I’ve been working on this month is at what Jayne or Mal would call an “uncomfortableness.” The regular book weight, I’m pleased with, although last night, reviewing, I see design details I need to go back and fix. I didn’t notice them doing the draft, I was trying to get the idea in quickly. But now I notice and they need to be fixed.
The draft to test out a bolder weight is also pretty good, and right now, I still want to proceed with it to see how it looks, a little more completed. (And now I know to adjust it like I will the regular weight.) So this is good too. But then comes the part that doesn’t quite fit.
That would mean somehow adjusting my plan for any bolder weights in a way that doesn’t really fit too well. It would result in too high a contrast. (Those super-thin letters that tend to be used for high fashion, for instance, Bodoni’s thin strokes being a prime example.)
So I started a draft that goes about it in the way I’d first thought of doing, more usual. And…hmm, I wasn’t too happy with the results. So I’ll have to fiddle around with it some more or go in a different direction.
One design problem is, this is a condensed typeface, more for display and headlines, and I’d wanted a period feel (1800’s wood type grotesque, the early sans-serifs). When I carry that out bolder, there’s limited space if I move the insides of the letters inward, and if I stretch them outward, the shapes all have to adjust to keep the look of the design, to keep the feel right and matching the regular weight.
When I did this, with the constraints I thought I wanted, it looked, hmm, not so right, not so good, and maybe too bold too fast.
So the answer lies somewhere else or in the middle, and I will have to keep at it until I find what I think works, visually and technically.
While this is puzzling, challenging, it’s also a neat problem to have, and letting myself have the freedom, the time, to try different approaches should help me learn and test things.
I want to get more completed on this, and I want and need to get back to other drafts. I need to get something completed, so I can start up, and feel like I’m actually doing this as a money-making business instead of just playing around for a dilettante hobby. And, y’know, income, however quickly that could accrue, so I have something going job-wise, and I’m not relying on a tiny couple of investments and pulling from savings periodically. Because money from the sale of the old house won’t last forever.
Well, anyway, I’m pleased and puzzled still with how this draft is going. It’s doing really well, it’s not shaping up into what I thought I was doing when I started it, but I’m oddly OK with that. I think it might be popular or at least distinctive, just unusual enough without being too eccentric, and it’s legible, readable. How closely it fits to those 19th century early grotesques? Hmm, I’m not sure now.
There are details on a few lowercase letters that I’m still not sure of. They don’t quite fit with the other letters, and yet they do. If I carried those through to the rest of the letters, it would change the font so much it would be another font altogether. If I eliminate those and match to the overall style, well, that’s likely what I’ll do for this font-family. But I like those details, so I’ll likely use them for something else.
I haven’t dared to see if there’s a serif style I’d like with this, for a companion serif family. If I’m going for that 19th century feel still, then it would need to be one of two styles in vogue then, or else one of about three others. (Which, uh, means one of any of the broad classes of serif fonts that there are, because they’d all appeared by the 1800’s and 1900’s.) But the styles most used back in the 1800’s were “slab serifs,” completely rectangular, no curves, sometimes not even on curved letters, or “bracketed slabs,” also called “Clarendon” or “Egyptian,” after the first major font that made that popular (you’ve all seen Clarendon, even if you don’t know it) and “Egyptian” because, historical fun fact, the discoveries of Egyptian artifacts and puzzling over how to decipher hieroglyphics, occurred in the Napoleonic era, and took Europe and the Americas by storm, as a fascination with Egyptian styles. So the serif style became known as an “Egyptian” because of this, even though it has no relation to ancient Egyptian design aesthetics, which…hmm, I’m not sure if anyone has really explored. Ooh, I think I just talked myself into more sketching. 🙂
Anyway, so things are going well, very productive right now on this draft, and I’m exploring more than I have before, to get this right. So I’m happy with that. I’m also itching now to get back to one or the other of the drafts already in progress and do more to finish out whichever one might go fastest. I feel like I need to focus down on one and go with it. — Or it might be the current one, once I can figure out what feels right for the bolder weights. (And italics are still to go, but will probably be more obliques (slanted) than full italics. Unless I get an inspiration that would work especially right for this design.)
Note an important thing, design-wise. It has to “feel” right. It has to “look right,” to the human eye, regardless of technical geometric perfection. (Although usually, there are geometric and proportional optical principles behind why we think a thing “looks right.”) Even so, there’s a humanized distinction there. Human beings want a look and a feel to something that is visually and emotionally pleasing in some way, or attention-getting, or in some way resonates, in order for any design to “work well,” to be a success, a thing that people want to use. And type needs to be sufficiently legible, or it won’t work well, with rare exceptions.
This applies to any kind of design work, not just type design; architecture and interiors and landscaping, as well as industrial and product design, sculpture, painting, clothing, any artistic endeavor.
Hmm, writing has its own things on “look and feel” that are all about how language works, the associations and connotations we have with words and stylistics, and other features. So this is a thing in writing too, but it takes a different, er, “shape,” a different mode or form of accomplishing this.
Huh, I think I just gave a micro-thesis there. I never got to the stage of having enough courses in a major to get to a graduating thesis. But I am sure there are ideas running around in my head, unformed or formed. I did get through a lot of liberal arts, and a good bit of math and some computer science, so there’s plenty rattling around in there, mostly half-forgotten in memory from 2/3 of a lifetime ago. Heh. But yes, a lot of the liberal arts ideals did stick, and were what I am mostly geared toward anyway.
I’m about to be 52 and I still get fascinated by things, excited, and have things I want to do, subjects to learn about. This is sometimes a thing to remind myself of, when I get down (depressed).
Liberal arts may not be as directly employable and payable in our current culture as they should be, but they are still just as crucial, right along with the technical sciences or athletics, to being a complete human being…which is, I guess, just that old Greco-Roman ideal still carrying on. Life is funny and strange, and yet here it is, all the same.
Oh, and a podcast I recently heard had a quote they’d heard elsewhere, attributed to Aristotle:
“Letters were invented so we could communicate with the absent.”
The (very young) woman who quoted it was blown away by the ideas, and her co-host went in another direction with it, both of which I thought were pretty good. I don’t know nearly enough about antiquities / classical authors to know in what context Aristotle said this, or how accurate the English translation is there, but I do like it. By letters, he (or the translator) meant writing, the alphabet, which was a Greek refinement (with vowels!) from the Phoenician consonant-only alphabet. Aristotle apparently meant a one-way communication, but did intend that the reader could understand the written message, so information, communications, a one-way conversation transfer, could take place, over a separation in distance and time, without speaking. So he was getting at a central idea behind writing, besides the idea of absence, a disconnection between speaker or writer and listener or reader. … And he would’ve had no idea that, something like 2500 yeas after he was gone, people half the planet away, non-Greeks, would still know, in some form, any of his ideas or who he was. — Not bad for an old philosopher who liked arts and sciences. 😉
He would be inured to the fact there are still people who don’t value such teaching or practical applications, but he might wonder how it is we still have people around who don’t see why it should be valued. — I don’t know; I’m surely putting too much in that thought on a wise man who knew the good and bad of people in his day, who knew human nature well enough to comment on it in depth. … And I think I should read some classics. All my reading was post-Beowulf and mostly medieval and modern English and French, aside from, religious-wise, the Bible. So Aristotle might wonder how a guy who supposedly got a good liberal arts education has only read snippets of Aristotle and his Greek contemporaries, or those Roman thinkers a few centuries later. Hah.
(I would be curious what that quote is in the original Greek, with or without the later polytonic accent marks. It’d be an especially cool thing to show in font samplers.)
Heaven help me; am I completely incapable of writing a short, concise post that does not meander so? I didn’t used to be like that; although no, short writing has never been my strong suit, heh.
BCS, when was the last time you read much Earnest Hemmingway?
(I’m taking that as a gently intended tease and editorial comment, which did give me a chuckle.)
But to answer literally — I read, hmm, two or three of his books in high school and college for courses. Even as a high school student, who at the time thought I knew English or writing pretty well — I got irritated at Hemingway’s habit of run-on sentences connected by lots and lots of “and’s.” Sure, he could write a story, and sure, you might like it, but dang, extended sentences with so many “and’s.” As a high school and college kid, I wanted to go through and mark up with periods and capital letters where those could be separate, simple sentences, to the point I had to sit back and remind myself he had something to say, story-wise, it seemed to be a pretty good story, well thought of, and ah, I should be paying more attention to that than to grammatical or stylistic points. LOL, it didn’t quite hit me at the time that that was more quibbling than actual editing to improve how it came across.
I haven’t since read him. I might have a different outlook now. — And gosh, has it been a long time since I read Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, once for high school and once for college.
In hindsight, there was one college prof I never should have told that I wanted to be a writer. Unlike for my other English profs or my French prof, that one prof, thereafter, I could not please or make a good grade with, no matter how good (or not good, or just frosh/sophomoric) my essays were. (I’d probably cringe at some of them now, I think.) My content or style or critical thinking, or ability (or lack of it) to argue a thesis didn’t seem to matter. I think he thought he was correcting me to make me a better writer, or else (more likely) out of jealousy. I didn’t learn much in that class, if anything, which was unfortunate. I did learn from three other profs, much more. After hearing me fuss about it, my mom (B.A. in English) read one of that prof’s required novels, and said she agreed with me and didn’t see why he’d selected it instead of any number of other good books, either from that period or otherwise. (The book was McTeague, I mercifully don’t recall the author’s name.) He was one of the few profs I felt I didn’t learn much worthwhile from. Others were considerably better.
(And my high school French teacher was always notably careful not to have her phone or address public. I would’ve liked to have kept in contact. Ms. Toni Seegar was one of my best teachers, out of all of them. She was great, and a neat person.)
Heh, Ernest Hemingway wouldn’t have liked it that, after at least three of his books, which were good, my main impression was run-ons and and’s. For which, I don’t have an excuse, really. (I got particularly irritated at one sentence which was most of the paragraph, and which ran for half a paperback page. My high school self was quite indignant. LOL.) Ah, this was before I’d seen lots of examples of how everyday people in the real world write, and had to edit customers’ writing. Oh, if I had a nickel for each of those…. Especially for the ones where the customer insisted he/she knew better, and I couldn’t point to a sheepskin on the wall to say I did know better. (My mom at one point threatened to bring her diploma to work and hang it as evidence she did know better. I almost wish she had.) :evilgrin:
Hmm. Succinct? Concise? ME?! (I need that smiley where he’s laughing so hard, he’s pounding the floor with his fists.)
Er, I’m trying, here. I just seem to feel compelled to say a lot. Or that’s my excuse.
(In fiction writing attempts, I do seem to be better. Somewhat.)
(I have been known to write business letters of one page or under, in my erstwhile defense.) :-/ … Not helping, am I? Digging the hole further, you say? Drat. 😀
I s’pose it’s OK to be an acquired taste, as long as one is not in too much bad taste. Or tastes bad. Or something like that. :-O
My personal difficulty was H.G.Wells. It was not that he committed run on sentences, nor that they did not make sense; it was that they were just so hard to unravel. It seemed that he never met a complicated, firmly packed structure that he didn’t adore and use as often as he could.
‘Scuse me, ma’am, but I have a problem with my brain being missing.
While I was right remembering Of Mice and Men, the one I want to reread is The Grapes of Wrath. As a college boy, I had an OK opinion of the book, coupled with my parents’ and grandparents’ stories of the Depression and WWII.
I am fairly sure that life experience and current events are likely to have given me another perspective on the book.
A year or two ago, I was amazed by the song, “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” with recordings by Bruce Springsteen, Pete Seeger, and a hard rock / metal band singer-musician I didn’t know, who did a great job on the song. So there are at least three fairly individual takes on the song. (Yes, Pete Seeger being that Pete Seeger of Peter, Paul, and Mary.) — If you haven’t heard these, they’re well worth a listen. They’re folk / protest lyrics and modern guitar work, one of which includes rough, aggressive electric guitar in its own fine interpretation. I was impressed by all three takes.
My dang cats think my keyboard is a freaking sidewalk, despite all protests otherwise. Got pretty demonstrative (and swipey) with them a few times. Stares of astonishment at my rude outbursts. No permanent effects against keyboard-walking. I think their opinion is that I “walk” my fingers all over the thing all the time, so why can’t they? Sigh. If only I had a translator tape that spoke cat….
(Yes, they’d probably have a lot to say about the menu and the litterbox alike.)
(Auto-incorrect really wants to turn that into a letterbox, which is most assuredly not the same thing! Hahah!)
Mild correction: Pete Seeger is not the same person as Peter Yarrow of (the folk group) Peter, Paul & Mary. Both are (or, in the case of Pete Seeger, alas, “were”) just superb, amazing folk singers.
As a young child, I listened to Peter, Paul & Mary records (my Dad gave me their “Moving” album when I was 5 or 6). He wrote the music to and the group sang “Puff the Magic Dragon.” I used to cover my ears and refuse to listen to the final verse where “Jackie Paper came no more and Puff that mighty dragon sadly slunk into his cave.” I would cry at the thought of Puff being so unhappy and abandoned by his friend and still find it terribly sad.
Pete Seeger was, in my biased opinion, the best American folk singer and folk song collector of the 20th Century. Early on, he performed as part of the Weavers. I listen to his music weekly (try his five volumes of so of recordings of American Favorite Ballads, available on ITunes: I also have his song book with most of them from when I “failed to learn” to play guitar when I was 13).
I play several of Pete Seeger’s renditions of folk songs (the union organizing song “Which Side are you on?” and the great, female badass/outlaw song “Darlin’ Corey”) for my Linguistics class when we discuss Oral Tradition.
President Obama requested that Pete Seeger sing at his inauguration, when Pete Seeger was in his late 80‘s or so, because of his lifelong commitment to the cause of civil rights and social justice. Even with his voice ravaged by age, it was a magnificent moment to hear Pete Seeger and his grandson… oh, and Bruce Springsteen… singing in front of the Lincoln Monument.
I just watched the YouTube video of that performance and, again, it brought tears to my eyes. I can’t figure out quite how to capture the YouTube URL for it but simply Google “Pete Seeger & Bruce Springsteen Obama Inauguration” and you will bring it right up.
I could, obviously, go on and on, but will leave it at this… And go pursue the Google query “do you mean Pete Seeger & Bruce Springsteen album?” Oh, I didn’t know there might be one. Let me go look!
Thanks, Raesean; and I should know the difference between Peter Yarrow and Pete Seeger. (If I recall, Peter Yarrow’s English, besides. But my track record’s spotty lately.) Heh.
The recording of Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen doing, “The Ghost of Tom Joad,” is on an album (CD) Sowing the Seeds – 10th Anniversary and is available on iTunes. Pete Seeger does a spoken interpretation, with Bruce coming in on backup, with light guitar, harmonica, drums, etc. behind them. Pete’s voice there is older but strong for the spoken version.
I will look for that collection of his, and I have a few songs from him.
Puff the Magic Dragon is such an unusual song. It didn’t really get to me, growing up; or rather, I don’t recall if I had a strong reaction to the storytelling, Jackie growing up and moving off and Puff becoming unhappy and reclusive at this. But as an adult, it resonated much more. As a story-in-song, it’s really something.
I don’t recall now if I’d heard Pete and Bruce from what I got to see of Pres. Obama’s inauguration, which was probably incomplete, given circumstances then. I’ll look for that. I miss Pres. Obama’s sense and calm. He tried in a very oppositional and difficult situation, and managed to get some positive things done. (In contrast to the present term.) — I did get to hear his inaugural address.
@Paul. Growing up we had a plaque on the wall that stated “We grow too soon old, and too late schmart — Pennsylvania Dutch Motto” thus I assumed German origins as the PA Dutch are actually Deutch.
While we’re on the topic of behind-the-pages scientific details, let me ask a question that’s been bugging me a while: What is the “beam” in the Devil to the Belt stories (Heavy Time and Hellburner)? It seems to be some sort of propulsion/guidance system run out of Belt Management (A.K.A. “Big Mama” and less-flattering names) and used by in-system ships:
How am I, the reader, supposed to picture what’s going on with that?
E.g., I can guess that the “vanes” on the Alliance/Union Universe FTL ships latch on the the hyperspace interface to speed ships up or slow them down, and I don’t need any sciency details beyond that, but I don’t have that pseudo-understanding for the in-system “beam”.
(I think I asked this once before but don’t remember an answer. I’ve also asked the question at https://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/17464/1430 but that’s mostly so I have someplace to put an official answer if I get it.)
as I recall it’s laser propulsion.
Now for some reason, I want to reread the story involving NG, which I think was the same two books. — I think my assumption was that that beam was a laser guidance system, but it’s been too long since I last reread those. — My recall is, they got released as ebooks from Closed-Circle.net, so I’ll want to make sure I upload my copies to my Kindle.
Dang, that To-Read pile is getting big. I may declare a holiday this weekend and do nothing but read!
Re: The curry subtopic a couple of blog posts ago — I experimented a while back with curry powder and a little chili powder for a pot of pinto beans. This was plain old curry powder, nothing more specific, from one of the big spice makers, like you’d get at any US supermarket. (hmm, I probably need to get curry powder and chili powder; I’m still replenishing my spices after the move, dang it.) — The resulting pot of beans was really great and I didn’t over-spice them. I can’t recall if I’d also put in a can of diced tomatoes or tomato paste, but that would be fine too. Next time I fix pintos, I’ll want to try this again. — The smell of the chili powder and curry powder and beans cooking was really lovely and hearty.
I’m very new to using any kinds of curry, but after a Browncoat recipe book a few years back had “Cargo Bay Beans and Rice,” which included coconut milk and (I think) curry powder, as well as lentils and red kidney beans, I was convinced of how good these were.
It appears any non-subterranean life that might have existed on Proxima Centauri B was extinguished last year. Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf “flare star”. (Many red dwarves are. They’re not good places to try to live.) Last year it “increased in brightness” by 1,000x in a matter of a minute, with accompanying radiation likely to “sterilize” the planet.
https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.08257
The line I saw was that you’d need SPF about 2 billion.
Yep. Red dwarfs HAVE that characteristic. There’s been a lot of noise about their planets being in a life-zone, but if so, I imagine it’s subsea or subterranean. I’ve also heard it said that Prox B is a ‘quiet’ dwarf…and I rather doubt that there is such a thing, on a life-development timescale. Just because we haven’t picked up a flare in the last number of years is no proof it doesn’t. Then there’s UV Ceti, which lies between us and Tau Ceti—a real interesting and violent flare star.
It’s roughly the same age as the Sun, 4.5E9 years, which makes sense. They’re so close together they were undoubtedly born in the same cloud at the same time. But so I’ve read that comes because they’re still spinning fast, small ergo low moment of inertia ergo easily accelerated in the primordial cloud. Old red dwarves, up to 13E9 years possibly, have slowed down, have less of a magneto, and are quieter. No problem for life though, they’ll live as long as the proposed life of the Universe.
I am promising myself, telling myself, to take an hour a day in the evenings to study Spanish, and drill enough that I do remember old vocabulary I used to know, rather than eyeing it, thinking, “Oh, yeah, I’ll remember that,” repeat it a few times…and then not recall it later if/when I want to use it.
Today, one of those local friends picked me up for an errand and personal business, and we ate breakfast. Did I want American or Mexican? Heck, I’ll try Mexican. (Hey, I don’t get out much lately, so any chance at good food, especially favorites, is most welcome.) And now I have some folks who know local authentic places besides. (But here, “local authentic” Mexican or Tex-Mex is pretty common. Houston, after all.) But I’m Anglo, and this part of town, I’m new, and there’s a higher percentage of Latino folks.
LOL, we both looked at the breakfast menu and wound up getting a typical American breakfast, because other items seemed like too much too early. 😀 (But I got some plantains for take-out. I’ve heard about them but never bought and fixed any.)
While my friend was away from the table, the waitress came by, and I knew already that her English is limited. So I go to ask the question in Spanish and…yeah, a vocabulary word I thought I would know, I drew a blank on the key word. I wanted to ask for a business card, so I’d have the name, address, and phone number of the restaurant. I have seen the word for street address recently, but couldn’t recall that. I couldn’t recall the word for “business.” My mind could come up with “carte d’affaires,” the French term for a business card or a business letter. (It might be fiche d’affaires for a business CARD.) And I know there’s an older English term, aha, a “calling card” is what they used to call them. I asked for “una tarjeta de…” and then fumbled for the right words, and ended up apologizing and making hand signs and saying “address” and “business card” in English. And felt quite silly doing so. — While the waitress went back to get a postcard ad with their phone and address (they didn’t have a business card), and she got this across to me in a mix of English and Spanish (hah, the language barrier works both ways) — Then, of course, I remembered the Spanish word is, “los negocios,” for business. (Spanish thinks of business as related to negotiations rather than busy-ness, while French thinks of it as business affairs.) Hah, so OK, I said something about, una tarjeta de negocios, in Spanish, when she returned with the postcard, and she explained, no, they didn’t have one, they have those ads with the phone and address. I thanked her again, and she went off, probably puzzled at the anglo, but at least liking that I was trying in Spanish. … And this tells me again to be more disciplined in my review. Er, I’m supposed to have language talent. I’m supposed to know how to study and work. I _like_ languages. Not being able to get across such a simple idea, and frustrating both myself and a very nice waitress, a lady maybe ten or twenty years older than myself (I am not used to being “middle aged,” dang it)… I expect better of myself. I expect at least the level of fluency I used to have in high school and college, and I need to become fluent in conversational, everyday Spanish, because I am encountering the need a _lot_ where I live now. And dang, if my neighbors or their kids or the apartment maintenance men and women come by, I want to be able to talk to them in their own language — because for many of them, they are not fluent or comfortable in English. (There is the full gradient here from primary English speakers with Hispanic heritage who also speak Spanish, all the way to people who speak very little if any English and are fluent in Spanish, and people who are genuinely bilingual equally, at home.) — I’m the anglo who took Spanish but switched to French, and after college, didn’t often get to practice either at work or in personal life, so both became rusty. And French became way more familiar, despite where I live. So this, despite language talent. And…it’s a point of pride, as well as real, practical need. It’s also basic friendliness and courtesy. Sure, I want people here to speak English. But the reality is, not all of them do. They feel less comfortable with English than I do with Spanish; and obviously, I need to improve a lot. I feel like it’s a basic thing to speak Spanish with the people around me. If they are fluent in English, great, that helps me. But if they feel more comfortable with Spanish, then they deserve that from me as their neighbor. Basic courtesy, friendliness, and willingness to get along and trade.
So, at least one hour of Spanish per night from now on, I’m telling myself, until I get past my prior fluency level and can speak conversational, everyday Spanish. — I am certainly finding out I need a lot of everyday vocabulary. I may be making out flash cards to drill memorization.
I wonder if, with the equivalent of a semester or two, I will have reviewed enough to surpass my old level. — I had Spanish I and II in junior high and high school, and then switched to French, finished French III in high school, tested out of some college French because of it, and then had the last semester or two of college French, and then two semesters, the survey course in French Lit. (and oh, do I need to reread that, all the way from pre-Enlightenment and philosophes, up through modern 20th century writers.) — So I expect to get myself back to post-Spanish II over the summer and maybe into fall, and from there, to what would finish out my old textbook and begin reading modern, everyday Spanish, plus (maybe) tackling Don Quixote by Cervantes, which is one of the things Spanish students do in high school, along with more recent prominent poets and authors.
Bren would surely shake his head that I haven’t been diligent enough so far, but at least he’d see the level of resolve and personal irritation I have right now. I’m very aggravated that I need to look up “street address.” It is not “fecha,” which is the date. it is not “route,” which is French for a route or literally, related to the rolling of a wheel. I am very sure that when I see the Spanish word, I will want to slap my forehead that I couldn’t recall it. Duh.
(Also, I would have sworn that plantains are plantanos, but no, they are platoons, according to that menu and my friend. … And I feel certain there’s a better translation for “mild, not spicy” than any of the terms Google or my Mexican-American friend thought of.)
Can’t even recall negocios. “Carte d’affaires” instead of “tarjeta de negocios.” ¡Ayayay! Aïe! Il fast plus mieux gonnaître les langues pour être bien compris et entendu et pour la courtoisie. Tiens! Je le marque et c’est ma faute. Uf!
(OK, my French does seem to be coming back, but also needs review. Still, it’s better than my Spanish so far. Sigh.)
:: end rant :;
(One of the short stories and Foreigner 1 have Bren immediately trying out Rage with the staff taking lunch counter orders. I seem to recall the Dept. and Foreign Office recommended against it, but Bren (rightly) considered it basic fluency and practice and testing. Ordering food, finding the restroom, getting apartment repairs done, these are surely basic fluency.)
I had better reread Le petit prince as well. I wonder how much I can do, going in cold, without consulting my dictionary. And maybe Voltaire or Descartes from my old college textbook, just because.
I am supposed to be better than this. It’s time to live up to the challenge and my own self-expectations. I should already have made it to my prior fluency. Past time to get there.
:: end rant again ::
@BCS: Try the free Duolingo app for improving your Spanish speaking practice. I just got it to try and learn a bit of Swedish: as my nephew has moved there for 4 years to study (no college tuition costs in Scandinavia for EU citizens) I expect we’ll be visiting there sometimes, and I’d like to be able to manage a bare minimum (though they all speak English as well as Swedish, so it’s not essential, I’d like to be able to read signs and grocery packets and such).
The basic level starts off very basic, and it’s based on vocabulary acquisition and speaking short sentences, but it’s easy and fun to practice something new this way.
Also, your French sentence wasn’t quite correct, I think (it’s been years since I last used my highschool French, so I may be quite wrong myself!).
You said “Il fast plus mieux gonnaître les langues …”; I would render that as “Il faut connaître les langues beaucoup plus mieux…”. Sorry for nitpicking…
:: falls over laughing at what auto-incorrect did to my French spelling ::
“fast” ? “gonnaître” ? — that 2nd one might be an actual French verb, but I shudder to think that could be anything but what I spelled. — I have so far not been able to keep the auto spell checker turned off. It wants to fight about many perfectly good English words, and every other non-English word, it tries to make them into English. Those should have been “Il faut” et “connaître,” but you understood that, thank goodness.
“If faut plus mieux connaître les langues”
and
“Il faut connaître les langues beaucoup plus mieux”
…Are basically the same except for adding “beaucoup” to get “much better” or “a lot better.”
Putting the adverb “plus mieux” between the two verbs instead of after the direct object is probably more literary than colloquial, but then, we do things like that in, wow, nearly every other European language too. English has gotten more fixed in its word order, but we still mix word order in a few ways. — I’d go with either word order being correct, and with “beaucoup” being just as correct. French would say “better’ as “plus mieux” and best as “le plus mieux,” which is grammatically the same as how Spanish does it. “Beaucoup” would definitely work fine there to intensify it.
I’ll get DuoLingo and the other app you’d mentioned, and try them. I think I’ve seen a YouTuber who referenced DuoLingo.
(My browser came up with lots of “helpful” English words for any of the French words and several of the English words. I really wish it could understand language-switching on any level, word, phrase, sentence, or paragraph.)
Chondrite? I’m going to have to look up Ilocano. At least I know (very roughly) where Tonga is (no, not as well as I thought, I’d better look it up on the map) and Tagalog, yep, Filipinos are here in the health industry and elsewhere. Hmm…I had better be sure I could point to where in the Pacific the Phillipines are. (Somewhere out there is a young guy, a Filipino nurse, who gave me a good hug when I particularly needed it, one hospital visit. I didn’t know his name, but that was one of the most human and healing and loving things ever, and good medicine. I hope somebody is that nice to him sometime.)
Don’t know if it would help, BCS, but there is a free online language teaching site called Duolingo. Since you are familiar with Spanish and French you would probably choose to test out of the initial lessons, maybe most of the lessons. I’m learning Korean on the site and it seems well constructed, with many different ways to go about the learning process. For instance, you can focus on vocabulary if you want to. Also, you can have the site email you every day to remind you to do a regular lesson.
Although we have some Spanish here, I’m more likely to run into Ilocano, Tagalog, or Tongan, or maybe one of the other South Pacific language groups. While Hawaiian is the de facto local language, very few people carry on a conversation in it (unless they are making a point).