Talmudically Speaking

       We were studying with our former senior rabbi, returned from Israel to be with us during the High Holidays.   The rabbi noted in a Talmudic passage the three books that are opened on Rosh Hashanah, "one for the thoroughly wicked, one for the thoroughly righteous, and one for the intermediate."

       The rabbi asked us which category we thought we were in.  All of us said "intermediate."   But after we read,  discussed, and parsed the whole passage almost word for word for some time, I offered up that I now felt "thoroughly intermediate."

More Speculating French vs. English

       Cases in point:


              English--"I am five years old."
              French--"J'ai cinq ans."  ["I have five years."]

There is a sense of accumulation in the French.  "I've lived those, and they're mine."  In the English, "This is how far I've progressed in my age; that's what I am, no more."

              English--"I am angry."
              French--"Je me fache."  ["I anger myself."]

"I am angry" is feeling I am in; therefore, who knows how long it could last?  "Je me fache," the anger is an action of mine; I could stop it at any time--or make it go on.


       Does the French suggest the speaker is more at the center of an ongoing life and in control than the English speaker, who is less assertive and ego-centered, but perhaps also more at sea?  (Compare posts of August 27 & 28, 2014.)

THAT Movie would be VERY Brightly Lit

       When Connie and I go to the Laemmle movie theatre on Ventura Blvd. in the San Fernando Valley, we hand over our tickets and are told our movie is to the right or to the left.  Tonight we turned left and were met as usual with overhead signs so we could find our movie's name and theater number.  This was the scene:

click on image to enlarge

       I don't know how many times I've been duped by the arrows and the brightest words visible to think one of the movies playing tonight was "RESTROOMS & WATER."

iPhone and I: Creative Mishearing

       My own hearing has been gradually deteriorating for, I suppose 15 years, or more, but I still struggle with myself and others (especially others), resisting getting hearing aids even if, as my son says, I should think of it as "glasses for the ears."

       But I've got someone (something?) that's right up there with me in the hearing department.

       David and I were texting .  I messaged him something I knew he would want to know at a timely moment.  He texted me back "Thanks."  Then here's what I spoke into iPhone's microphone:
 

                                    "Welcome.  Lots to talk about."
 

And this is the text I got back which iPhone wanted to send:


                                         "Welcome to Taco Bell."


Not bad, iPhone, I could have come up with that one myself. 

"Immunity Leads to Impunity"

       Sometimes what seems to be a catch phrase captures exactly what needs to be said in a memorable form.  That happened tonight on the PBS NewsHour.

       Commentators were asked to evaluate the work of resigning Attorney General Eric Holder, and Mark Shields averred that it was a failure not to make Wall Street CEOs personally accountable for the disaster they brought on.  Fines, yes.  But people lost life savings, the country was brought to its knees, and no jail time for anyone.  He ended his assessment by saying "Immunity leads to Impunity."

       If no investigation and calling to account takes place of the ones who had the power and authority in the financial industry, CEOs conclude that there's no punishment for careless, greedy, and precipitously risky decision-making...and there will be a next-time.

Once Again "The Shehecheyanu"

Nice to repeat this post of November 23, 2013 at another happy time, Rosh Hashanah:

  
       There's a nice blessing said at the beginning of happy occasions in Judaism; it's from the Talmud, and it'll be said next Wednesday on the first night of Chanukah.
   
       The blessing starts with the usual "Praised be Thou, O Lord, our God" and then gives the reason for the blessing:

                "Who has granted us life, sustained us, and enabled us
                                          to reach this season. "

It feels good to say because it expresses thanks for being allowed to arrive at a joyful moment.

       It also helps that the Hebrew language affords such a rhythmic and rhymed combination of syllables to say those words:

            sheHECHeyanu, viKEYamanu, viHIGeyanu, lazMAN haZEH.

There's a built-in affirmation in the very roll of the utterance.
                                      Listen here.

Texting and the World Meet

       I was texting my son that this Friday our former senior rabbi, now retired and living in Israel, and our new senior rabbi for the past year, will be leading a service together and talking about the challenges facing Israel.

       When my oral words came down into text, the word(s) I saw were "is real"  I didn't and don't know whether to put a period at the end of that sentence or, seems just as likely, a question mark.

       The people, the land, the nation, Israel.  Its fellow travelers, livers, co-occupants, contenders, Palestinians.  Partial owners all.  

       is real?   is real.

      

Montanans Revisited

       Re my post "Words, Sounds, Meaning" of Monday, September 8th, 2014, I told of two Montanans who had similar character traits and that all the words I could think of to describe them had "sta" in them, an Indo-European root meaning "stand," and these were both "stand-up" folks in many ways.

       The other day I talked with one of those two Montanans and his wife, mentioned the post and sent it to them.  The wife especially agreed that the words definitely applied but then informed me those qualities also applied to the other part of his (and her) heritage, Scottish.

       This astonished me when I realized the other Montanan I knew was ALSO Scottish in background.  Have to rethink this.  Are these Montanan or Scottish characteristics, or BOTH?  But the "sta" words do apply.

Where are the Proofreaders and Editors of Yore?

       Some sentences from a Sunday, September 21, 2014, article on classical music in the L.A.Times Calendar section:


       *   "She [pianist Yuja Wang] played Prokofiev's Second Piano Concert."

       *   "The Symphonie Fantastique...was irresistible joyous."

       *   "The Prokofiev concerto [conducted by Bringuier] had an entirely different character than the heavier one [conductor] Dudamel made last year in Caracas..."

       I'm missing the actual editor, copyreader, anyone! to help catch the mistakes in the writing above.  The  writer will do the writer's best but can't catch everything in the tight time-frame journalistic deadlines bring to bear.

       *     No final "o" on "Concerto."

       *     It's a "bly" ending not a "ble" ending in the second example.  And no spell-check would catch either of these first two because in both cases what's on the page is an acceptable (but different) WORD.

       *     The third instance, what gets me is the word "made."  What's going on with the grammar and sense here.  What did Dudamel make, a performance, a recording, a character?  Someone should have caught and clarified this.

       The digital age is wonderful and promising, but it can't fill the human's place in every instance.

The Man Who Preserved a Language

TEACHER AT HEART

       A belated tribute to Richard Dauenhauer who was a force in saving the Alaskan language of Tlingit.  Dauenhauer was a linguist, anthropologist, and former Alaska poet laureate.  The photo shows him speaking in 2013.

       "Dauenhauer, 72, made recording, transcribing and advocating for the Tlingit language his life's work.  He trained a cadre of teachers and translators to continue his efforts.  He sought not just to revive the fast-disappearing  tongue, largely relegated  to the thoughts of a few surviving tribal elders, but to win acceptance for its use."
                   from Jill Leovy's obituary in the Los Angeles Times of Sunday, August 24, 2014

    

"pic Q you a" language

       Speech recognition sometimes shows you OTHER words that MATCH EXACTLY the sounds you gave it.  Example:   I said "will erase," and iPhone texted "Willy race."

       Yesterday, I said "be in touch with us," and it came back "be in Taitsch with us."  I thought that was funny, and why the capital T?  iPhone knew, as I didn't, that "Taitsch House" was a beautiful restored house in Fredericksburg, Texas.  I repeated the word, and iPhone gave me back "touch."   Slight differentiations in pronunciation or energy can do that.

       In messaging my son David about the tremendously effective, yet sometimes "peculiar" ways of speech recognition, the text came up "pic Q you a" which is funny but not far off in sound!

       Since I've always hovered between speech and writing, I'm puzzled and fascinated with this.    

Sometimes Mottoes Give us Guidance

       There is a neat bit of wisdom in my "Life's Little Instruction Calendar" today.  Only I wondered if younger folk might not be familiar with the reference made in it.

       Then I also came across a Fortune Cookie lurking on my dresser.  IT said:


                    We must always have old memories and young hopes.


That sounded neat to me too.

       So here's my "old memory" that informs today's "instruction":  When you used to have to cook oatmeal instead of just heating it up, you could ruin it if you made it the wrong way.

       And here's the "instruction":


                    Life is like cooking oatmeal.  If you don't keep stirring it, it                         gets lumpy.


I fully intend to retain my young hopes on this my wife's birthday and keep "stirring it up" for both of us.  

"Kayam," "Stand," "Stay"

       I wrote on September 8th and 9th about "exist" as meaning "standing out" by derivation.  My mind plays with the Hebrew prayer on awakening called "Modeh Ani" ("I acknowledge, thank").
 
       The prayer speaks of God as "chai v'kayam" ("living and existing, enduring").  Like "exist," "kayam" comes from a root "koom," meaning "stand."  Recall that numerous "st" words with that root "stand" also have a sense of "staying," of endurance about them.  The Hebrew/Aramaic word "kayam" is of exactly the same breed.
      
       We suppose God to "live" as one supposes the soul to "live," vital but totally intangible, without physical presence, manifestation.  But the world God has created, the world that persists, which we meet each day, that is existence, "standing forth," invoking us to engage.

Tongue Twister Alert

       Bet you can't say the following correctly five times fast:


                            "a short social sharing site"

Language on Your Back

       Reading about language today made me recall Jonathan Swift and "Gulliver's Travels" in the land of Laputa.

       Gulliver found that professors there abolished all words, saving breath, lungs, and time.  Why?   "[S]ince words are only names for things," people would carry things with them such as "were necessary to express the particular business they are to discourse on."

       The more you had to say, the more you carried.  Gulliver writes he'd often seen two Laputans "sinking under the weight of their packs...who when they met in the streets would lay down their loads, open their sacks and hold conversation for an hour together; then... help each other to resume their burthens, and take their leave."

       In the interest of health and brevity, I can't see why we don't abolish all words here too. 

       

       

Is a Preposition Something I can End a Sentence with?

       Most of us have heard of this one.  I think it was Winston Churchill who mocked the proscription by saying "A preposition at the end of a sentence is something up with which I will not put."

       I learned today that the proposed rule was initially advocated by l7th century British Poet Laureate John Dryden.  English was coming into its own as a language by this time, and Dryden thought it needed regularity, rules.  He believed that following Latin was the correct path, and Latin did not let a preposition end a sentence.

       The rule-makers had noble goals but were not to win out, which, some think, may be one reason English has become as popular a language as it is. 

        I discovered this while at the online website "The World in Words."

Sometimes You Have to Hear Yourself

Click on Dilbert Strip to Enlarge

You can find "Dilbert" by Scott Adams at this address.

Opting Out of Personalized Ads, 2

       On Saturday, August 30th, I made my feelings known about Personalized Ads.  One of the things I complained about was the linguistic obfuscation used by the purveyors of these ads to subvert the  choice we have of "opting out."   Here's an example of such language:


       "One more thing. The only way we know that youre opted out is to deposit a special 'opt out' cookie. With current internet technology, thats really the only way for us to know not to collect data. (And again, its the same approach others use as well.) So, if you look at your cookies, you will still see one from us. Please dont delete it or we wont know not to collect data any longer."   (Sic)


       How many of us have looked at our "cookies" lately?  And which cookie are they talking about?   The final sentence has at least a triple if not quadruple negative in it; what is it saying?  This is scandalously purposeful language intended to have you and me back off feeling stupid and scared of doing anything!  (The five missing apostrophes are just an additional irritant.)

       I went ahead and clicked that "opt out" button anyway, and it did it.  No more personalized ads sent to me by "My Buys."  But it's like killing a hydra-headed monster.  A personalized ad came yesterday.  There'll be one from another source tomorrow.  Find the little blue triangular icon in a corner of the ad and click on it.  It's the first step toward privacy and sanity.

      


       



       

"Severely Adored"

Click on comic to enlarge

Don't think I've ever seen these two words together before.   Brilliant, provocative, evocative--words, drawings, location all well matched.  Find these guys' cartoon website here.

Would iPhone Know Samsung's name?

       I love using iPhone's speech recognition capabilities to accelerate the texting process.  Besides I'm an old speech and radio kind of guy; put a mike in front of me, and I'll respond.

       I was messaging with David about Apple's smart phone compared to Samsung's, and when I said "Samsung" into the microphone, I wondered if iPhone might mistranslate it on purpose.  It came back "sam's song," which I thought was kind of nice; so I let it be sent.

       But then I wondered, could it actually get it right?  I pronounced it more carefully, and it came back perfect,  correctly spelled; however, it was underlined, which meant iPhone wasn't sure and gave me two more in case.  The alternates were "Sam soon" and "Sam's soon."

       I rejected them, but nodded approvingly at iPhone's thoroughness.

Sonic Multipliers

       Alliteration in poetry is sound repetition in nearby words that calls attention to those words and makes associations between them.  Such connections also occur in everyday speaking.

       On one PBS NewsHour story about ISIS, several guests were interviewed.   I heard the following in words close to one another:

1. "fierce" and "fearsome":  two different roots [ferus] "wild" and [faer] "fear" but words with sounds that mimicked one another and reenforced each other's meaning;

2.  "contain" and "continue":   both words with the same roots [con] "with" and [tien] "hold," meaning "hold together," an echo going back and forth between them;

3.  "bomb" and "Obama":  here is maybe the most potent sonic connection, inevitably moving the words toward one another in our minds as almost synonymous.

       Similar sounds in words link and create a multiplier effect.
      

"Exist," "Ecstasy"

       Words that begin with "sta" (basic derivational meaning "stand," as noted yesterday) are not the only words that employ that root.

       "Exist" and "ecstasy" are two that fascinate me.  The first syllable in both words means "out." The "st" part of both words is the "stand."  To "exist" is to "stand out" by derivation.  And to be "ecstatic" is to "stand outside" or be "beside" oneself, the state of ecstasy.

       Just playing with the concrete images embedded in even the most potentially philosophical and spiritual of words, is the great joy and practicality of tracing words to their tangible, touchable, palpable, sensory, bodily beginnings.

Words, Sounds, Meaning

       What makes a Montanan?   I've only known two, but for a goodly number of years, and they have similarities.  I began to wonder how I would characterize them:

          "sturdy,"    "stalwart,"     "steady,"    "stable,"    "staunch"

I realized I was using words that all began the same way.  Was this an accident?  The words seemed appropriate, and they were the first ones that came to my mind.

       Then I recalled that in another context entirely I had learned the three-letter Indo-European  root "sta" stood behind a huge host of words, all with the basic meaning "stand," these words among them.

       These men, not known for lying or sitting around, do stand; they follow standards, and they are persistent.  I wonder if even the "sta" sounds and the way we utter them suggest staying qualities.

            

"a poem...makes you shut up."

       Poet Galway Kinnell was once introduced at a poetry reading as "a living American poet."  Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets Toi Derricotte notes how funny but also how sad this is, indicating "the distance between most Americans and poetry."

       But later in a letter written to "Friend(s) of Poetry," Derricotte mentions a 4th grader who had been writing poems for several days with a group of students in a class she taught, who, when asked, "So what is a poem?"  replied, "I don't know what a poem is, but it makes you shut up."

       "Living" poems (whether the poet be dead or alive), that's what they do--make us shut up, in realization of a truth we had not fully known until that moment.

Names: A Wonderful Mouthful

       Tennis players come from all over the world these days to compete, and the names can be a challenge.  In the women's doubles final today at the U.S. Open,


       Martina Hingis and Flavia Pennetta played Ekaterina Makarova          and Elena Vesnina who were winners over Kimiko Date-Krumm              and Barbora Zahlavova Strycova.


       In that connection, Kei Nishikori today won a men's singles semifinal.  When Kei's father was asked how his son was given the first name Kei [kay], the reply was that he thought the name was pronounceable, and both parents wanted their son to be a citizen of the world.  A couple American broadcasters admitted Kei's English was far better than their Japanese.                              

Reading Is ALWAYS an Interactive Process

       One of the problems with words that "crawl" beneath the main content on a CNN screen is how distracting they can be.

       Another problem I found yesterday is that words coming into view parts-of-words at a time means we perforce make a guess as to the remainder of the word, and when the overall news about the Islamic State has centered on horrendous acts, interesting things can happen.

       Consider these sentences yesterday, first what I THOUGHT I would read, second, in parentheses, the actual word(s):


"Store owners who don't close during times of prayer are beHEADED (beaten)."

"man may have fled U.S., joined terror group and could be beHEADED (behind the group's social media campaign.)"


       BeHEAD (Believe me), everything influences the way we read.

"Dingy," "Dinghy," and a Ring-a-Ding-Ding!

     
       I see the word "dingy" and wonder how we know how to pronounce it, especially when the word "dinghy" is pronounced [DING-ee].  Why shouldn't "dingy" be pronounced [DING-ee], or, both words [DIN-jee]?

       "Dinghy" is from Hindi and means a little boat.  The OED says it's pronounced [DING-ghee] in Britain, spelled with "gh" in English (no "h" in the Indian word) to indicate the "g" is hard.  I ask why?  "gh" could be [f] as in "rough," in which case [DIN-fee]; or silent as in "doughy," in which case [DIN-ee]. 

       "Dingy" means dirty, and the origin is either "unknown" (my preferred one) or related to "dung."  But how do I know this is pronounced [DIN-jee] and not [DING-ee] as with "thingy" or "slangy" or, one might repeat, "dinghy"?     

        

Just Saying. . .

       Celebrities' smart phone photos sent to the "cloud" were being hacked and put on websites this week.   Digital security experts tell us don't use easily discovered words or names from your life as passwords or "security check" words.  Don't use any word in a dictionary as a password.  Computerized "password sniffers" can go through millions of words in no time and grab a word you're using.

       So how many of us will buy and use a password creator and storer that manufactures meaningless mixtures of numbers, letters, etc., for each password we need, to defy code breakers?

       Those of us who can't remember passwords in the first place, how likely are we to remember at some point what the "key" is to the password creator-storer, or where the device is itself?

Expression Can Be Dangerous

The pause at the stoplight gave me just time enough to catch this on the car ahead of me.  The fact that I've tried to catch myself on the iPhone camera lately in my own car humming, moving to the beat, and just caught up in the joy of the music, has nothing to do with the fact that I LOVE this bumper sticker!

Both Thumbs Typing

click on comic  to enlarge

The "Zits" website can be found here.