"DEMIGOD"

       There is a license plate, California license plate.  It is a personal license plate without question, and I don't think you'll see it anywhere else; so I'm glad I just saw it to tell you.

       It's DEMIGOD, all in caps, in beautiful yellow. on black.  Oh.  Wow.

       Mythologically speaking, a demigod was often the offspring of a god and a mortal.  Nowadays?  A person so outstanding as to seem to approach the divine.

       Tough one to live up to, maybe especially if you're self-designated.  Or did someone who thinks you are one, gift you the plates?!

The Sound of 1,100

       The movie "Wild" was listed in a broadcast schedule and described thus:  "A lone woman undertakes an 1,100 mile hike."

        Why use “an” when there are numerals afterwards?  If you say it as I did, "one thousand one hundred." then the sound [wuh] for "one" is there,  a consonant sound; so "an" wouldn't apply. The article is "a." 

       Perhaps they figured it would be said,  “an eleven hundred mile hike. ”  But there's that comma.

       It depends on the sound that follows.  Maybe they thought, "It begins with the numeral 1--treat it like language spelled 'o,' 'n,' 'e,'  and since 'o' is a vowel, we'll use 'an' to make it sound right."

       Except the letter "o" isn't what's operative!  It's the sound of the word "one," which begins [wuh], exactly as in the word "won."

      

Last Candidate STAnding?

       "Stamina" became an "issue" in the first presidential debate this week.   Hillary won out over Trump in that exchange after he said he didn't believe she had enough stamina to be president.

        Physical and/or mental strength, staying power:  stamina.

       This interested me particularly because it's a word I hadn't thought of when I was trying to name the admirable qualities that characterized each of two similar men I knew.  What I realized was they all began the same way:

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

When I looked up the Indo-European root for such words, it was sta.  The basic meaning?  "STAND."

       The "STAYing" qualities at the core of these words works perfectly.  "Stamina" fits right in with them and would also characterize either of the two men I had been thinking of.


       (You can find my original blog entry on the "sta" words here)
       (For the Hillary-Trump exchange and more on the origins of the word "stamina" from Merriam-Webster, please touch or click here.)
    

Twist Me a Tongue

       The Vin Scully anecdote last Thursday indicates how one sound can influence another in spoken language.  Tongue-twisters are another example.

       This appeared in the L.A. Times last Thursday, one of the hardest I've ever come across to say and repeat correctly if you speak it fast.  These two words are about a Dodger player surprising a Giant pitcher with a three run home run.  The player's name is Puig, pronounced [pweeg]. 

       The tongue-twister is simply "Puig sideswiped"; I'm betting you can't say it five times fast (or even at normal rate) without tripping over your own tongue.  Try it.

"Now Don't Go Wanderin' Off": You Used to Say it to Fans, Now We Say it to You

       There's lots of well-deserved excitement and sadness at the same time that the Dodger's announcer for 67 years is bringing his career to a close at age 88.

       All kinds of stories by and about Vin Scully are coming forth in happy abundance.

       Here's an example . . . because I can't resist.

       A young baseball announcer, just breaking in, came to Vin and asked him if he had any advice on what he should know or look out for in his budding career.  Vin told him,  "Just remember to go v-e-r-y  s-l-o-w if you're about to say 'Hot shot hit foul'."

The Activists Not Only Interrupted the Game!

        I'm sure Mike Digiovanna of the L.A. Times is a fine sports journalist, but like any journalist pressed with deadlines, once in awhile something that just a little more time would have resolved gets into the paper:


       "Joe Blanton struck out the side in the eighth inning, and Kenley Jansen struck out three of four batters in the ninth, withstanding a brief delay caused by a group of animal rights activists who ran onto the field with banners protesting Farmer John, supplier of the team's Dodger Dogs, for his 24th save."


       I just know Mike didn't want such a gaping distance between Jansen's striking out three batters and "for his 24th save"!

       And now that I look at it again, didn't Mike probably want "notwithstanding" in place of "withstanding"?

       Copy editor anyone?

      

"I think it's different enough, don't you?"

       Instructed to look for "light" cereals that might go right through you as the best kind of eating before a colonoscopy--I came across what seemed like a good candidate on my grocer's shelves.

       I bought it, and in the several days I had the large Kroger house brand package sitting out and was wondering if I'd be able to consume it all after my procedure, it occurred to me that Kroger didn't have to exert itself much to apparently legally steal the real brand name.

        The cereal product bore a perfect resemblance to what it was copying, and so did the name:

                   "Crispy Rice" meet "Rice Crispies." 

 

I Like Your Ilk

       Running into, and noticing, words like "ilk," one can only wonder, whence cometh? 

       Merriam-Webster in discussing its source used the term "prehistoric compound" and made me begin thinking of alchemy, Medieval potions, and other things of that ilk--but there we are, with the word in question, "ilk."

       It turns out, using the Indo-European roots in the Appendix of the American Heritage Dictionary. we can see that ilk is from Old English ilca, "same," which is with high probability from Germanic is-lik-, "same." 

       And there you have it, if is-lik- is altered through usage, as will happen with language, it could become the abbreviated and compounded (put together) word "ilk."

       (Apologies to alchemical compounds--which are of a different ilk.)

"Tenants, anyone?"

       Mara Liasson said, "Donald Trump disagrees with most of the tenants of Modern Republicanism." 

       So, you know, she's with National Public Radio, and she's not alone in pronouncing "tenets" "tenants" with an extra "n" in there.

       And there are the tenants of Modern Republicanism, those who live there, they're the tenants, they live in Modern Republicanism, but she's saying Trump doesn't live with those tenants, doesn't live on that property, he doesn't live in Modern Republicanism, he lives somewhere else.

       Unless he is, of course, the forbear of Modern Republicanism.

      

"Farmers Market"

       The look of those two words has changed since my childhood.  What was "Farmers' Market" has become "Farmers Market."  Rare to see an apostrophe in such an instance now.

       The gradual change from the possessive with an apostrophe to NO apostrophe, is a change from answering the question, in effect, "Whose market is this?" to answering the question, "What kind of market is this?"   Noun used as adjective, sometimes called an attributive noun, telling what particular attributes these markets have.  "Farmers sell their produce here.  It's that kind of market."

        Nothing to get too excited about either way, I think.  Maybe we've just gotten lazy and naturally drop things like apostrophes.  Maybe we resent people who own things--"Why isn't it my market too? I shop there."  Don't see how either side wins a decisive victory here.

        

"B'shert 7"

       I found my note which said this and couldn't recall what it meant.

       It finally came back to me:  I'd seen it on a license plate; it must have been the 7th request for that personalized plate.

       Good, popular.  "B'shert" [buh-SHAIRT] is Yiddish:  a soulmate, a predestined life partner.  Still, a surprising license plate.

       I surprised myself once by using the word in a public setting, at the one-year date following a good friend's funeral.  I spoke of Abe to other friends and relatives gathered, and mentioned that we had in common our age; that we both liked performing, he acting, I reading aloud; and that we'd both met our b'shert outside native ground, so to speak (they were non-Jewish).

        But clearly, "b'shert" had applied, with all our hearts in all four cases.  
              

Coincidental Dialogue

       Looking anxiously in the refrigerator for something to snack on, I found corn tortillas and noticed on the package "Gluten Free."  I didn't want those in any case.

       I swiveled to the microwave on top of which there was sitting some kind of chips.  The first words that popped off the bag were "Gluten and Corn Free."

       For me it was talking to the tortillas in the fridge:

            "I can do you one better--I'm even free of corn!"

Just Wondering

       If "brothers" become "brethren," do "sisters" become "cistern"?

Sportswriters Have Got Words

       Dodger Yasiel Puig had done something recently which made son David and me turn to each other with looks of disbelief.   It's the kind of thing that caused the Dodgers to send Puig to the minors, from which he recently returned to the big league team a chastened player and man instead of a spoiled brat millionaire.

       Here is how sportswriter Andy McCullough wrote it up in the L.A. Times: 

       "Ryu hummed an 89-mph fastball at the waist, and Dickerson ripped the ball into right.
       "Yasiel Puig read its flight like a middle-school student trying to decipher James Joyce.  He stepped forward, and the ball went over his head."

       Second-best to celebrating true athletic and human prowess, sportswriters must cherish giving a dumbass, sandlot performance by a major leaguer its due.

Wanna Live in "Tarzana"?

       This post may be too "in" for those from outside the San Fernando Valley in California.  All summer, the L.A.Times "Hot Property" Section on Saturdays has been including a two-page spread on different neighborhoods in Los Angeles, their history, information about diversity, median income, age, rent vs. owned, education and so on, plus attractions and possible negatives of living there.

       One week's issue spotlighted the community of Tarzana.  I wonder how its residents reacted when they read this under the heading "Neighborhood challenges"--


       "May be too relaxed for some:  Tarzana is great for people who find Encino too exciting."


P.S.  If you were a novelist as rich as Edgar Rice Burroughs, you too could name the land you bought  for your most famous "liiterary" creation.  (Personally I'm glad I don't live there.)

"Thank You for Being a Part of My Program"

       Fareed Zakaria is an extremely bright oral communicator with a Sunday morning CNN world affairs program "Global Public Square."     

       Fareed is exceptional in his own commentary and in the pertinence yet tact of his interview questions.  Each segment is well-gauged for brevity to hold pictorial and verbal interest, inform, and conclude promptly with attention and appreciation still high.

       I mainly bring up Fareed's show because of how it ends.  Fareed says,  "Thank you for being a part of my program this week."   Not thank you for "listening" or "watching," which would leave the audience outside looking or listening in.  The phrasing perfectly sums up the tenor of the whole broadcast, an engaging with guests as with audience, who are conceived from the outset as included, and therefore thanked for participating afterwards!  

"Two Years Before the Mast"

       For approximately eight years now, each day, morning and night, I have pulled on the long loop of cord that raises and lowers our 7-foot-wide bedroom window curtain.  It's about ten big pulls if I get my hand high enough and pull to the bottom.

       That's at least 58,400 pulls, I figure.  And though I've never been a sailor nor even read this book, every time I run 'em up or down, I think of that book's title, Two Years Before the Mast.

       It's by Richard Henry Dana, Jr.   Published in 1840.  Memoir of a voyage from Boston to California, around Cape Horn and back on a trading vessel.

       I'm lifting and lowering, tightening and loosening those sails with every tug, onerous task no longer, excitement and adventure everywhere!

       

         

"Hantileh"

       We never escape our babyhood, our childhood, our youth and the influence of our parents, and grandparents, and beyond, I suppose...yes.

        A platitude but personal for me today.  Driving to the beach, I had sun-protective clothing for my arm, but my hand and especially fingers were uncovered, and we'd removed some protective, tinted plastic sheeting from the driver's side window.  It had  bubbled and made seeing difficult.  I had put sunscreen on the hand and fingers for the drive.

        I thought of it as we neared the beach:  "hantileh," an affectionate diminutive for "hand" in Yiddish.  From my mother, and her mother, and how far back.  It might have been said too when Mom put mittens on me for Minnesota winters. 

       Sunscreen wasn't my hand's only protection today.  It came swathed in language.

"If Thumbs Could Talk"

       Maybe the first long exchange I had texting was one evening with David a while back.  Much to say, varying but related topics, questions, answers short and longer, comments on each others' information and views.  I think I referred to it at the time as "silent conversation."

       The very next morning, this wonderful Zits appeared in the comics:

Click on comic strip to enlarge.

             Zits by Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman can be found here.