When did 'shit-tonne' become standard?
It happened twice last weekend. When qualifying some large amount of measure, the phrase, "shit-tonne" was invoked. It seems like it was just a few short years ago that "shitload" was the preferred measure of all things vast i.e. "There is a shitload of plastic in the Pacific Ocean."
I'm not really sure when it happened. I'm not even sure if the tonnes in question are US or Metric although I assumed metric as it gives a greater overall weight when invoked. All I know is that since being back from Africa, it's shit-tonne all the way.
On a certain level, I appreciate this new quantifier as it is much more accurate than "load" which was nebulous to say the least. One man's "load" could be another's "dump" after all. Now at least we know that the item in question is being compared to shit that is in the amount of 1,000kg and hey, that's pretty useful.
14 08 2010 6 comments
Tags: language, measures
Fuck the sequel, bring on the 3D-quel
It's always the same age-old question: what do you name your second movie in a series? That's an easy one with something like Alien as you get your Aliens for a title. It's also pretty simple to just put a "revenge" or a "return" in the title and presto, you've got your sequel ready to go. But what--if the great lords of cinematic budgeting allow it--do you call the third movie in a series? That was tough and it usually just rehashed some kind of sequel title that ended up being pretty lame or you stuck a III at the end and called it done.
This my friends has all changed with the move to having 3D films. Now, "triquels" are simply given a 3D at the end and shabam, 'nuff said. Movie companies are loving this crap as it's revitalizing franchises that were otherwise thought dead when a good title couldn't be thought of after a rather lackluster sequel. Ah James Cameron, bless you and your Avatar moving for bringing this new option to us.
15 07 2010 0 comments
Tags: film, language
Better employment through omission
Offices in the US are terrified to hell of languages. On a certain level, it makes sense given that the majority of culture in the US happens in a monolingual environment and our closest neighbors are a 1.5-2 hour flight away. But in another way, it limits the outreach of whatever it is that that office is trying to do, although that point is rarely seen.
For the longest time, I was happy to include a listing of my language abilities and their level of proficiency on my resumé as I saw it a useful skill to have. Ultimately, this would always engender any number of comments from any number of people interviewing me. Something along the lines of, "Wow, that's a lot of languages. Why do you speak them?" For the record I speak:
English - Native
Spanish - World: Conversational / US: Fluent
Croatian - World: Basic / US: Conversational
French - World: Basic / US: Conversational
Catalan - World: Poor / US: Basic
I include a World/US variance due to the fact that how Americans rate their language proficiency and the rest of the world does are very different. But, as you can see, sure, I know a bit of a number of languages this was weird to people, especially when applying for a development job. I think that most people just saw any ability to speak Spanish useful only if you have to talk to cleaning staff, although they'd never admit it. It got to the point where I simply leave it off my resumé now and it's made all interviews go a lot more smoothly. I suppose it allows people to focus down on things, but understanding localization and internationalization is pretty important in web development work these days. Apparently, only to some though, only to some.
08 06 2010 2 comments
Tags: language, us america
Me versus the English crapification of French
Life is still painful in learning French. And yes, it's still the pronunciation aspect of it, especially given that the French words that directly exist in English are so incredibly screwed up. #1 Fan tipped me off to this article that compared all the French words that we use in English, often with no respect to their original meaning.
Probably the worst out of the group is "déjà vu", not because it's a fragment of the more complete "Je l’ai déjà vu", but more because in English, we say it with the other "oo" sound, which when written in French is "déjà vous" which literally means, "already you". Kinda stupid.
Anyways, the fight with French pronunciation, forgetting how badly it's set up in English, and how much easier it would be to say in Spanish continues, although it will be on hold for the next two weeks while I'm back in AngloLand.
28 04 2010 4 comments
Tags: language
Al Fakher: The horniest of the shisha tobacco
Came across this in the market the other day here in Abengourou. I realize that in Arabic, "Al Fakher" probably means something nice, but the way it sounds in English is anything but. I just love the tagline of, "The incomparable Special Taste of Al Fakher". Thankfully, there are indeed more flavors than just grape Al Fakher.
20 04 2010 3 comments
Tags: arabic, in to africa, language
In a state of perpetual evening
Probably one of the weirder language things I'm having trouble adjusting to are the greetings for the time of day. This may not seem like such a big deal, but people in Côte d'Ivoire are quite gregarious. Everyone greets everyone. While in the US, a nod, or depending on the setting, just eye contact can be acceptable, if you don't verbally respond back, it's considered offensive and people will repeat their greeting to you as they assume you simply didn't hear it because everyone responds. I don't really mind this and on a great many levels, it's quite enjoyable to engage with people in a country, as opposed to just being an outsider unsure of how to interact.
The one thing that gets me though is the actual greeting. In the US, traditionally we've done away with "good morning", "good afternoon", "good evening", and "good night" to use one size fits all phrases such as, "hey". The art of linguistic articulation is not one of America's finer points…
In Spanish, I've gotten used to "buenos días", "buenas tardes", and "buenas noches" as well as the respective times of day in which they're used. Croatian took a bit more getting used to with "dobro jutro" until about 10, "dobar dan" until about 18 (depending on the time of year), "dobar večer" until about 22, and "laku noć" at the very end of the night, which also works in place of "goodbye" for the evening. The times are surprisingly punctual for these different phrases and people have some kind of very accurate clock in their head to just know when to say them.
As French would have it, there is only "bonjour" and "bonsoir"; "good day" and "good evening". This probably seems simpler overall, but when one is used to having all the shades of time through the day, it seems blunt. Obviously, you get used to it, although while writing this, I said, "bonsoir" at 10:45 in the morning to a fellow who walked in the door.
In Côte d'Ivoire, probably the hardest thing is getting used to saying these at the right time. The reason that I made such a dumb gaffe with this fellow who walked in is that "bonsoir" starts at noon. Yes, the "evening" starts in the middle of the day and while people tend to get up around 6, they go to bed at 12 (don't ask me how they do it) and so, evening is making up the vast majority of their day.
I still find it weird and I doubt that I'll really quite get it at any point, although I'll just go along with it as that's the way the day goes here.
08 02 2010 0 comments
Tags: customs, in to africa, language
Time for a re-read me thinks
In looking up the exact definition of a Prefect and realizing that, as I assumed, we really have no equivalent in the US, except those wanting to sound fancy-like, I was reminded of Ford Prefect; the character, not the car. Obviously, this joke of a name from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (which the film version of sucked hard) was funny to me, but never completely ha ha funny. I was not alone:
Adams later observed that this joke was lost on U.S. audiences who assumed it was a typing error for "perfect." In the French version, Le Guide Galactique,[1] Ford's name was changed to "Ford Escort." The joke is also now largely lost on younger audiences in Britain also, since the Ford Prefect is now a rare sight on British roads. In the film adaptation, his last name was never actually stated on-screen, but it is given in the film's credits as "Prefect."
Sadly, Ford Escort would have worked in the US as well, but the French got that bit of humo(u)r. Anyways, maybe it's time to go back and read that trilogy in five parts. I had forgotten how funny it was as again, the film version that came out five years ago was crap on a stick.
24 01 2010 1 comment
Tags: england, humor, language
The different tastes of a language
It's often asked by those who just don't know if Catalan is a dialect of Spanish. It's not. They're both "dialects" of Latin, although at this point, one would go so far as to say that they're separate languages due to the fact that a Latin speaker and a Spanish or Catalan speaker wouldn't be able to understand one another. To those visiting, it probably seems that this isn't the case as there is a lot of overlap between Catalan and Spanish like they both say "hola" as well as things such as "adiós" and "bienvenido" being "adéu" and "benvingut" in Catalan. These are just a few of many, so you can see where people get this whole "dialect" idea from, although I'm guessing it has more to do with Catalonia being part of Spain than anything else. For instance, Macedonian and Bulgarian are mutually intelligible dialects of one another, but no English speaker would ever assume that as they're separate countries and no one from either of those countries wants to admit it.
But, when you actually dig down in to it and start really working with Catalan, many things are completely different. For instance while "dog" is "perro" in Spanish, it's "gos" in Catalan. But let's look at food, because it's in the language of food where you find the truth of a people.
"bocadillo con jamón y queso"
That is basically a ham sandwich with cheese, but it's oh, oh, oh so delicious as it's with Spanish ham and manchego, drizzled with olive oil. This isn't something limited to Castillian speakers though and it is widely available and vastly consumed in Catalonia as well, but there it's:
"entrepà amb pernil i formatge"
Look at that. There is nothing that matches up, yet it means the exact same thing. If you still think that's still a dialect of Spanish, let me know how.
There is some humor from this though as it is often the case that Catalan words end with the "ll" letter like "coll" which means "neck". It also happens that there are a number of words that are quite similar to Spanish, but that they drop an ending vowel such as "cat" which is "gato" in Spanish and "gat" in Catalan. So a dorky, polyglot joke in Catalonia is to ask for a:
"bocadill amb jamó i ques"
Quite ridiculous and it's a joke that really only makes sense for Catalan speakers, who will most likely smirk if you ask for it. But don't worry, it will taste just as good as a "bocadillo con jamón y queso" except that the bread will be rubbed with tomato and garlic, making it even better actually. Why do I bring this up? Because I'm heading there again for some work on Sunday and staying for the rest of the year and getting fat on pernil in all its heavenly culinary incarnations.
05 10 2009 0 comments
Tags: food, humor, language
Let's stop using 'maybe' because it means 'no'
It seems that when people want to stop trolls on a website, they turn to only allowing a positive message to be shared. At first, I agreed with this somewhat, but then realized if you don't allow the negative in, then some aspect of the positive gets co-opted to become the negative. I mean, you can't really define the positive without the negative, so they both have to be there. But there's one other outcome of artificially skewing the positive which is the overuse of "maybe".
I've found that the US loves "maybe". It's not negative and it's not positive. It's completely noncommittal which is great for people who always want to portray an image of either being open to everything or being part of everything. Having the "maybe" allows them to do just this while fitting in a teeth whitening session around their daily activities and it allows Americans the ability to look like positive can-do people while actually being some of the flakiest people in the world.
I say end the "maybe" because really, it means "no". Let's face it, it's either "yes, I can do/come to that" or everything else. I can't count the number of times I've been part of some Evite or Meetup where there are a third "yes", a third "no" and a third "maybe". How can you plan an event other than to assume that all those "maybe" are actually "no" and if they were to show up (they never do), you just have to tell them, "Well, I didn't know you were coming."
I've actually written in to the support teams at both these groups to allow "maybe" to be taken out if you're constructing an event. They refuse to do it which is ridiculous. I think Evite even wrote back to me along the lines of, "We appreciate your feedback, but the majority of our users prefer the 'maybe' option." That's fine. Anyone who wants to use it can, but I just want to get rid of it on what I'm doing so that planning is actually possible instead of trying to generate an illusory buzz about your event.
I have to admit that the Plague of Maybe is something which is much more predominant in the bigger cities in the US. In my hometown if someone doesn't want to attend something, they'll say, "No, I'm not coming. It sounds gay and I think you're a asshole." While blunt, I appreciate this so much more than a "maybe". So come on, let's stop using "maybe".
26 08 2009 2 comments
Tags: internet, language, us america
Dennis Mccabe, can you punch yourself in the face please?
I wasn't really aware of it, but apparently a Spanish version of homedepot.com came and went while I was off doing other things that required more giving and a shit. They gave it something like four months before declaring it a failure. This goes to show that Home Depot will probably go bankrupt in the next year as they are full of monolingual MBA-ful idiots running the place. First, Spanish is incredibly important to them. There are countless migrant workers from Mexico and the rest of Central America working in construction. In fact, it seems like these are the only guys working in construction these days and for those who don't know, their first language is usually Spanish. Second, who the hell launches a website to cancel it in four months?!! I've worked on complete loser sites that stick around for years. Hell, this site has been around six years and it's just me blathering and posting pictures! Third, um, it's a recession that's hitting construction incredibly hard, so a) why launch the site now and b) again, why kill just after you do?
All of this is business idiocy at its best, but what really got me was the comment you see below. I can't believe that one comment can have so many offensive parts to it, but this Dennis Mccabe is obviously in a league of morons that has yet to be charted. Beyond the fact that he misspells "kowtowing" and is so belligerent towards anyone who doesn't speak his idea of Americanian, he just had to go and say that we're trying to, "Balkanize the US with different languages" I'm sure he felt really, really smart tossing in that word; almost BBC smart I'm assuming. He probably also didn't read this article either. My blogging reach is small I see, but this article talks about the whole issue of localization for companies in a much more professional manner. For starters, it doesn't tell a commenter to punch himself and only goes up from there.
15 06 2009 0 comments
Tags: language, morons, us america
