The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

Today's complaints from the field

With a concert on Sunday and other things going on in my life before then, I don't know how much I'll post this week. Tomorrow I get to walk Cassie to day care and hop on a train to my downtown office in the snow, which sounds really bad until you look at the data and see that October 31st is actually the average date of Chicago's first snowfall. The weather forecast promises it won't stick.

Speaking of sticking around:

  • David French believes President Biden has threaded the needle well with his response to the war in Gaza, even though his poll numbers have declined.
  • US Sen. Kristen Sinema (I-AZ) may have done more to enable the lunatic fringe of the party she claims to oppose than any other Democratic senator (before she became "independent"), save perhaps Joe Manchin (D-WV).
  • Author Anne Lamott, who recently turned 70, offers a plea to let yourself age gracefully.
  • Bruce Schneier points out a hack long known to Scandinavians: you can avoid EU alcohol tax by taking a ferry from Helsinki or Stockholm to the Finnish archipelago Åland.

Finally, John Kelly interviewed some expert sources to find out what language tics really irk them. For example, to someone who rows, saying "a crew team" is like saying "an ATM machine." Don't do it.

Monday, Monday (ba dah, ba dah dah ba)

I woke up this morning feeling like I'm fighting a cold, which usually means I'm fighting a cold. One negative Covid test later, I'm still debating whether to go to rehearsal tonight. Perhaps after a nap. And wearing an N-95.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the world:

  • Kenyan runner Kelvin Kiptum ran the world's fastest marathon yesterday in Chicago, finishing the race in 2:00:35, 36 seconds faster than Eliud Kipchoge's 2:01:09 set last year in Berlin.
  • David Ignatius reflects on the massive intelligence failure that allowed Hamas to attack Israel over the weekend.
  • Matt Ford completely debunks the XPOTUS's argument that being president granted him total immunity from prosecution. Along those lines, David Graham says that anyone who represents the XPOTUS in court has a fool for a client.
  • David French finds "moral outrage" in the insult "OK Boomer."
  • Chicago spent $3.5 million hosting NASCAR over the summer, offset only a bit by the $620,000 in fees the organization paid to the city for the privilege. And we're stuck doing it next year, too.

Finally, pilot and journalist Jim Fallows annotates a 17-minute video of the Air Traffic Control conversations with FedEx 1376, which made a gear-up landing at Chattanooga, Tenn., last week. (No one was injured, but the Boeing 757 will probably be written off.)

Three out of 300 is a start

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) forced through a vote on the top three general officer promotions that junior Senator Tommy "Coach" Tuberville (R-AL) has blocked for over six months, meaning we will have a Joint Chiefs Chair, a Commandant of the Marine Corps, and an Army Chief of Staff in the next couple of days. That leaves just over 300 admirals and general officers waiting for confirmation. No biggie.

Meanwhile:

Finally, Bob Ballard's company recently did a 40-hour underwater survey of three WWII aircraft carriers sunk at the Battle of Midway. 

Different words for the same thing

I learned on this trip that the German word for the small computer you carry everywhere is "Handy." That got me thinking.

In the US we call it a "cell phone." Most of the rest of the Anglosphere calls it a "mobile." Same in Czech ("mobilní telefon"), French ("téléphone mobile"), Spanish ("teléfono móvil") and most other European languages.

I find this interesting because in most parts of Europe, the name describes what the thing is. In German, it describes how you use it. But in the US, we still use a phrase that describes the underlying technology. It occurred to me that a US-based company invented the thing in the early 1970s, and it came into broad use in the US probably 10 years before the rest of the world.

But I wonder if that's also cultural? Are we Americans more interested in the tech than the thing itself? And why do Germans call it by an English name that has nothing to do with either the tech or its use?

Hypotheses welcomed.

The grammar of Great Andamanese languages

Linguist Anvita Abbi studied the language family on Great Andaman (just south of Myanmar in the Andaman Sea) and made a fascinating discovery:

Somehow my extensive experience with all five Indian language families was no help. One time I asked Nao Jr. to tell me the word for “blood.” He looked at me as if I were an utter fool and did not reply. When I insisted, he said, “Tell me where it is coming from.” I replied, “From nowhere.” Irritated, he repeated, “Where did you see it?” Now I had to make up something, so I said, “On the finger.” The reply came promptly—“ongtei!”—and then he rattled off several words for blood on different parts of the body. If the blood emerged from the feet or legs, it was otei; internal bleeding was etei; and a clot on the skin was ertei. Something as basic as a noun changed form depending on location.

The grammar I was piecing together was based primarily on Jero, but a look through Portman's and Man's books convinced me that the southern Great Andamanese languages had similar structures. The lexicon consisted of two classes of words: free and bound. The free words were all nouns that referred to the environment and its denizens, such as ra for “pig.” They could occur alone. The bound words were nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs that always existed with markers indicating a relation to other objects, events or states. The markers (specifically, a-er-ong-ot-or ut-e-or i-ara-; and o-) derived from seven zones of the body and were attached to a root word, usually as a prefix, to describe concepts such as “inside,” “outside,” “upper” and “lower.” For example, the morpheme er-, which qualified most anything having to do with an outer body part, could be stuck to -cho to yield ercho, meaning “head.” A pig's head was thus raercho.

[My] studies established that the 10 original Great Andamanese languages belonged to a single family. Moreover, that family was unique in having a grammatical system based on the human body at every structural level. A handful of other Indigenous languages, such as Papantla Totonac, spoken in Mexico, and Matsés, spoken in Peru and Brazil, also used terms referring to body parts to form words. But these terms had not morphed into abstract symbols, nor did they spread to every other part of speech.

I envy Abbi's ability to do that. I've spent 8 weeks now trying to sort out Czech grammar and have only just started to understand the accusative case. It makes a guy want to stick with German...

Wednesday afternoon potpourri

On this day in 2000, during that more-innocent time, Beverly Hills 90210 came to an end. (And not a day too soon.) As I contemplate the void in American culture its departure left, I will read these articles:

Finally, a new genetic study suggests that "modern humans descended from at least two populations that coexisted in Africa for a million years before merging in several independent events across the continent." Cool.

Free time resumes tomorrow

During the weeks around our Spring Concert, like during the first couple of weeks of December, I have almost no free time. The Beethoven performance also took away an entire day. Yesterday I had hoped to finish a bit of code linking my home weather station to Weather Now, but alas, I studied German instead.

Plus, with the aforementioned Spring Concerts on Friday and today, I felt that Cassie needed some couch time. (We both sit on the couch while I read or watch TV and she gets non-stop pats. It's good for both of us.) She'll get more couch time tonight, don't worry. But she'll also be home alone for about 7 hours today.

I don't have rehearsal tomorrow, and in fact I have no responsibilities beyond my normal day job until next Saturday, so I should finish the coding soon. (I also have a task for an old client that will take me a dozen or so hours, and I really need to start that before my trip.)

In the hour I have before Cassie's next walk and me driving out to Oak Park, I need to study more German and some Czech. In the former we're now discussing how the bear and the mouse need to an apartment („Der Bär und die Maus brauchen eine Wohnung”, for what purpose I can only imagine), and in the latter, whether I eat salt („Jíš sůl?”) and that they have good coffee („Kávu mají dobrou”). Clearly I have more work to do in Czech.

Meine Eule heißt Duo

At the end of the month, I'm taking the first real vacation I've had since 2017, to Central Europe. After connecting through Heathrow, I land in Prague, Czechia; then by train on to Vienna, Austria; then Salzburg, Austria; then a flight back to Gatwick and a night in London. And because of Vienna's and Salzburg's proximity to Austria's borders, I will probably also visit Slovakia, Hungary, and Germany—at least for a few minutes.

To prepare for this trip, about a month ago I downloaded Duolingo, and started the Czech program. I also jumped into the German program at unit 5, as I've studied German before.

I've had mixed results.

First, I want to make it clear that I love Duolingo. I have learned some basic Czech and I've gotten my German back to tourist-level fluency. When I get back to the US, I'm planning to load up French and Spanish, with the goal of getting both back to conversational levels. Just practicing languages every day keeps me learning them, so I believe I'll eventually finish the French and Spanish programs with some pretty good skills in both.

As for my upcoming trip, I've decided to change my approach. Thus far, I've spent about 20 minutes a day on Czech and 10 on German. And yet I'm going through the German lessons much faster, for a number of reasons, not least of which is that I first learned German in high school and I first learned Czech 37 days ago.

In the German program, I'm breezing through things like „wie ist das Wetter in Wien?” and „entschuldigung, wo ist der Geldautomat”, both of which which I actually want to know, and I'm acing (almost) all the speech and listening exercises. (Im and in gave me a bit of a bother for a hot minute.) I've gone from my start in section 1, unit 5 to section 2, unit 4, and the app says I've learned about 300 new German words.

In the Czech program, by contrast, 37 days have gotten me to...section 1, unit 5. And that's only because I gave up on the optional grammar drills after unit 4. I can say things like „jsem David” (I'm David) and „jsou to zvláštní zvířata” ("those are strange animals"), but not every time, and with no guarantee of grammatical accuracy. You see, Czech is a declined language, where all the grammar lives at the ends of words. I just can't seem to get the correct word endings 6 times out of 10. It's supremely frustrating.

So starting today, I'm going to change my approach.

First, I'm going to flip my priorities and spend 2/3 or more of my time on German. That's closer to my trip plan, anyway: from wheels down at Václav Havel Airport to my train crossing the Austrian border, I'll spend at most 48 hours of the 7-day trip in Czechia.

Second, I'm going to concentrate on Czech vocabulary, not mastery. For example, I'm going to skip the grammar drills at the end of each Czech unit and concentrate on just getting enough sentences right to move on to the next unit.

I'll continue to do the German drills, though. This will be my 5th trip to German-speaking countries, and will not be my last, but I have no idea if I'll ever get back to Czechia after this month. I'm singing Bruckner next year and probably Bach in 2025, but I have never to my knowledge sung in Czech. And I'm far more likely to remember the difference between „wo ist der Bahnhof” and „wo ist die U-Bahnstation” than I am to recall (or even say) „Jsem velký klukvs. „Jsme vel kluci”.

I only hope „jsi hezká” comes in handy at least once...

Clear, cool April morning

The clouds have moved off to the east, so it's a bit warmer and a lot sunnier than yesterday. I still have to wait for an automated build to run. For some reason (which I will have to track down after lunch), our CI builds have gone from 22 minutes to 37. Somewhere in the 90 kB of logs I'll find out why.

Meanwhile, happy Fox News On Trial Day:

Finally, I've started reading The Odyssey, so I applaud National Geographic's article this month on the history of the ancient world in which Homer set the poem.