ilani ilani

The End.

2006-05-04T23:39:00.000-04:00

I started ilani ilani on January 1, 2005, joining what was at the time a small community of linguistic bloggers. I was in California over winter break and a bit bored, if truth be told.

Tomorrow is the last day of classes I'll ever take as an undergraduate, and it seems a fitting time for a change. These days there are tons of linguistic blogs, so many that I can't even get through them all, and I'm sure it's only a matter of time before there's a dedicated linguistic podcast. I had always hoped that I would find my niche in the blogosphere, but to tell you the truth, I've been too afraid of stirring up controversy to write about anything I'd really like to talk about, and as a consequence, this has become kind of a link blog. That's never how I wanted it to be, nor do I have much desire to continue it as such. So... this is it. I'll leave the archives up, but I won't be posting any more here.

Well, everyone, it's been a lot of fun. Thank you to all my readers of both the active and lurking varieties! I'm sure we'll be seeing each other on other sites.

Memery

2006-05-02T11:56:00.000-04:00

I've been tagged by Angelo! Here I go...

ME, TOO

I AM: two hours of classroom time shy of finishing my assorted degrees
I WANT: lunch
I WISH: it wasn't such a rainy, dreary day
I HATE: having two papers and two presentations hanging over my head
I MISS: other people cleaning up for me
I FEAR: I don't have much interesting to say about Irish relative clauses from a diachronic standpoint
I HEAR: the Colbert Report in the background
I WONDER: if I can safely venture to campus without an umbrella
I REGRET: leaving a cushion on the chair outside... it's now very wet
I AM NOT: obligated to do anything today until 6!
I DANCE: like a penguin with Parkinson's
I SING: not as well as I used to! My range is now a full third lower than it was in high school.
I CRY: never at movies.
I AM NOT ALWAYS: a team player.
I MADE: brownies last night.
I WRITE: very cryptic and terse class notes, the meaning of which I can seldom recover
I CONFUSE: my cat by repeating his meows back to him
I NEED: to go to the market
I SHOULD: be a lot more productive these days.
I START: the dishwasher before I go to bed
I FINISH: books impatiently, often skimming the last chapter, and then (unsurprisingly) find them anticlimactic
I TAG: anyone who has too much free time on their hands

FOUR THINGS

A. Four Jobs I’ve Had:
Tutor, Spanish
Tutor, Geometry
Tutor, Linguistics
Webmaster
B. Four Movies I’ll Watch Over and Over:
Pirates of the Caribbean
Zoolander
Sgt. Bilko
Meet the Fockers
C. Four Places I Called Home:
La Canada, CA
Los Angeles, CA (to people who are not from LA)
Wigglesworth D-31
Cambridge, MA
D. Four TV Shows I Love:
House
24
Boston Legal
Trading Spouses
E. Four Places I’ve Been on Vacation:
Hawaii
Ireland
Cancun
Hilton Head, SC
F. Four Websites I Visit Daily:
CNN
Facebook
LA Times
Digg (didn't take long to get me addiggted)
G. My Four Favorite Foods:
Sushi (especially hamachi and seared albacore)
Pad thai from Spice (looking forward to going there tonight)
Tarte tatin
Real lox (as opposed to smoked salmon, a highly inferior product)
H. Four Places I Would Rather Be Right Now:
A tropical island -- any one would do
In a house exactly like this one, but with more efficient climate control
Prudential Center, to find a b-day present for my soon-to-be-16-year-old sister
Two weeks into the future, with all my classwork done
I. Four People I’m Tagging:
Anyone
J. Four CD’s [addendum: or albums, presumably completely, in whatever medium, e.g. MP3] to Which I Have Most Recently Listened
Li Xiangting, Sleeping Lotus
Jimi Hendrix, complete Woodstock performance
Queen, Live Killers
Century Classics: 1100-1200: Music of the Monasteries

Amhrán na Bealtaine

2006-05-01T10:39:00.000-04:00

It's May 1! Aside from being May Day, my penultimate day of classes in my undergraduate career, and the birthday of one of my friends from elementary school, today is also Beltane. I thought I would post my favorite traditional Beltane song for you here:

Bábóg na Bealtaine maighdean a'tsamhraidh
Suas gach cnoc is síos gach gleann
Cailíní maiseacha bángheala gléigeal
Thugamar féin an samhradh linn.

Curfá:
Samhradh buí ó luí na gréine
Thugamar féin an samhradh linn
Ó bhaile go baile 's 'na bhaile 'na dhiadh sin
Thugamar féin an samhradh linn.

Tá nead ag an ghiorria ar imeall na haille
Is nead ag an chorr éisc i ngéagaibh an chrainn
Tá 'n chuach 's na héanlaith a'seinm le pléisiúr
Thugamar féin an samhradh linn.

(Curfá)

Tá an fhuiseog a'seinm 's a' luascadh sna spéartha
Beacha is cuileoga is bláth ar na crainn
Tá mil ar na cuiseoga 's coilm a béiceadh
Thugamar féin an samhradh linn.

(Curfá)

We used to sing with an alternate chorus:

Samhradh buí na nóiníní gléigeal
Thugamar féin an samhradh linn
Ó bhaile go baile 's ár mbaile 'na dhiadh sin
Thugamar féin an samhradh linn.

There are a few particularly interesting things about this song. It shows some dialectal features--most notably the synthetic 1pl past tense, thugamar ('we brought'),--and I like how the "ó bhaile go baile 's ár mbaile 'na dhiadh sin" ('from town to town and our home after that') part shows all the mutations in a row, plus two different meanings of baile. This word shows up in the Irish name for Dublin, which is Baile Átha Cliath 'Town by the Hurdle Ford,' and is behind all the Irish town names with 'bally.'

There are at least two melodies for this text. One is happy and one is more melancholy (I think the latter is much prettier). Were I not such a crappy singer, I would post MP3s. But if anyone is really interested, I have the sheet music of the happy version and could probably work out the other one.

Move over, Alex

2006-04-30T11:22:00.000-04:00

There's a new parrot in town, and his name is N'kisi. Here's an article from BBC News about N'kisi's vocabulary, which is 950 words. It's a nice article, but, uh, what's this about telepathy? You can hear N'kisi talk and read a transcript of the interaction here.

New Scientist on translation technology

2006-04-27T12:50:00.000-04:00

Here's a brief preview of an article about machine translation from New Scientist. Personally, I'm still holding out for a babelfish.

Sweden gets W

2006-04-25T11:13:00.000-04:00

Thanks to my cousin Aaron for pointing me towards this story about W getting its own section in the Swedish dictionary, owing to actions taken by the Swedish Academy.

The sky is falling: AOL-speak

2006-04-24T20:16:00.000-04:00

A little part of me dies every time I read a story like this.

The top story on Digg as of now is entitled "AOL has destroyed the English langauge with chat speech." Needless to say, it's preposterous that AOL could be blamed for people using--gasp--abbreviations. The comments on Digg are actually more interesting to me than the actual story. I particularly love the comment (referring back to the original link poster's description) that "How sad." is not a complete sentence. I also love the comment that "anyone who talks like that in AIM chat probably sounds just as stupid in real life. most people can still speak and type coherantly." [Sic.] Well, I type in all lower-case, punctuate less, and use abbreviations in e-communication to people I know well enough--and so do plenty of the most successful professors, doctors, and lawyers I know. Do they sound stupid in real life? I think not.

Well, now that that's over with...

2006-04-23T21:45:00.000-04:00

The undergrad colloquium was this weekend, hence my absence over the past week as I scrambled to get my own presentation done and get the logistics of the event taken care of. It was a really good group this year and things went very smoothly. Whew. And the best part: I never have to organize it again!

All this while, I was thinking that I should post about the many meanings of newborn Suri Cruise's name, but the nice folks over at Language Log have already done it for me, so rather than a scouting-the-web-for-links evening, this is going to be a smoking-my-boyfriend's-ass-at-Tetris evening. Thanks, LL! I owe you one!

Evolution of language NYT article

2006-04-16T11:37:00.000-04:00

There was a short article about the evolution of language by Gary Marcus in the NYT last week. It's nothing new (though the analysis of FOXP2's two-amino-acid difference in humans and chimps is pretty recent, I think).

Is your accent real, or are Jafaican it?

2006-04-11T11:11:00.000-04:00

Apparently, kids in London are now talking like Ali G. While the self-designation for the dialect seems to be "Jafaican," the article claims that "the academics prefer 'multicultural English.'" Really? Not the most descriptive term for identifying a particular dialect, is it?

GMU Speech Accent Archive

2006-04-09T17:12:00.000-04:00

The Speech Accent Archive run by some folks at George Mason University now has 523 recordings. It's a pretty cool site with streaming audio of both native and non-native English speakers all reading the same paragraph of text, and IPA transcriptions are provided along with generalizations about the phonetic features of the accent. I'm not sure I agree with all of the transcriptions, but it's a really fun site nonetheless. I wish there were some way to play a random recording so I could guess where it's from!

Fast Language Learners Boast More White Matter

2006-04-06T23:30:00.000-04:00

Here's an interesting link from the New Scientist. In a nutshell: those who can pick up non-native phonetic distinctions fastest (such as dental/alveolar/retroflex) tend to have more white matter in the left Heschl's gyrus.

Auditory Illusions on CD

2006-04-05T11:56:00.000-04:00

From Digg (which my recent post spurred me to figure out--it's actually very cool!) comes this link to a CD called Phantom Words and Other Curiosities. In the sample track posted on the site, I get a sort of vase/face illusion effect: it switches between "oh when" and "nowhere" (in a quasi-British accent). Come to think of it, I get these kind of illusions from any rhythmic noise a lot: the washing machine is one major culprit.

Origin of 'pop' (soda)?

2006-04-04T22:43:00.000-04:00

On a recently-aired episode of Unwrapped, host Marc Summers (remember him from Double Dare?) claims that Faygo, makers of the apparently famous berry-flavored Redpop, originated the term 'pop' for their soft drink because of the sound made when the bottle opens. This is corroborated by an article from the Soda Museum. An online etymology site, however, claims that the first usage of 'soda pop' is from 1873. The Faygo folks weren't in business until the 1920s. This timeline of soft drink history says 'pop' was first used in 1861 but gives no further comment. Anyone have more concrete information about this? I'm sadly lacking a good print dictionary (well, okay, any print dictionary, of English at least) here.

Unexpected irregular

2006-04-02T20:50:00.000-04:00

Since I'm a Mac nerd, I basically spend all day listening to Mac podcasts. Since I'm a linguistics nerd, I occasionally find bits of interest. I'm currently listening to the March 15 edition of the Mac Roundtable Podcast (the thesis put me a bit behind) and something cool came up at about 31 minutes in. One of the podcasters was talking about one of his articles about making money podcasting:

...it got popular, I got dug, I got a lot of comments on it...

It took me a minute to process the comment, but I think I finally figured out what he meant. There's a website called digg that allows people to "digg" their favorite news articles, etc. And the past tense of digg is, apparently, dugg! I would've expected regularization there, but who am I to say? Language doesn't behave just because there's a linguist listening.

The Wikings

2006-03-30T23:15:00.000-05:00

Tonight's Daily Show features a segment with Jason Jones about Denmark (or something...?) that includes much making light of being pronounced as [w] by Danish speakers. It's not too late to tune in, west-of-the-East-Coasters!

Website redesign

2006-03-30T17:12:00.000-05:00

I've just redesigned my website yet again, thanks to a great program called Rapidweaver. It's not yet complete, but I have much more incentive to work on it now that I'm playing around with a new toy. The decision to use this particular app was made after a couple months of tinkering with iWeb and Sandvox, both of which are better than Rapidweaver in certain respects but not quite as strong or flexible overall.

Aphasia on ABC

2006-03-29T18:53:00.000-05:00

Last night's Boston Legal, which I am watching as we speak thanks to the miracle of TiVo, opens with Alan Shore speaking word salad in the courtroom. It's a really well done example of how speech can sound really normal in terms of prosody and function words yet make no sense (cf. colorless green ideas sleep furiously).

Global Flavor

2006-03-27T00:25:00.000-05:00

Tonight on the Junk Food Blog, there was an announcement posted about a new "Latino Style" Lay's potato chip. The author wonders

Exactly what does a "Latino" taste like? Apparently, something like Hot Peppers Salsa, according to the bag.

I thought it was odd to see the word "Latino" used to described [sic] a flavor, as opposed to something like "Mexican style".

The usage didn't strike me as particularly odd--I read it as something like 'style a Latino might like'--but it did remind me of something I *do* find odd at a local restaurant. Punjabi Dhaba, the Inman Square Indian eatery, has three flavors of lassi: mango, coconut (I think? some fruit, in any case), and Punjabi. Uh... is that vegetarian-friendly?

A plea

2006-03-23T16:21:00.000-05:00

Pleeeeeassseee stooooppppp talking about chain shiftinggggggggg, aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!! It's D-Day minus one over here, and any mention of the Northern Cities Shift makes me really, really nervous.

I ran into a classmate in one of the dining halls last night. She was spread out with a half-eaten box of crackers, a big block of cheese, a reading lamp, various blankets, a laptop, several writing implements, and a few reams of paper. I stopped by to say hi and ask how long she'd been there: two days without leaving. Linguistics: it takes a lot out of you, but nothing that a good hunk of extra-sharp cheddar and a weekend of sleep can't put back.

Catullus review

2006-03-19T13:58:00.000-05:00

There's a review of Peter Green's bilingual edition of Catullus in the Los Angeles Times today. I'm not particularly a fan of the translation myself (snippets from two of my favorites appear at the end of the review-- you can make up your own mind), but it definitely is more colloquial and less repressed than any of the others I've seen.

Pirahã Podcast

2006-03-18T12:51:00.000-05:00

In this week's New Scientist podcast, there is an interview with Dan Everett about Pirahã. It's worth a listen, though you know how language stories that make it into the media usually are, and this one is no different. You can find the file here, under "Life on Mars?"

BIHNBMJBIL #1 and other news

2006-03-16T23:20:00.000-05:00

This post is first in a (hopefully small) series: books I hope nobody buys for me just because I'm a linguist. I get copies of Strunk White from distant relatives all the time! Don't act like it's never happened to you! Anyway, apparently this book has been around since 1999, but I first saw it at the Harvard Coop yesterday: The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations: The Complete Opinionated Guide for the Careful Speaker. Some of the reviews are good for a chuckle (and others, good for a facepalm).

In other news, Lá Fhéile Pádraig sona daoibh! I just had a look in my [old [Irish textbook]] to see if there were any cute sayings to post here. I was reminded that this time three years ago, I was learning my favorite Irish poem (Poker le Michael Davitt, RIP) and my favorite Irish song (Thíos Cois na Trá). What a great chapter! But alas, no easily translatable tidbits about St. Patrick.

Oh, and in other OTHER news, I was about to post this when I realized I have a genuine annoucement to make, for once! Since I have mailed my acceptance and notified everyone else, I suppose it's all right to talk about grad school now. I applied to four places and was accepted at all of them-- Berkeley, Harvard, UMD, and MIT. I'll be staying at Harvard. It seems kind of strange to be excited about staying put, but let me tell you... I'm really excited!!

Recency Principle

2006-03-15T17:27:00.000-05:00

I don't normally interact much with other blogs, for better or for worse, but if I may provide three words to accompany the recent Language Log post, "The Recency Principle Lives:" Wag the Dog.

Chain shifts & Communism

2006-03-14T22:08:00.000-05:00

So. I have a title for my thesis. "Nothing to lose but their chains: re-thinking vocalic chain shifting." It's appropriate for someone writing from the Kremlin on the Charles, don't you think? Vowels of the world, unite! Umm, anyway... just when I thought I had gotten rid of push chains once and for all, someone brought van Riemsdijk's work to my attention, in particular this paper. Et tu, syntax?