I ran across an issue of some importance several years ago that's gotten little acknowledgement. Basically, its how well a lexicon uses the distinctions amongst its phonemic inventory. It's a step away from phonotactics.
Essentially, it makes a little sense to distinguish sounds if they don't contribute to the distinctiveness of words. It's slightly contentious, but some languages test this more strongly than others, in terms of allophony (some languages' phonemes are very flexible, like in Pirahã). There can be extra ways to distinguish words e.g. syntax, prosody. So the level of redundancy probably varies as well.
The point tho is that, if the words in your language are, eg CVCV...etc. and you have syllables A, B, C, and D, and a lexicon of a few words using them, e.g. AB and CD, then you can do several things, because they're not utilizing the inventory very well. Maximally, if these are the only 2 words in the language, you actually only need two syllables in your inventory, with this lexicon, eg AA and CC (or any other pair of syllables) maybe even condensing the words to one syllable eg A and B. Anyways, this process is known as hashing and it was solved for optimality in 1992.
So I'm not a programmer or anything but its cool. It lets you know how important words are to the sound of the language eg testing the high frequency words and sounds of the language, and testing polysemy, etc. it would be good for designing a shorthand e.g. adapting PLOVER to a language, and its how a stenotype for Japanese uses only 10 keys, basically a home row.
Sunday, March 31, 2013
Saturday, March 30, 2013
Internet jargons & slangs
Wow, it's been so long since my last post! To say I'm busy is part of it, but its mostly with very different things, none to do with language.
I'm revisiting an old idea of mine, and I've found out, others: collaborative crowd-sourced conlanging. Essentially, how can we create a language together so that we understand it, use it, and develop it, and how do we inculcate English monoglots, e.g. newbies? That seems to be one of the biggest things...English messes up, and waters down everything.
You see this in Internet slang, where catchphrases go from being catchphrases to slang shibboleths, eventually becoming idioms, then euphemisms, and finally becoming synonyms. That slowly happened to Boontling, the real-life dialect that developed out of some bored children's games in slang in remote California. This happens in countries where English-speakers settle and fail to learn the language, and then everyone bends over backwards to accommodate them until their language fails to attain new speakers and status.
It's strange because English suffered the Norman invasion in 1066 AC but the people didn't learn the French of the Norman invaders--they kept their English, which was severely bastardized until it reached Middle English, but they apparently didn't care. Then, the King at the time said, "Let us speak French in the court!" and that then and there gave English its new ascendancy.
How do you make people learn? That is what I've tried to find out, and it seems like you have to do quite a it of the work for them, and they'll cover the difference. Other posts have covered what kind of a system I think would be needed (essentially a news site and message boards and people with a lot of time on their hands).
What would these people have in common? They would need context to discuss things in a world, and the virtual world doesn't cut it. There have been efforts (e.g. on kickstarter) to create immersive videogames but they look bad, hence they're not immersive. 2nd life and minecraft don't really work well either IMO, tho minecraft is extendable by the users. I'm not aware of whether minecraft has vocal interaction but that would probably be necessary. The thing is, if its public, people don't feel the need to socialize in some cryptolect.
Anyways, Kalusa the first and really only language like this worked pretty well until someone decided to start stuffing the ballots, but in actuality suffered from the same problems as other conlangs. It had words for things which no-one would ever have the opportunity to speak in public, like for animals. If conlangs were realistic they would have native words for computer guts, Internet chat forms, and the various things you can see/learn about in fictional worlds or pictures. Inevitably, they would come to be like counting the bricks on the inside of a jail cell. That's why we have real languages, so we can go to them.
It's just that conlanging hasn't touched on what people want most: money, food, power and sex. Esperanto, because its totally against hegemony (well, really any 2nd language would be too) throws out power. Not using English throws out power as a motivator, so that's I don't know how many people? It does allow you to potentially get a date if you're not a total boar...in theory. If people have time they're spending on language study they may or may not have a lot of money, and hence enough food. If a language is going to take hold its going to have to have both a significant amount of grammar and work units translated into a target language, without a further incentive to translate more original works.
Essentially, it has to be a fun game.
Gary Shannon discussed awhile ago away to change English into another language. That would be pretty fun and workable right? The grammar would be expressed thru a longish article slowly changing the language into the target deformation, gradually building up until the whole thing is totally replaced. At least, that's one way. It could be reinforced with funny limericks, etc.
This works a lot better if there is a simple pattern which people can extrapolate, e.g. phonetically and grammatically backwards English aka Shilging, which is more than either a game or a relex, and certainly sound fun (hardest thing? reversing the prosody, which might be impossible).
On the other hand, it seems like people will always move on. And that's not something any language can deal with.
I'm revisiting an old idea of mine, and I've found out, others: collaborative crowd-sourced conlanging. Essentially, how can we create a language together so that we understand it, use it, and develop it, and how do we inculcate English monoglots, e.g. newbies? That seems to be one of the biggest things...English messes up, and waters down everything.
You see this in Internet slang, where catchphrases go from being catchphrases to slang shibboleths, eventually becoming idioms, then euphemisms, and finally becoming synonyms. That slowly happened to Boontling, the real-life dialect that developed out of some bored children's games in slang in remote California. This happens in countries where English-speakers settle and fail to learn the language, and then everyone bends over backwards to accommodate them until their language fails to attain new speakers and status.
It's strange because English suffered the Norman invasion in 1066 AC but the people didn't learn the French of the Norman invaders--they kept their English, which was severely bastardized until it reached Middle English, but they apparently didn't care. Then, the King at the time said, "Let us speak French in the court!" and that then and there gave English its new ascendancy.
How do you make people learn? That is what I've tried to find out, and it seems like you have to do quite a it of the work for them, and they'll cover the difference. Other posts have covered what kind of a system I think would be needed (essentially a news site and message boards and people with a lot of time on their hands).
What would these people have in common? They would need context to discuss things in a world, and the virtual world doesn't cut it. There have been efforts (e.g. on kickstarter) to create immersive videogames but they look bad, hence they're not immersive. 2nd life and minecraft don't really work well either IMO, tho minecraft is extendable by the users. I'm not aware of whether minecraft has vocal interaction but that would probably be necessary. The thing is, if its public, people don't feel the need to socialize in some cryptolect.
Anyways, Kalusa the first and really only language like this worked pretty well until someone decided to start stuffing the ballots, but in actuality suffered from the same problems as other conlangs. It had words for things which no-one would ever have the opportunity to speak in public, like for animals. If conlangs were realistic they would have native words for computer guts, Internet chat forms, and the various things you can see/learn about in fictional worlds or pictures. Inevitably, they would come to be like counting the bricks on the inside of a jail cell. That's why we have real languages, so we can go to them.
It's just that conlanging hasn't touched on what people want most: money, food, power and sex. Esperanto, because its totally against hegemony (well, really any 2nd language would be too) throws out power. Not using English throws out power as a motivator, so that's I don't know how many people? It does allow you to potentially get a date if you're not a total boar...in theory. If people have time they're spending on language study they may or may not have a lot of money, and hence enough food. If a language is going to take hold its going to have to have both a significant amount of grammar and work units translated into a target language, without a further incentive to translate more original works.
Essentially, it has to be a fun game.
Gary Shannon discussed awhile ago away to change English into another language. That would be pretty fun and workable right? The grammar would be expressed thru a longish article slowly changing the language into the target deformation, gradually building up until the whole thing is totally replaced. At least, that's one way. It could be reinforced with funny limericks, etc.
This works a lot better if there is a simple pattern which people can extrapolate, e.g. phonetically and grammatically backwards English aka Shilging, which is more than either a game or a relex, and certainly sound fun (hardest thing? reversing the prosody, which might be impossible).
On the other hand, it seems like people will always move on. And that's not something any language can deal with.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Representing tonality via text
Note: this is adapted from elsewhere but it's more appropriate here.
You can use adverbs in the quotation. E.g.
(Mockingly) Why not?
"Why not?" [she said] mockingly.
WHOAsounding surprised
"Really?" he says, pretending to be serious because he wants to steal her pocketbook while she's not looking, but she mistakes for cheap moves--and so she looks away, saying "I'm not that easy," only to look up again and find them both gone.
Why not? --he said laughing --I'm game.
Etc.
The last example is rather like in Polish; every change in speaker is presented with a dash, and quotations are offset with a helping phrase because it is spoken by a narrator (the "she said" part). (Note that it's not capitalized tho, so its not a new sentence.) It may not be easy to come up with words for every sense you're going for (tho there are lots of words in English,"he said, being droll) but then you can make up words for those manners of speaking. The strikethrough is a way of making it seem more meta like for making comments in programming code; stuff that's written and crossed out is understandably not officially part of the text tho still there. You can present implied subtexts that way too, like how it would be if you spoke and intoned those words. It basically imitates the effect of speaking by sneaking in more, it doesn't necessarily give the reader a blow-by-blow of it. I like to italicize the text that is crossed out too.
E.g.
--I wouldhate love to have you over more often.
--I like thatbut I hate everything else.
What is weird, is that some languages e.g. Japanese present solipsistic speech (i.e. talking to oneself) in young children by talking in the 3rd person. It sounds kind of crazy to English people, like something a mad person might do. There's even a trope of characters using quotatives for their own speech, which definitely sounds dissociative. It's funny tho when that character is speaking in a monotone, and their narration adds how they intend to be heard, or hear themselves. [url=http://hasegawa.berkeley.edu/Papers/Soliloquy.pdf]Here's some more on soliloquy in Japanese.[/url]
"That's absurd," I murmur irritatedly to myself.<--Here the utterance is performed; tho it is kind of a lie if you don't say it too. Maybe "I write in anger" is more honest but it makes less sense. Both incidentally are performatives.
"Sarah thinks its crazy," says Sarah quietly to herself. Or "she says~" <--Japanese style example
Libreoffice gives you a ton of text formatting options e.g. Small capitals, double, triple lining etc. I like punctuation marks for beginning sentences too á la Spanish e.g. ¡ ¿Why do you ask?? You could always innovate new punctuation marks.
Maybe there's a history of using emoticons, comics, or ideograms of authors' feelings?
Diminutives, denigratives, honorifics, etc make attitudes more explicit. Certain sentence-final particles in Japanese serve only stylistic purposes. Of course there's an endless number of ways to change narration to capture speech. Otherwise you'll have to dig into intonation which is a big field. I'm digging into [i]English Intonation[/i] by Wells, but im using ad hoc labels for several things which aren't finely distinguished in the different methodologies. None are really super-comprehensive for what a native speaker knows about the language tho. For instance, 'disbelief' and 'incredulous' accents have very similar profiles (tho they are distinct; they have different height spans and different onsets within their syllables); overall, you're better off just labeling them.
On the other hand, certain gradients that people are super aware of, are handy to have a notation for. For instance, "Tell me." Say the first word high and the 2nd one lower. There are several minute variations on it. If you pronounce "tell" gently rising, you'll sound urgent. If you keep it level, it will sound neutral, and if you pronounce "tell" sloping down, you'll sound confident maybe even reassuring. (That example is from Bolinger's [i]Intonation and Its Parts[/i], page 225. That general profile is considered an A-profile in his terms, with different "glides".) I still think its more convenient to use adverbs here, tho e.g. urgently, flatly or plainly, and confidently or reassuringly. I honestly think its a bit tedious labeling stuff with [url=http://blogjam.name/?p=9070]intonation diacritics[/url]. (Almost forgot to mention, but the American and British approaches have only been partially reconciled, that program uses a British accent. It should still be useful, but you may want to do some work.) Same reason I like audiobooks tho.
You can use adverbs in the quotation. E.g.
(Mockingly) Why not?
"Why not?" [she said] mockingly.
WHOA
"Really?" he says, pretending to be serious because he wants to steal her pocketbook while she's not looking, but she mistakes for cheap moves--and so she looks away, saying "I'm not that easy," only to look up again and find them both gone.
Why not? --he said laughing --I'm game.
Etc.
The last example is rather like in Polish; every change in speaker is presented with a dash, and quotations are offset with a helping phrase because it is spoken by a narrator (the "she said" part). (Note that it's not capitalized tho, so its not a new sentence.) It may not be easy to come up with words for every sense you're going for (tho there are lots of words in English,"
E.g.
--I would
--I like that
What is weird, is that some languages e.g. Japanese present solipsistic speech (i.e. talking to oneself) in young children by talking in the 3rd person. It sounds kind of crazy to English people, like something a mad person might do. There's even a trope of characters using quotatives for their own speech, which definitely sounds dissociative. It's funny tho when that character is speaking in a monotone, and their narration adds how they intend to be heard, or hear themselves. [url=http://hasegawa.berkeley.edu/Papers/Soliloquy.pdf]Here's some more on soliloquy in Japanese.[/url]
"That's absurd," I murmur irritatedly to myself.<--Here the utterance is performed; tho it is kind of a lie if you don't say it too. Maybe "I write in anger" is more honest but it makes less sense. Both incidentally are performatives.
"Sarah thinks its crazy," says Sarah quietly to herself. Or "she says~" <--Japanese style example
Libreoffice gives you a ton of text formatting options e.g. Small capitals, double, triple lining etc. I like punctuation marks for beginning sentences too á la Spanish e.g. ¡ ¿Why do you ask?? You could always innovate new punctuation marks.
Maybe there's a history of using emoticons, comics, or ideograms of authors' feelings?
Diminutives, denigratives, honorifics, etc make attitudes more explicit. Certain sentence-final particles in Japanese serve only stylistic purposes. Of course there's an endless number of ways to change narration to capture speech. Otherwise you'll have to dig into intonation which is a big field. I'm digging into [i]English Intonation[/i] by Wells, but im using ad hoc labels for several things which aren't finely distinguished in the different methodologies. None are really super-comprehensive for what a native speaker knows about the language tho. For instance, 'disbelief' and 'incredulous' accents have very similar profiles (tho they are distinct; they have different height spans and different onsets within their syllables); overall, you're better off just labeling them.
On the other hand, certain gradients that people are super aware of, are handy to have a notation for. For instance, "Tell me." Say the first word high and the 2nd one lower. There are several minute variations on it. If you pronounce "tell" gently rising, you'll sound urgent. If you keep it level, it will sound neutral, and if you pronounce "tell" sloping down, you'll sound confident maybe even reassuring. (That example is from Bolinger's [i]Intonation and Its Parts[/i], page 225. That general profile is considered an A-profile in his terms, with different "glides".) I still think its more convenient to use adverbs here, tho e.g. urgently, flatly or plainly, and confidently or reassuringly. I honestly think its a bit tedious labeling stuff with [url=http://blogjam.name/?p=9070]intonation diacritics[/url]. (Almost forgot to mention, but the American and British approaches have only been partially reconciled, that program uses a British accent. It should still be useful, but you may want to do some work.) Same reason I like audiobooks tho.
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Updates
I kinda like languages
Basic Esperanto dictionary
Esperanto shorthand
Esperanto hub
Vikipedio pages read aloud
I have the strongest urge to write lessons for Novegradian or Alashian, but I can't see doing it. Who'll read it? I'm digging into French again but I don't see much point. I have the pronunciation and
intonation down pretty much pat,
if not the liaison, but it's so ridiculous.
I was looking into imageboards source code and I like shimmie but I don't really have the time. Maybe I could get the Esperantists to help? The idea was to have users upload their photos and other users would tag them. It's kind of like the basic english word list, except this would be over 9000.
The other alternative is to somehow use it for conlangs so that tags from several (all) languages would display at once. Frathwiki people might be tempted I think.
Basic Esperanto dictionary
Esperanto shorthand
Esperanto hub
Vikipedio pages read aloud
I have the strongest urge to write lessons for Novegradian or Alashian, but I can't see doing it. Who'll read it? I'm digging into French again but I don't see much point. I have the pronunciation and
intonation down pretty much pat,
if not the liaison, but it's so ridiculous.
I was looking into imageboards source code and I like shimmie but I don't really have the time. Maybe I could get the Esperantists to help? The idea was to have users upload their photos and other users would tag them. It's kind of like the basic english word list, except this would be over 9000.
The other alternative is to somehow use it for conlangs so that tags from several (all) languages would display at once. Frathwiki people might be tempted I think.
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Blissymbols & language hunting
I've been trying to sponge up as much language hunting/where Are your keys and its slow going but it feels good. The hardest part is that I've not yet been able to teach someone anything yet.
I'm trying to do esperanto first because its easy. The problem is, I don't know enough of the game to teach what I know in esperanto! The videos for irish Gaeilge and chinuk wawa take time to go thru and a lot of the WAYK wiki is either abstract, or links to dead videos. I bought the book for language hunting but that's slow go too. I've made my way thru 40/400 pages.
Meanwhile, other languages, like Elvish & Alashian are actually within my grasp, at least for first steps. So too is Esperanto, but there's a lot more game time mileage in learning quenyan "What is that?/make me say yes/make me say no". I might have to make up words for the other basic parts of the game for quenya, but maybe not.
One thing I've thought about is making Blissymbols to match up with the use of sign language as a bridge, but this time for the written page. Each Blissymbol could be a morpheme or lexeme and function as a kind of visual gloss, one per hand sign. Since it's Signed Assisted (insert X language here) it doesn't need the full grammar of sign language, its being used principally for the physical stimulation and iconicity...so using Blissymbols instead of signing symbols could make sense. Unfortunately I haven't found explanations for all the Blissymbols but I have found a dictionary. Some signs are more iconic than others.
One surprising thing I've realized about WAYK (actually it was a first impression) was that its a lot like a game that elementary girls play that goes something like this:
"What is that? -That is a stick. -A stick? -A stick. -Oh a stick!" There's a variation that involves a fuck instead. WAYK's big difference is that it uses sign language simultaneously, and goes into things a lot deeper. Yeah, pretty big differences. But I can see how it's called a game.
I'm trying to do esperanto first because its easy. The problem is, I don't know enough of the game to teach what I know in esperanto! The videos for irish Gaeilge and chinuk wawa take time to go thru and a lot of the WAYK wiki is either abstract, or links to dead videos. I bought the book for language hunting but that's slow go too. I've made my way thru 40/400 pages.
Meanwhile, other languages, like Elvish & Alashian are actually within my grasp, at least for first steps. So too is Esperanto, but there's a lot more game time mileage in learning quenyan "What is that?/make me say yes/make me say no". I might have to make up words for the other basic parts of the game for quenya, but maybe not.
One thing I've thought about is making Blissymbols to match up with the use of sign language as a bridge, but this time for the written page. Each Blissymbol could be a morpheme or lexeme and function as a kind of visual gloss, one per hand sign. Since it's Signed Assisted (insert X language here) it doesn't need the full grammar of sign language, its being used principally for the physical stimulation and iconicity...so using Blissymbols instead of signing symbols could make sense. Unfortunately I haven't found explanations for all the Blissymbols but I have found a dictionary. Some signs are more iconic than others.
One surprising thing I've realized about WAYK (actually it was a first impression) was that its a lot like a game that elementary girls play that goes something like this:
"What is that? -That is a stick. -A stick? -A stick. -Oh a stick!" There's a variation that involves a fuck instead. WAYK's big difference is that it uses sign language simultaneously, and goes into things a lot deeper. Yeah, pretty big differences. But I can see how it's called a game.
Fusion in conlanguages
Matthew D. Martin is a conlanger & he has a neat post about creators giving their fans a hand in their design. I agree with the sentiment and think that while their have been many collaborative conlangs, few have been truly crowd sourced. I think it would be great if creators found a way to impart dynamism to the communities that they want to grow. So far, like with Esperanto, that has meant tinkering inside the grammar and coining new words, but nothing allowing that grammar to grow. If there were enough glue to hold a language together while not being a closed loop, that would be fantastic.
I realized something awhile back, that when words are made up of morphemes those morphemes can still be bound, or the meaning dictated by convention. In other words, meaning isn't created in those words by their composites. Instead people create little folk stories that help them learn the word and its meaning, sometimes even it's pronunciation. The process sometimes even works in reverse if people are really pressured into needing a way to remember it...Which is where much conlang design comes in. Esperanto is really good for this. However, the process isn't really regular, and I don't see any reason it should be honestly. So lets say you want people to actively work on the language, Why not let people change the language fairly often? Ere are languages that glom together words all the time, and those words' morphemes can have different forms, different meanings, etc. And the thing which eventually works out is convention. What's popular catches on and gains currency. People work out little stories for themselves.
This happens slowly somewhat in English. A word like "acorn" gets reparsed as meaning "egg" + "corn" = "eggcorn" = "acorn" (That might be a "typological pun" but bear with me.) This is not too productive in English because its language community is huge and people are all literate, and because English isn't hugely fusional, but you can see it in other ways.
In English there are two morphemes, "-in'" and "-ing", and believe me they are two morphemes. In ye dayes ov olde our language had separate endings for the gerund and active participle, but fashion and vowel changes shaved them down. However, rural speakers retain them still in certain places and mark a distinction between them that urban speakers have long lost to syncretism. It's a mistake that most speakers of English make when parsing these that they can't tell there's a grammatical distinction present. We make a story that these speakers mean the same word as we do, but chop off the <g> at the end...It's not actually a natural sound change, and its not being lazy. That's our prejudice as more fashionable less conservative, more innovative speakers of a different dialect with more prestige. This language change can happen more rapidly in a small community of speakers hashing out a language speaking to each other. People will crush and mangle words and misunderstand each other and contrary to most conlanging that's natural.
I've said this before, but I really like lernu's forum dictionary. Now if its going to work with the above, users need to be able to add entries like urbandictionary. That way they can give derivations...if they choose. Or leave it to other users to puzzle out.
P.S. A while ago there was a guy posing as a philologist by the name of Edo
Nyland. He was trying to relate all the world's languages to Basque by fusional processes. His energy is good, and a different kind of Conlanging, one which I nevertheless respect. It would be a shame to not let it in the picture.
I realized something awhile back, that when words are made up of morphemes those morphemes can still be bound, or the meaning dictated by convention. In other words, meaning isn't created in those words by their composites. Instead people create little folk stories that help them learn the word and its meaning, sometimes even it's pronunciation. The process sometimes even works in reverse if people are really pressured into needing a way to remember it...Which is where much conlang design comes in. Esperanto is really good for this. However, the process isn't really regular, and I don't see any reason it should be honestly. So lets say you want people to actively work on the language, Why not let people change the language fairly often? Ere are languages that glom together words all the time, and those words' morphemes can have different forms, different meanings, etc. And the thing which eventually works out is convention. What's popular catches on and gains currency. People work out little stories for themselves.
This happens slowly somewhat in English. A word like "acorn" gets reparsed as meaning "egg" + "corn" = "eggcorn" = "acorn" (That might be a "typological pun" but bear with me.) This is not too productive in English because its language community is huge and people are all literate, and because English isn't hugely fusional, but you can see it in other ways.
In English there are two morphemes, "-in'" and "-ing", and believe me they are two morphemes. In ye dayes ov olde our language had separate endings for the gerund and active participle, but fashion and vowel changes shaved them down. However, rural speakers retain them still in certain places and mark a distinction between them that urban speakers have long lost to syncretism. It's a mistake that most speakers of English make when parsing these that they can't tell there's a grammatical distinction present. We make a story that these speakers mean the same word as we do, but chop off the <g> at the end...It's not actually a natural sound change, and its not being lazy. That's our prejudice as more fashionable less conservative, more innovative speakers of a different dialect with more prestige. This language change can happen more rapidly in a small community of speakers hashing out a language speaking to each other. People will crush and mangle words and misunderstand each other and contrary to most conlanging that's natural.
I've said this before, but I really like lernu's forum dictionary. Now if its going to work with the above, users need to be able to add entries like urbandictionary. That way they can give derivations...if they choose. Or leave it to other users to puzzle out.
P.S. A while ago there was a guy posing as a philologist by the name of Edo
Nyland. He was trying to relate all the world's languages to Basque by fusional processes. His energy is good, and a different kind of Conlanging, one which I nevertheless respect. It would be a shame to not let it in the picture.
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Language hunting & my prosody wiki
This is amazing and shows you how eliciting an entire language's grammar can work fairly painlessly. It also shows why some redundancies I've noticed in the process are important. Here's another video. This time it's the astonishingly hard-to-pronounce Georgian language being hunted.
Right now I'm working on a language hunt for Esperanto with anyone I can snare, but I have to get over this laryngitis first. Esperanto is coming along; I've already read several forum posts. I think I have memrise to thank for teaching me the correlatives, and the Intense-EO flash card app, as well as the fantastic lernu! website with its automatic translations.
This is my wiki about intonation. I'm sorry its so bare and forlorn but I have a wikiPad with a lot of information on my desktop. I think it's going to be hopelessly messy no matter how I start it so I should just get this thing together anyway. One thing is that I may need to split the wiki according to accent which I'm not looking forward to, but it all depends on who joins up on it.
I've mentioned French is coming along fairly well albeit slowly. I've given up on buying stuff in French because I don't have the resources anymore. Comics just keep climbing in price.
Y'know what I've never seen before? Pictures and poems together. That would be gorgeous. I guess in anthologies they go together but they're not usually visually juxtaposed. I think I've seen that with Japanese tho e.g. Karuta cards. Speaking of karuta, I've been thinking of printing a deck for my friends when they visit for the first time in a year since finishing school. I found this awesome website.
I've been practicing my ocarina too. It's a transverse 12-hole model and my substitute lately for talking what with this laryngitis. I picked up a sogeum PVC flute off eBay too recently, but that won't come for a while. I'm thinking about picking up PVC whistles off Becker too. They're very affordable. I wanted to buy a PVC flute but I haven't found anyone yet. I already have a shakuhachi but it's really difficult to play and requires a lot of breath. I don't want to make my own because I don't have the time or the skills. Conceivably, one could make a Bohlen Pierce flute or whistle but its more of the same, I mean in terms of difficulty. There are also no plans available. That scale would suit the ethos of the shakuhachi well tho. OTOH these are all kind of goofy anachronisms...I mean, the appeal lies in the potential for using these woodwinds as clubs am I right? Because that's the real benefit to using PVC, tough and cheap. At least, that's true of the shakuhachi (it was designed as a weapon first, instrument second.) This, despite the fact the design predates PVC.
Meanwhile I should be composing iPad music for a certain contest...I find the less I think, the easier it is to accomplish things. I have a tendency to just make things balloon out of control when I should be pursuing the opportunities available to me in the moment. Planning, planning, while nothing is happening, and then forgetting the plans.
I've practiced pen shorthand too and I've found that its not too hard to write at 80 words per minute. I gave up Plover tho. The computer keyboards, even if they have NKRO, aren't suited for shorthand IMO, so it's a waste of time or worse.
I still really love pen shorthand. It's gorgeous and easy, but the more I'm used to writing the more I get annoyed with it. Writing really doesn't cut it as an information transmission vehicle. My reading shorthand is finally catching up to my writing. Maybe my attitude will change the more I practice? I doubt it tho. How does anyone ever write a book? Dragon was my saving grace until I contracted this laryngitis. Man is it annoying.
On the other forefront, I'm considering a special business venture. I've still got to think it thru. I'm not sure how I would start it.
I've mentioned French is coming along fairly well albeit slowly. I've given up on buying stuff in French because I don't have the resources anymore. Comics just keep climbing in price.
Y'know what I've never seen before? Pictures and poems together. That would be gorgeous. I guess in anthologies they go together but they're not usually visually juxtaposed. I think I've seen that with Japanese tho e.g. Karuta cards. Speaking of karuta, I've been thinking of printing a deck for my friends when they visit for the first time in a year since finishing school. I found this awesome website.
I've been practicing my ocarina too. It's a transverse 12-hole model and my substitute lately for talking what with this laryngitis. I picked up a sogeum PVC flute off eBay too recently, but that won't come for a while. I'm thinking about picking up PVC whistles off Becker too. They're very affordable. I wanted to buy a PVC flute but I haven't found anyone yet. I already have a shakuhachi but it's really difficult to play and requires a lot of breath. I don't want to make my own because I don't have the time or the skills. Conceivably, one could make a Bohlen Pierce flute or whistle but its more of the same, I mean in terms of difficulty. There are also no plans available. That scale would suit the ethos of the shakuhachi well tho. OTOH these are all kind of goofy anachronisms...I mean, the appeal lies in the potential for using these woodwinds as clubs am I right? Because that's the real benefit to using PVC, tough and cheap. At least, that's true of the shakuhachi (it was designed as a weapon first, instrument second.) This, despite the fact the design predates PVC.
Meanwhile I should be composing iPad music for a certain contest...I find the less I think, the easier it is to accomplish things. I have a tendency to just make things balloon out of control when I should be pursuing the opportunities available to me in the moment. Planning, planning, while nothing is happening, and then forgetting the plans.
I've practiced pen shorthand too and I've found that its not too hard to write at 80 words per minute. I gave up Plover tho. The computer keyboards, even if they have NKRO, aren't suited for shorthand IMO, so it's a waste of time or worse.
I still really love pen shorthand. It's gorgeous and easy, but the more I'm used to writing the more I get annoyed with it. Writing really doesn't cut it as an information transmission vehicle. My reading shorthand is finally catching up to my writing. Maybe my attitude will change the more I practice? I doubt it tho. How does anyone ever write a book? Dragon was my saving grace until I contracted this laryngitis. Man is it annoying.
On the other forefront, I'm considering a special business venture. I've still got to think it thru. I'm not sure how I would start it.
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