Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Much Sorry with Delays
Birth, Death and All That Stuff in Between
How to Honor Labor Day, Every Day
My Yom Kippur Miracle (Repost from 2010)
Good intro to fly casting
Peach update, with pie
NYC update
Easy for you to say: To the elites on mass immigration
For NYC on 9/11, Sailors' Snug Harbor
Pickled Peaches
Water Shoes
Labor Costs in U.S.
Your "identity"
Good news about The Great Courses
Uses of Hot Pepper Jelly/Sauce, Chutneys, and Jams
A Saturday Drive to Litchfield County, CT
How to Pick a Kayak
Civilized: Fruit forks and knives
Loads of kayaking on Cape Cod
Psychology Experiments' Questionable Results

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Thursday, November 26. 2015

Thursday morning links

A Thanksgiving treat and blessing for me this morning - a flock of about 35 Cedar Waxwings in my maple tree. (Photo is that species.)


When In Rome - Historian Mary Beard on her new book, old cultures, and whether we are doing as the Romans do


Three Old Men Having Fun


English is not normal - No, English isn’t uniquely vibrant or mighty or adaptable. But it really is weirder than pretty much every other language


Our evil planet kills countless humans every year – why bother to save it?


Thanksgiving: How does it happen that everything has become politics?


Those Zany Colonists and the Nation They Built:



Thanksgiving is about the weird ancient America...


What we built here wasn’t only good — it was better, better than anything the world had seen, and we shouldn’t give a second’s hearing to those who say otherwise. Yes, even with slavery, the mistreatment of the Indians, and “Keeping Up with the Kardashians”: better. A world better.




Posted by Bird Dog in Hot News & Misc. Short Subjects at 08:30 | Comments (7) | Trackbacks (0)

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"English is not normal - No, English isn’t uniquely vibrant or mighty or adaptable. But it really is weirder than pretty much every other language."

I'm generally a fan of John McWhorter but this is nothing more than a puff piece.

He lost me at "In countries where English isn’t spoken, there is no such thing as a 'spelling bee' competition." Patently untrue: spelling competitions are common to many languages. The French have a Dictée Campus Eiffel which, being a dictée, requires correctly spelling entire passages of text. The Dutch have a national spelling competition too. The winners are routinely Flemish and that's because (as a Dutch friend of mine once noted) they are very nationalistic about the language, living as they do in Belgium where they vie with French.

And by the way, being a French speaker, I can tell you that I routinely hear all about the exceptionalism and unique attributes of the French language ad nauseam.

Neither English nor French nor Dutch nor any other language is intrinsically any more "special" than another.
#1 JJM on 2015-11-26 09:08 (Reply)
The unique vibrance of English was that like the people who speak it, at least until recent decades, it wasn't under the thumb of the State or "elite" as other languages, such as French, are. What some call weird is really just individualistic.
#2 JK Brown on 2015-11-26 10:00 (Reply)
"The unique vibrance of English was that like the people who speak it, at least until recent decades, it wasn't under the thumb of the State or 'elite' as other languages, such as French, are. What some call weird is really just individualistic."

Patently false.

Language discrimination - judging someone solely by their accent, dialect and grammar - is just as common in English as it is in French or any other language.

And English is no more "individualistic" either, whatever that's supposed to mean.
#2.1 JJM on 2015-11-26 16:20 (Reply)
We try to save the planet because until we get large enough and round enough to hold our own atmospheres, we need the planet. And I know, many are we along in their quest to achieve atmosphere, but I caution against such hubris. Your head will be cold, your feet will be frozen and will that be a hurricane in your pants or are you just glad to see me?
#3 JK Brown on 2015-11-26 10:28 (Reply)
After pretty extensive travel, I have concluded that it is easy to speak English badly and still be sort of understood (think offshore call centers or taxi drivers Abroad), but really hard to speak English well, even as a native speaker. Perhaps this is why we so admire non-native speakers whose spoken English is so polished - I still remember hearing the late German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt address an audience in London, and being amazed at the perfection of his spoken English.
#4 David Graeme on 2015-11-26 12:38 (Reply)
"I have concluded that it is easy to speak English badly and still be sort of understood [...] but really hard to speak English well, even as a native speaker."

Depends on what you mean by well.

Incidentally, it's really hard to speak German "well" too, even for a native speaker.

The excellence of Schmidt's English boils down to a combination of hard work, lots of practice and above average intelligence. Also, as is so often the case, the global importance of English as a lingua franca makes it a career imperative to master for the ambitious.

By contrast, English speakers are generally not motivated to learn another language with quite the same application. Why bother? Everybody speaks English anyway. Right?
#4.1 JJM on 2015-11-26 16:41 (Reply)
It's purt difficult to be a good English speaker. Droppin' gs from the end of ing words, slurring, eliding, and drawlin' Southern don't help nary a bit. I am mea culpa on all accounts. I am and sound like a hick yokel. No matter how I try I cannot get better.

That is what is so nice about the written word--one can almost seem of average intelligence if they are just able to put one perfectly spelled word after another into the proper arrangement. It can be learned or it can be a gift. Jack London said that.

On no account is English easy. I do not speak another language but of all the lilts, accents and burrs that I have heard I do not believe there is a tongue that compares.

Alliteration and onomatopoeia could not sound so sweet uttered gruffly or grunted gingerly in a language with too many vowels.

English is nuanced, shaded to taste. I like it.
#5 tennesseered on 2015-11-26 20:09 (Reply)

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