ultra gaelic

Since I can’t get enough of the Economist’s brilliant Christmas issue, let me share two more articles with you:

• “The others” – on being foreign, living abroad by choice, living in exile, and self-deception
• “A Ponzi scheme that works” –all the reasons why the Economist loves America in one article … in case you needed reminding

Oh, I wrote to the editor about the confusion over types of verb aspect and actually got a response. Turns out I interpreted what “it” referred to in one sentence differently from what the author intended, so I retract my complaint.

I’m way behind on work and a conference proposal (though procrastinating on it), so it’s going to take me longer to write about Morocco. In the meantime, I’ll include beautiful photos of the desert like this one:

(That’s not me on the sand dune. It’s one of our Berber cameleers.)

I managed to sort through my Morocco photos, but I need some more time to write narrative. I’m also waiting for my traveling companions to post photos they took so I can supplement my meager collection of 82 photos (not all of which will be described in the narrative, rest assured).

In the meantime, here’s a shot of me on a camel:

I’ve recently come across a few articles dealing with the ways Americans and Britons use language that have solidified some things I’ve been thinking about:

• “My American Friends” from the New York Times Sunday Book Review is spot on and even touches on that which distinguishes Americans (and often Canadians) from most Europeans: namely, chattiness with strangers in social and customer service situations. That and clothing that’s not black.
• “Hi there” from the Economist a history of the loss of formality in contemporary language and argues that this decreases our ability to express intimacy. Lots of food for thought here. Especially interesting to read the claim that Britons are more informal than Americans in their use of languageuse of first names was a British innovation, not an American one as I assumed. I have to say that while they cite as an example Gordon Brown referring to Obama as “Barack”, I think this can be entirely blamed on George W. Bush’s habit of referring to foreign leaders by their first name. He made it look normal for eight years, so why would Brown act otherwise? I also have to say that I had never realized that use of “sir” to address a stranger was an Americanism. I used to think contemporary Russian was deficient in not having a word for addressing a stranger (compared with French or American English), but now I see that Britons also suffer from this!

While I’m sharing articles, here’s another from the Economist: a fun, short introduction to linguistics (a faster read than the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, which belongs on every coffee table). The Economist confuses different types of verb aspect (perfective/imperfective versus progressive/nonprogressive), but I’ll forgive them.

My coworkers—and, it seemed, most of Dublin—disappeared as Christmas approached, so I found the bus ride to the airport on Christmas Eve, and the airport itself, to be incredibly quiet. I had some extra time, so I checked out the bookstore, where all the top sellers were about the financial crisis in Ireland—how bankers and politicians conspired to rip off the little man.
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I finished packing for my trip a few hours early, so I’ve got a bit of time to share some more photos with you.
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Now that you’ve been through a few volumes of my textbook on learning to speak English, let’s do a review exercise. Please translate the following:

(If you have trouble reading the print in the image, try viewing the image by itself in your web browser.)

Apparently the sheep, cattle, foxes, and even the haws (new vocabulary word!) portend a white Christmas this year. Weather permitting, I’m off to London late on Christmas Eve to stay in a hostel for three nights before heading off to Morocco for a holiday (as they say around here), where the weather should be much sunnier and warmer than here in Dublin.

Should be back to Dublin late on Sun., Jan. 3, but my connection in London involves switching airports and airlines (all to save a few bucks!), so it’s possible I won’t make my connection and will need to stay the night in London. For those I don’t speak to before leaving, merry Christmas and happy New Year!

If my packing goes well on Thursday, I’ll snap some daytime photos of the apartment for sharing before I leave.

In the meantime, a few shots of Dublin that I’ve snapped this month.

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The hunt for a place to live is over. I’ve decided on sharing a Georgian townhouse on a quiet cul-de-sac in a prime location with two grad students (“postgraduates” here) at Trinity College Dublin. One is an M.Phil. student in Irish writing (formerly called “Anglo-Irish literature”) and the other is a Ph.D. student in computer science. Clarissa, studying literature, is from the US and brought her dog with her as well. He’s a bit old, so he mostly sleeps and rarely barks. The other, Brian, is quite reserved. Scottish, I think, but I didn’t get much out of him. Said he did some Semantic Web stuff and worked with “Dublin Core and all that crap.” Perhaps if I drop the name of a certain markup languages specialist in Edinburgh he’ll warm up to me.

The house has a working fireplace (for those chilly nights in Dublin) and a sleep sofa for visitors. (I’m told that the mattress is best used on the floor, though.) As is standard in Ireland, the hot water heater is on a timer so you have hot water for your morning shower. (No guarantee for the middle of the afternoon.) No television but a daily subscription to The Guardian and the corresponding Sunday subscription to The Observer. There was a large amount of fresh kale on the counter when I visited, and Clarissa gave tips on the good farmer’s markets. I think I’ll do just fine there. I move in on Thursday!

I stole the three photos from the housing ad:

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