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2004-07-23 15:14
Sometimes I live in the country,
sometimes I live in Town
Sometimes I take a great notion
to jump in the river & drown
Queen
Victoria, Abraham Lincoln, Florence Nightingale and other characters
from history may soon be able to speak again, as scientists
perfect techniques to recover the sound from recordings that are far
too delicate to be played.
I love Irene God knows I do,
I'll love her til the seas run dry
And if Irene turns her back on me,
I'd take morphine and die
The dulcet tones of movers and shakers from an earlier age could soon
be heard once again, thanks to scientists Vitaliy Fadeyev and Carl
Haber, who usually work with subatomic particles at the Lawrence
Berkeley National Lab. They are now planning to use that technology to
give a voice to the great and the good down the annals of history.
You cause me to weep,
you cause me to mourne,
you cause me to leave my home
But the very last word I heard you say
was "Please sing me one more song"
"I think it's hard to quantify," [says Vitaliy Fadeyev] "but it's
certainly a great cultural and emotional imprint. The very first
sample that we reconstructed was the Goodnight Irene song. It's
thought of as a lullaby these days, but if you listen to the lyrics
it's about adultery, murder and some other things. That immediately
gives you the feeling for the cultural change between the 1930s, 40s,
50s, and these days."
It does? Compare and contrast Leadbelly's biography and works with
some gangsta rappers, and wash it down with Greil Marcus's account of
the influence of the Staggerlee
mythology on African-American musique, and decide for yourself, Varied
Reader. Meanwhile, follow the bouncing ball:
Irene, goodnight
Good night, Irene, goodnight
Good night, Irene,
Good night, Irene,
I'll see you in my dreams
-- "Good Night, Irene", Huddie Ledbetter AKA Leadbelly (-- 1949)
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2004-07-23 samwidge (utc+1)
(We wouldn't normally cover his Kronprinsfredness, for sure, but this
is a trashbladet story really.)
Danish trashbladet Se og H�r - the Danish weekly
TV-listnings magazine with by far the most fotos of disclothed wimmins
- has allegedly gone
too far with its sneakily taken fotos of Knudella and especially
her beloved Kronprinsfred, even including a shot of him taking a
leak against a hedge.
Billeder, som ikke engang en af de v�rste sladderaviser i Europa
ville bringe.
�Den slags billeder, du n�vner, ville jeg da gerne se, men vi ville
aldrig bringe dem,� lyder det fra engelske The Mirrors billedredakt�r
Glenn Bennett.
Pictures which not even one of the worst trashbladets in Europe would
publish.
"I'd be glad to see the sort of picture you're talking about, but we
would never publish them," says Glenn Bennet, picture editor of the
English paper The Mirror.
The Mirror? It doesn't count unless you ask The News of the
World, I should say. The Swedish royals borrowed Caroline of
Monaco's lawyer and successfully beat the German trashbladets into
submission - Kronprinsfred would do well to follow their example, I
should think. Even prinses (although not generally very interesting)
have rights in gloriously egalitarian Yoorp!
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2004-07-23 morning (utc+1)
�1. Two (2) excellent posts in sci.lang from Torsten Paulin, a Danish and
a Danishiste:
- consonant
behaviours (which are many and varied).
- vowel
quadrilateral (you need a uniformly-spaced font for the ASCII art).
�2. One Swedish word for 'vocabulary' is ordf�rr�d which
obviously decomposes in ord 'word' and f�rr�d, which
must be a something one can do with words to make a vocabulary. (Not
looking things up is the point of this remark, so I haven't.) Last
night I came across begreppsf�rr�d, doing the same thing with
begrepp 'idea' or 'concept', obviously meaning 'stock of
concepts'.
Marvellous. Silly Englishes often wax lyrical about the lexical
profusion of their tongue, on the grounds that the language has this
property and they speak the language and it must therefore be a very
excellent property for a language to have, but there is a charm to the
way 'Wegian stakes out a semantic space (and one which is of course in
no way inferior) by resourceful modular recombinations of a less
profligate collection of roots. (This isn't 'better' either. There
is no 'better'. Please return to your various segregated
ghettoes.)
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2004-07-22 post-samwidge (utc+1)
�1. What's that you cry, Ulf Ulfsson of the Swedish Met Office?
"This time, for sure"?:
�ntligen - nu �r varmare och soligare v�der p� v�g.
Finally - now warmer and sunnier weather is on the way.
�2. Time-travel twist
Polishing off the last 150+ pages of Kalle Anka Pocket Special
last night, I came across a story with a time machine, as you do. But
they sent a timer bomb with N hours on the clock M
million years back into the past, and then had N hours to go
back and dispose of it "before" it exploded.
My brain hurts now.
�3. �lkrig!
Are there two more beautiful words in any language than "�l" and
"price-war"? Certainly not in Danish:
Danske billigbutikker har g�tt til krig og i l�pet av kort tid har
prisen p� en �l-flaske falt til 1,50 danske kroner, 1,70 norske
kroner.
Danish cut-price shops have gone to war and in the course of a short
time the price of an �l-bottle has fallen to 1.50 Danish kroner, 1.7
Norwegish kroner.
(That's not technically Danish, except for most of the words.)
�4. Cricket
It's back!
�5. Harrumph!
The weather here is humid, but the rain can't do better than drizzle.
I woke up this morning and though "Ugh, not light, sleepy-byes again
till dawn" and then it was 0830 and still gloomy and I was late.
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2004-07-22 fika (utc+1)
We like prinsessor! Everyone likes prinsessor they're great! But
prinsessor need their own space
too and it
is not OK to sneak up on them or hug them or squeeze them or,
especially, call them George.
To ukjente menn skal ha trengt seg inn p� den svenske kongefamiliens
eiendom p� �land mens hele familien l� og sov.
Two (2) unknown men snucked in to the Swedish royal family's estate on
Beerduck while the whole family was asleep.
Bad unknown men! No uppsneaknings! Just enjoy nice prinsess
gossip in the 'bladets and then take your nice pills and go sleepy
byes. The little red ones are vair vair nice, thank you Nurse.
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2004-07-22 10:31
What happens when you provide spirit-based soap for a music festival in
Sweden?
Yes:
A 14-year-old girl was briefly hospitalized with a minor a stomach
ache after she put too much soap into a carbonated beverage during the
Baltic Sea Music Festival in Karlshamn, a town that once was the
center for Sweden's liquor production.
We prefer, as always, Aftobladet's version:
Men en 14-�rig flicka f�rdes i fredags kv�ll till sjukhus med akut
alkoholf�rgiftning sedan hon druckit en blandning av tv�l och Red
Bull.
But a 14-year-old girl was taken to hospital on Friday with acute
alcohol poisoning after drinking a mixture of soap and Red Bull.
Kids today with their Red Bull and their soap!
[Link via Anne, tack]
[Permalink]
2004-07-21 16:39
Not a chance! Aftonbladet explains:
Svenskarna vill k�pa kall �l p� Systembolaget.
Men det g�r inte.
-Vi f�r inte favorisera vissa varor och eftersom vi inte kan kyla
alla, kyler vi inga, s�ger �sa Nilsson p� Systembolaget.
Swedishes wish to buy cold �l at Systembolaget.
But they can't.
"We can't show favouritisme to certain goods, and since we can't chill
them all, we don't chill any," says �sa Nilsson of Systembolaget.
'Wegian �l semiotics is not a small subject and nor is it a simple
one, but (in summary) in Sweden anything stronger than 3.5% can only
be sold by Systembolaget, the state-run alcohol monopoly. A
side-effect of this is that Swedishes pretty much assume 3.5% beers
aren't worth drinking, because otherwise they'd be restricted,
wouldn't they? (Danishes have no such restriction, and therefore no
such attitude. It is a world of craziness, for sure.)
But imagine going for a picnic with �l that is either (a) weak enough
for general sale or (b) not pre-chilled! This dilemma - unspeakably
terrible to the Swedish mind - is nonetheless one they must routinely
confront!
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2004-07-21 samwidge (utc+1)
A listning, hoorah! To make it more interesting, let's make it
a list of things I purchased in Scandewegia which would be suitable
for storing on my many bookshelves, if there were any space left on
them, which is far from the case:
- Jumbobog, the Danish Donald Duck ("Anders And") comic in
paperback size, vols. 283 ("Vikingefejden") and 285 ("Anders den
Glatte"). The Duckiverse is arguably underappreciated in Anglophone
comics fandom, but more to the point it is a very handy bootstrap for
the langwidge learner. (I have also some Italian ones, waiting for the
glorious day. )
- Kalle Ankas Pocket Special - Kalle Anka is Donald Duck in
Swedish, and this is the 70th anniversary special, hoorah! I can read
these without a dictionary now, although that involves a degree of
bluffing.
- Kierkegaard, Kjerlighetens gjerninger and Frygt og
b�ven ("Fear and trembling").
- Signalkanonen and En arktiskt safari, J�rn Riel.
Heartwarming collections of tall stories from a Greenlandic hunting
station (I think). Cheap Danish paperbacks not involving serial
killers are hard to come by, so I wasn't especially spoiled for
choice.
- Bellmans b�sta, G�ran Rygert (Ed.). 18th century hymns to
Bacchanalian excess, with melodies swiped from any- and everywhere.
Good stuff, and should be better known by silly Englishes.
- Evert Taubes b�sta G�ran Rygert and Ingmar Hauge (Eds.).
The great Swedish troubadoob of the 20th century. "�nglemarken" and
"Brevet fr�n lillan", winners both, are here, and lots more.
- Ukulele skol Thomas Allender. Hoorah!
- Tio tankar om tid ("Ten thoughts on time"), Bodil J�nsson
- Id�ernas Historia: en �versikt, Sten H�gn�s. History of
ideas is a big growth industry in the 'Wegia, and I strongly approve
of that. (And if there's any leftover funding gravy looking for a good home..?)
- Latin: Kulturen, historien, spr�ket, Tore Jansson. Very
much in that order, and gives due weight to the post-Roman era of
scholarly Latin. I think I may be by way of aquiring a taste for the original Scholastique tradition.
- Skapelsens geografi ("The geography of creation"), Dick
Harrison. Sweden's celebrity medieval historian considers way space
was conceptualised in the middle ages. Those crazy Swedishes just can't get
enough of his stuff - he's had a couple of other hits besides this.
Swedish "Pocket" paperbacks are great, though but. They are all the
same format and bundled into standard classes A through F, and shops
price them by class rather than by book, and there are specialiste
pocket bookshops all over the place, and the most expensive
ones are maybe 5 UKP, which is pretty cheap. The downside is that
everything not in pocket is outrageously expensive. But that's
also true of Denmark, which appears to have no corresponding system to
funnel persons to the bargains and vice versa.
[Permalink]
2004-07-21 morning (utc+1)
From the 1963 Fodor Guide to Scandinavia's "Prelude to
Denmark":
One final point. Instead of using blankets and top sheets, you will
find that the Danish sleep under a bag of feathers enveloped in a
sheeting bag. This permits no adjustment during the occasional heat
waves, and you will either swelter or make do without bed clothes.
Moreover the bag of feathers doesn't tuck in at the bottom, probably
because being tucked in gives the Danes claustrophobia. Again you are
confronted with a choice between cold shoulders and cold feet. If you
get desperate, you can remove the outer case and use it as a top sheet
and the bedspread as a blanket. After a few days, however, you will
love this bag of feathers (eiderdowns [sic]) so much that you will buy
one and take it home with you!
(There is a joke, which I had assumed dated from the very dawn of
time itself:
Q: How do you get down from an elephant?
A: You don't, you get down from a duck!
Was this really not in circulation by 1963?)
[Permalink]
2004-07-20 15:40
The Gads pocket engesk-dansk/dansk-engelsk (and note that the latter
is conspicuously not "Danish-English", the relevance of which will be
apparent shortly) is the pocket english-danish dictionary by
appointment to yami, and this is
not only good enough for us, it is as good as it gets. However:
Orbogen er skrevet for danskere, men da det stik imod vore
forventninger har vist sig, at ogs� unl�ndinge bruger den i vid
udstr�kning, har vi forsynet de danske substantiver med afgivelse af
k�n.
The dictionary is written for Danishes, but since, completely against our
expectations, it has turned out also to be widely used by foreigners,
we have provided information about gender for Danish nouns.
The "And that's all you're getting, Silly English, so stop whining
about the lack of Danish pronunciations!" is silent. Danish suffers
from terrible elisions, you know.
We note further that
1. udgave cva udgivit i samarbejde med William Collins & Sons
Ltd., Glasgow, Scotland.
The first edition was edished in collaboration with William Collins
& Sons Ltd., Glasgow, Scotland.
Which explains why it is Collins' celebrated "Gem" size, if not how
they got away with the "no one wants to speak little old Danish
anyway, and we wouldn't tell them how if they did" routine. The
Norsteds engelska-svenska fickordbok also used to be a Collins'
Gem and also isn't anymore (and also doesn't give pronunciation tips
for Foreign).
Next time, Varied Reader, that you hear someone object to, complain
about or utter reproaches concerning the unwillingness of the silly
Engleesh to speak Foreign, you might wish to bear this sort of thing -
which is by no means out of the ordinary - in mind. (I don't claim
any profound causal precedence for this factoid, of course - not least
because I have reservations about causality - but I've got the moral
high ground back, and that's the main thing.)
[Permalink]
2004-07-20 fika (utc+1)
Bellman var en utm�rkt s�ngare som f�redrog sina visor till eget
ackompanjemang p� cister (flatbottnat lutinstrument i olika storlekar
- den cister Bellman spelade p� var i gitarrstorlek) eller citrinchen
(klockbottnat str�nginstrument, importerat fr�n Holland, av
mandolinstorlek).
Bellman was an outstanding singer who performed his songs to his own
accompaniment on a cister (a flatbottomed lute-like instrument in
different sizes - the cister Bellman played was guitar size) or
citrinchen (a klockbottomed stringed instrument, imported from
Holland, of mandolin size).
Bellmans b�ster, being an anthologi
Mandolin size? You mean ukulele
size, isn't it?
The Bellmans b�sta chord-names-only arrangement of "Solen glimmar blank
och trind" ("The sun is shining bright and round") lies very
nicely under the fingers of a ukulele beginner, for sure.
Solen glimmar blank och trind,
Vattnet likt en spegel;
Sm�ningom upbl�ser vind
I de fallna segel;
Vimpeln str�cks, och med en �r
Olle p� en H�b�t st�r;
Kerstin ur Kajutan g�r,
Skjuter l�s och regel.
The sun is shining round and bright
Water like a looking-glass
Bye and bye the wind gets up
In the fallen canvas
The pennant flies and Olle stands
On a hayboat, oar in hand
Kerstin leaves the cabin and
Shoots the doors' bright bolt of brass
(So I cheated a bit. Silly Engleesh hasn't the rhymes, you know.)
[Permalink]
2004-07-20 morning (utc+1)
I copied the use of "English" as a verb, meaning "to reply in English
to someone attempting to speak Foreign" from
Diana
ben Aaron:
[...] Which actually maps to my experiences of being Englished in
Finland, even when I know I've got the Finnish words spot on.
One of the Google dictionaries gives "English tr.v. Eng�lished,
Eng�lish�ing, Eng�lish�es (1) To translate into English. (2) To adapt
into English; Anglicize.", but that's to English something,
not someone ,which is quite different.
[Permalink]
2004-07-19 17:42
�1. David is not only
an exceptionally gracious host and guide, he has produced
also an upwritning of our excursicity in Shoppningharbour, hoorah!
�2. An also terrific Birgitte, whose fake
Swedish sets a bar that our Swedish cannot reach, let alone our
non-existent Danish wonders
about Swedish (orthographic) k, which has a "soft" form
(roughly [�]) before the soft vowels i, e, y and � and a
"hard" form before the phonologically back vowels a, u, o, �.
But pretty much the same thing happens with Frenchy-French and Italian
c or g in their standard orthographies, which we assert
(without checking) arise from comparable sound-shifts which are
reflected in an orthography which historical developments have made
morphophonemic rather than truly phonemic. (The key word is
"palatalisation", if anyone wants to check.)
This must surely, also, be a very rare specimen of a Danish claiming
the moral high ground on questions of orthography and the
pronunciation of consonants.
�3. John Holbo - who is a bit like a philosophe, only
Anglophone - has a post about
comics sort of presumably in his series on fiction and
what-have-you. I'd like to see Alex
Golub get all L�vi-Straussian over there, for which I am by no
means an adequate substitute, but that's the InterWeb, is it not? (Update: The Golubsignal gleamed in the sky for but moments before the answer came, hoorah!)
[Permalink]
2004-07-19 14:19
I went to a library-flavoured section of the Kulturhuset in Stockholm
for a bit of a browse and was much taken with Kjeld Kristensen's
Dansk for svenskere ("Danish for Swedishes").
Having comprehensively failed to process spoken Danish at all, with
the distinguished exception of some words of the Easyjet recorded
on-board announcenings which were delivered in an exceptionally clear
amplified murmur, and the word sm�penge (?) ("change") from one
of Shoppningharbour's many beggars, and already knowing some Swedish,
I wish for just such a something.
Can I, you naturally ask or enquire, not procure such a something from
the many excellent Danish online boghandels ("bookshops")?
No, I bleeding well cannot, on account of none of them having it. It
would be easy to find an equivalent in their clearly-laid out and
browseable catalogues, of course, if it wasn't for the comprehensive
lack of clearly-laid out and browseable catalogues. (I'd settle for
badly laid out, by now, for sure.)
The way that online Danish bookshops differ from unbelievably bad is
precisely that it is very believable. Biscuits, you may be very sure,
will not be forthcoming.
And don't get me started on cheap editions of Kierkegaard. (I did get
some, after all. It's all defiantly unmodernised, so that all Nouns have
capitals and "�" is spelled "aa", but I can't read Danish anyway, so
who cares?)
Birgitte points out that I should have been looking in Swedish bookshops, and she is of course quite right, but the dismalness (dismality?) of the Danish catalogues remains.
[Permalink]
2004-07-19 ugh? (utc+1, h�las)
When you've been playing a ukulele all week, a full-size classical
guitar comes as a bit of a shock, I can tell you.
[Permalink]
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