A Told Number of Negations, Said with Strong Givings.

I ran across this on Ojo's Linguistic Fun Page. This is absolutely hilarious! I won't give away what it's about. Figure it out yourself.

How I Met My Wife

-Jack Winter/The New Yorker

It had been a rough day, so when I walked into the party I was very chalant, despite my efforts to appear gruntled and consolate.

I was furling my wieldy umbrella for the coat check when I saw her standing alone in a corner. She was a descript person, a woman in a state of total array. Her hair was kempt, her clothing shevelled, and she moved in a gainly way.

I wanted desperately to meet her, but I knew I'd have to make bones about it since I was travelling cognito. Beknownst to me, the hostess, whom I could see both hide and hair of, was very proper, so it would be skin off my nose if anything bad happened. And even though I had only swerving loyalty to her, my manners couldn't be peccable. Only toward and heard-of behavior would do.

Fortunately, the embarrassment that my maculate appearance might cause was evitable. There were two ways about it, but the chances that someone as flappable as I would be ept enough to become persona grata or a sung hero were slim. I was, after all, something to sneeze at, someone you could easily hold a candle to, someone who usually aroused bridled passion.

So I decided not to risk it. But then, all at once, for some apparent reason, she looked in my direction and smiled in a way that I could make heads or tails of.

I was plussed. It was concerting to see that she was communicado, and it nerved me that she was interested in a pareil like me, sight seen. Normally, I had a domitable spirit, but, being corrigible, I felt capacitated--as if this were something I was great shakes at--and forgot that I had succeeded in situations like this only a told number of times. So, after a terminable delay, I acted with mitigated gall and made my way through the ruly crowd with strong givings.

Nevertheless, since this was all new hat to me and I had no time to prepare a promptu speech, I was petuous. Wanting to make only called-for remarks, I started talking about the hors d'oeuvres, trying to abuse her of the notion that I was sipid, and perhaps even bunk a few myths about myself.

She responded well, and I was mayed that she considered me a savory character who was up to some good. She told me who she was. "What a perfect nomer," I said, advertently. The conversation become more and more choate, and we spoke at length to much avail. But I was defatigable, so I had to leave at a godly hour. I asked if she wanted to come with me. To my delight, she was committal. We left the party together and have been together ever since. I have given her my love, and she has requited it.

If for some reason you haven't figured out what the deal is (which may be due to density or an overly Carrolistic view of language), the "story"  uses nonstandard negations throughout the text. It would be interesting to make a list and find out how many of those words are technically correct, or even used to be used frequently and simply dropped out of usage. It seems hard to imagine that all (or even most) never had a positive form. Maybe I'll look into it sometime. Then I can chalantly slide a few into my conversations.

For Your Listening Pleasure I

I intend to start a little series titled "For Your Listening Pleasure" for your listening pleasure, in which I shall post some of the best songs Youtube has to offer (in my humble opinion, of course). I can guarantee you with 350% certainty that no rap or hip-hop songs will ever appear under that heading. This is the first video of the series.

(Now I can't hear this song below without thinking of Jamie Hyneman from the Mythbusters.)

The Bonny Ship The Diamond by The Connemara Stone Company

Hearing this song, you can get the ghost of a feeling of what it must have been like to be those hard, weatherworn fishermen...you can feel their awe and terror of the mighty seas they travel. This song (but not quite this version)  more than any other has given me a genuine understanding and appreciation for those men who "sailed the ocean wide, where the sun she never sets, me lads, nor darkness dims the skys..." Unless, of course, it storms, but who lives to tell of that?

The Mystery of the Magical Forearm Lines

Maybe you can help me solve it.

Sometimes you find or think of something very interesting - something you would like to know more about. You search and search and ask and ask...but no one seems to have the answer. There's only one thing you can do...find the answer for yourself.

The other day my cousin pointed out to me a little horizontal line about an inch or two above her elbow crease. It was faint, and looked kind of like a scar or wrinkle. She told me that only the girls in our family have it. I looked and discovered (to my intense confusion) that I had them too, on both of my arms. We did a little survey and it appeared that while most of the girls (except one) seemed to have them on one or both arms, the boys didn't - except one, but his were very faint. Another thing we noticed was that the lines appeared to be more prominent on the left arm, excepting two cases (there were about nine "test subjects" in all). It seemed highly improbable that this was something peculiar to our family, so we decided to do some research.

While searching the internet, we found nearly nothing about this mysterious "crease". However, we did run across a few things. There were only two articles we found that mentioned this "crease" at all. What we found was that some people think that this line is found in people of Han Chinese descent. This was perplexing, because our family has absolutely no Asian ancestry AT ALL. However one site has a whole forum discussing this. It appears that people of Scandinavian or Celtic blood may have these as well. My mother's side is Irish and Scandinavian, and most of her family have them. Other people say that they're just wrinkles, stretch marks, caused by the sun etc. I suppose it may be something like this, but if they are genetic (and specific to a few specific races) that would be a really interesting thing to know. I'm dreadfully sorry that I couldn't come up with any picture.

So maybe you can help me get a bit closer to the answer to this Riddle of the Line.
Here are some things to think about:

1. Do you have these lines?
2. Do you have them on one or both forearms?
3. Which side of your elbow crease are they on (above or below)?
4. Do you have "doubles" (my little sister has one above and below her elbow crease on both arms)
5. How faint are they?
6. Are they more prominent on one arm?
7. What is your ancestry?

I encourage you to report your findings to the Comment Box.

What Middle-Earth Race Do You Most Resemble?

Yes, I am a Tolkien Nut (Ringer, is the correct term, I think), and yes, I am a teenage girl. And yes, I know plenty of people such as myself who are interested in the answer to the question in the heading. And NO, people are NOT generally good at making in-depth, unbiased online quizzes. I got tired of searching fruitlessly and decided to make one myself. With the help of my dwarvish brother, I have hopefully somewhat succeeded in creating a quiz that searches your true personality and is not incredibly silly and predictable (ie. Q. Are you short and have hairy feet?). And no, Orcs, Cave-trolls, Nazgûls and Emancipated Hobbits are not options. Neither are Wizards. Sorry.

And, please,

1. Don't be offended if you disagree with what you get - I tried to make it as accurate as possible based on my own knowledge and suppositions. And I'm sorry if the questions are silly.
2. The more honest you are, the better.
3. This quiz does not really take physicality into account.
4. Do not be put off that my user name is I am Cow. There is a story behind this.
5. COMMENT!!! It's been up there for ages and I only have 2 comments!!! This makes me distraught. Comments make me happy. In fact, while you're at it, comment here, on this blog. So far I have no comments and am very sad.

Here are my results. Fairly accurate, I think.

Which Middle-Earth Race do you Most Resemble? Your Result: Elves   You most resemble the Elves, the first-born children of Arda. Elves tend to be mysterious and thoughtful, wise and skilled. They are extremely curious (which may lead to trouble) and excel in music, poetry, and song. The Elves were the favored race of Tolkien, and therefore are a beautiful race. However, they may be seen as unconcerned with the troubles of other races, and can be easily seduced by power.
Ents
Hobbits
Men
Dwarves

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Ye Olde Thorn

If you've ever been to a Renaissance Festival (or even if you haven't), chances are you've run across plenty of "Ye Olde fill in the blank"s. Generally Ye Olde Inne or Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe or something like that. Well, maybe I'm the only person on earth who didn't know this - and thought they were perhaps clumsily telling me that it was my coffee shoppe - but apparently Y used be the printer's adaptation of the thorn (þ). So, basically, "ye" is just "the". The Olde Inne. The Olde Coffee Shoppe. Well, that clears that up. Now I just have to figure out why the Disney logo has a big, deformed, backwards G where the D should be. Oh, and the Y is a P.


Yes, I am very stupid. I'm working on it.

The Flower of the Trees and The True Goths

Gothic is neat. Very cool and very strange. The language, I mean. If you look into it at all, it will make those ridiculous "goths" who wear all black and spikes and things seem very...silly. SO silly you may have to stifle extreme laughter while in their presence.

´Cause they just don´t know what they´re missin'.

Gothic is an extremely old East-Germanic language, and it looks like nothing you've ever seen before. I'm certainly no expert, so I'll let Alexander Arguelles tell you all about it. This guy is amazing. He has tons of Youtube videos (mostly of Germanic languages, but a few other things as well) that are extremely interesting and informative. Through him I've gotten a pretty fair appreciation of the so-called "harsh" and "unmelodic" Germanic languages. They aren't harsh - they're strong. And I wouldn't say unmelodic, I would say that they are, as Legolas Greenleaf said, "like to the land itself, rich and rolling in part, and else hard and stern as the mountains...laden with the sadness of Mortal Men" (Legolas was referring to Rohirric, which is more or less the same as Old English. As for the "sadness of Mortal Men" part...well, that's just an Elf's perspective).

Anyway, here's Dr. Arguelles:

After you've become intrigued by this tongue of tongues, you may be interested in this little-known poem by the Good Professor (Tolkien, that is). Being a philologist interested in these types of things, he went ahead and wrote an entire poem in Gothic. Yes, an ENTIRE, WELL WRITTEN POEM IN A COMPLETELY DEAD, KIND OF OBSCURE LANGUAGE WITHOUT THE INTERNET! That's what's so neat about philology. Many people may disagree with me on this point, but I think that even though it's great to be able to speak four or five different languages (polyglottery), it's even better to be able to simply read and write in (and perhaps speak a bit of) an untold number of languages (philology). That is, being able to delve deeply without devoting an entire life to just a few tongues. I guess I'm just fascinated by the fact that Tolkien was able to have a good enough grasp on the Gothic language to write poetry in it and no one ever really gives it a second thought. Nowadays it seems like it would take forever to be able to do something like that, even with our unlimited modern resourses.
Enough of that; here's the poem:

Bagme Bloma
Brunaim bairiþ bairka bogum
laubans liubans liudandei,
gilwagroni, glitmunjandei,
bagme bloma, blauandei,
fagrafahsa, liþulinþi,
fraujinondei fairguni,

Wopjand windos, wagjand lindos,
lutiþ limam laikandei;
slaihta, raihta, hweitarinda,
razda rodeiþ reirandei,
bandwa bairhta, runa goda,
þiuda meina þiuþjandei.

Andanahti milhmam neipiþ,
liuhteiþ liuhmam lauhmuni;
laubos liubai fliugand lausai,
tulgus, triggwa, standandei.
Bairka baza beidiþ blaika
fraujinondei fairguni.

The Bitter Scroll has come up with a pretty good  English translation, which I've given you below, but his notes on it are very interesting and worth checking out at his site.

The Flower of the Trees
On glorious branches, glittering and
Pale green as she grows,
The birch tree bears her lovely leaves,
The flower of flowering trees,
Fair of hair and lithe of limb,
The mistress of the mountain.

The winds now call, soft winds are stirring,
She lowers her limbs in play.
Sleek and straight and white of bark,
She utters a trembling tongue.
Great mystery, bright token is she,
A blessing on my people.

The twilit sky obscured by clouds
Is bright again with lightning.
And standing strong and faithful while
Her lovely leaves take flight,
The birch will wait there, bare and white,
Still mistress of the mountain.

Pretty neat, huh? More and more am I growing weary of rhyme and becoming fond of alliteration...

So I ask you, what's more Gothic?
                                                     This...

Or this?