Conversations

Takk = Thanks
Tak = Roof

That's tricky. Sometimes I have this conversation:

Cashier: Here is your bag.
Me: Roof.

I will try to use this in the United States.

My school tour guide called the teachers' mailboxes "pigeon holes."

Hoooow cute. We could learn a lot from the Norwegians.

Foreigners

Last night, I met a bunch of friendly foreigners. (Yes, I am a foreigner, too). They all spoke English. Every single one of them. Even before they knew I was American, they'd introduce themselves to me in English with their German, French, Pakistani, Spanish, or cadaver* accent.

Even foreign couples speak English to each other! Like, if a Russian girl is dating a French guy, they probably speak English to each other. All this English language makes me feel fortunate... and guilty for not being fluent in anything else. I did show off my German counting skills, though. I am brilliant when it comes to counting to twenty in German. Eins, zwei, drei, vier...

I was talking to a German guy about it and he said, "But we hear a lot in English, like music and movies. I can't imagine if everything I heard was in my language. Can you?"

"Yes," I answered, "because just about everything I hear is in English. Every song, pretty much every movie, every TV show...." (I finished this quote just so I could include the links.)

And surprisingly, he was a little surprised.

That English. What a language.

*If you haven't figured out what "cadaver" means because you have been living on the former-planet Pluto or something, one uses "cadaver" or "cadav" to mean "whatever" or "whatev", respectively. This word is all the rage with me and about two of my friends.

It's ok if you suck at language, and I will be there for you if you need to fill out a job application.

I rule at spelling. I am the ultimate spelling champion. It's a gift I value, and as a language arts teacher, it will come in handy.

But I will not be an uptight spelling monster. Here, Time magazine makes the argument I have been discussing all year in my future-teacher classes.

Yes, I'll get over you're misspellings.

Hahaha! That was a joke! I hate "your" and "you're" mix-ups. Those get me.

But the rest of the errors? Come on. We have more important issues to deal with. Like sunken discs. And sentence fragments.

Another joke. I rule at spelling AND humor.

The teacher does like it.

Philly Phil Phil brought my attention to this.

Did you know pants could be so funny?

Brits made another good thing.

My new disc golf disc is called The Kite. My second favorite coworker asked, "Kite like the bird, or kite like the kite?"

What? There is a kite bird? It makes sense, I guess, what with the picture of the bird on my disc, right above the word "KITE" inscribed in gold. (Fake gold, probably. But maybe not. I am drawn to fancy things.)

"Do you think the kite kite was named after the bird kite?" someone asked. "That'd make sense. Why don't we have an Oxford English Dictionary above the espresso machine?" someone else responded.

So, I came home, logged into my University of Washington account, found my way to the OED site, and looked it up.

Yes! Yes! The "hovering toy" was, in fact, named after the bird! It was first used around the year 1664! Other interesting things!

Words are the best.

Relating slang and satellite pieces

You know how when people get lots phone calls, they say, "I'm blowing up"? Well, if those people were in space, I'd hope there their cell phones were not literally blowing up. There is enough debris surrounding our planet.

That's all.

10 months sans furniture

I am moving in one month. Moving is not da bomb. Moving is more like da green zone. (You see how I exposed the weirdness of that "bomb" slang? Why would anyone want bombs? But I guess they do, so I will use it in the positive light that those silly teens do.)

Last week, I moved the winter coats. This week, I am moving books and DVDs. Next week, I am moving... well, not a lot. Maybe my booty, if I can convince some friends to go dancing. (Here, I used three different tenses of the root word "move." Not everyone can do that. Like, people who don't know English very well, that'd probably be hard for them.)

Anyway, I am getting rid of lots of crap cool stuff. Want any of this?
-My gray couch with lots of history and memories.
-My coffee table with some permanent marker stains that are easily covered up.
-My silvery bed futon, dreams and mattress included.
-All of my VHS's, including Star Wars and Tarzan and Big Bird in Japan.
-Some of my books, several them about being a good teacher.
-Tens of thousands of dollars of students loans that I would be happy to put in your name.
-Abraham Lincoln. Psych. Even though I am kind of mad at him for trying to tip over my Harry Potter glass RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME, I still think he's all right.

Roomie gets first dibs. Y'all get second. Strangers from Craigslist get third.

Today, I do not cheer for the Huskies.

I stumbled across this on UW's website: "The University of Washington is one of the nations outstanding universities."

Nations.

Oh my God.

You'd think one of the nation's outstanding universities could remember an apostrophe.

Apple makes me ask the hard questions.

You know how you can't start a sentence with a number in number form? Like, this sentence is wrong:

4,289 baby chickens followed me home.

Well, is it the same with Apple iStuff? Is this sentence wrong?

iTunes' Top Song list shocked me by bumping Flo Rida's "Low" out of the number one spot.

Because you can't begin a sentence with a lowercase letter, but writing "ITunes" is downright wrong. Do you just have to rearrange the sentence so that "iTunes" comes later?

Such profound questions, and all before 10 AM.

What happens in my bed, in my brain.

Last night, I fell asleep wondering whether it's "skeptic" or "sceptic." It's "skeptic."

More on language, Moron language

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year is "W00t." Note that the where there are usually o's (the letter), there are zeros.

1ame.

Merriam-Websters C00ler Past Words of the Year:
2006: Truthiness
2005: Integrity (ok, this is 1ame, too)
2004: Blog (holla!)
2003: Democracy

My prediction for 2008: KELLY JEAN WALDEN! (capitalization and exclamation mark included)

Maybe when I get tenure.

Language is my favorite. I'm excited to teach students to become Language Masters. (Our readings usually say, "Masters of language," but, at the suggestion of William Strunk, Jr., I eliminate words when I can.) (Parentheses don't count.) (In fact, nothing I write counts unless I say it does.)

It's too bad that our culture's best examples of language brilliance often occur in wildly offensive songs. Let's consider Luda's "Stand Up." The song boasts excellent examples of simile, metaphor, hyperbole, and pretttty clever rhymes. (Lots of rappers alter the normal pronunciation of words to flow together better, but Ludacris has the most fun with it.) Unfortunately, it also contains disgustingly sexist images and vocabulary I would never use with 14-year-olds.

Kanye West's "Crack Music," one of my all-time favorite songs, probably couldn't be played in a classroom, either. Some argue it's racist and paranoid (I don't know if I agree), but I think it provides plenty of interesting content to discuss. Plus, consider some of the most genius lyrics you've ever heard:

How we stop the black panthers?
Ronald Reagan cooked up an answer
You hear that?
What Gil Scott was hearing
When our heroes and heroines
Got hooked on heroin
Crack raised the murder rate in DC and Maryland
We invested in that
It's like we got Merrill-Lynched
And we been hanging from the same tree ever since

Too bad I won't discuss crack with 8th-graders. Anyway, I would feel uncomfortable sharing a song that I won't even sing along to because of the racial slurs.

At least I have Lauryn Hill, right? That is, unless I listen closer and find more of the same.

Someone, somewhere, please write and release some school-appropriate brilliance. Thank you.

Sometimes I get to the forefront of the language evolution without even trying.

Several words that are now part of my everyday vocabulary started as occasional mocking words. (These are not to be confused with mockingbirds.) For example, I once hated when people said "freaking" instead of the f-bomb, so I mocked them. "It's so freaking cold!" I would exclaim, laughing at the silliness of it.

Now, I use "freaking" all the time. It's so stupid. Here are some other words that have weaseled their way into my vocabulary:
-Babycakes (as in when the boyfriend calls and I answer, "Hey Babycakes!" and then I get embarrassed because my classmates are nearby and laugh at me)
-Deets (short for "details", recently adopted from Teen Beat magazine)
-Delish (short for "delicious", I am not sure where I got this)

And twenty minutes ago, as I was checking off items on the To-Do List I wrote for myself last night, I discovered...


-Fo'