Where is the Unialphabet?

Recently I poked and prodded around the internet, Portland libraries, and even had my mother in California send me a book in the mail to get an example of Delfín Carbonell Bassett's "Unialphabet." 

Here is why: I think it's potentially brilliant. It's a simple gesture that could really change the mindset of students learning language.

Here is what it is, in theory: Instead of having and English/Spanish and Spanish/English division in bilingual dictionaries, put them all together in one alphabet, with some sort of key to distinguish which comes from which language. It breaks down the artificial wall, and lets the languages live in the same universe. It may lead to more 'Spanglish' writings, but it also stops kids from learning unconsciously that their language of reference can only be thought of one word at a time in the other language, one arrow going to Spanish, one arrow back to English. With the Unialphabet system, all the words are living in bunk beds next to each other, forced to recognize the others' presence AS WELL AS exponentially increasing the element of serendipity, finding words you weren't looking for, because now all the words are available all the time as the main words. It also can visually show someone "hey, English has a lot more words in the W section than Spanish, why is that?" pushing a student to think about the fundamentals of language earlier than the day some crazy word enthusiast, such as myself, pushes word facts down their throats without warning. 

Here is the problem: The book my mother sent me was a Dictionary of Proverbs, which was on the list of books which used the system on Wikipedia. I know Wikipedia is not the king of information, but by god I thought I could trust it just a little further than I could throw it. Anyway, the red and yellow cover, as you can see, clearly divides it into two sections. One thing it does do is explain English idioms in Spanish, and Spanish idioms in English. Ok, that's good, but WHY ARE THERE TWO ALPHABETS. UNI! ONE! WTF! I want to love this, I want to write to Erin McKean and tell her for the Dictionary Society of America I want to write a proposal that encourages bilingual dictionaries to be printed unialphabetically for American textbooks, and pocket dictionaries! BUT I DON'T HAVE A REAL EXAMPLE! 

In fact, the most true example of a unialphabet that I have access to is my very own "Mellifluous Verbosity," the list of all the words that make me happy.

So what now? Keep searching for my linguistic path, amuse myself with words, maybe email Mr. Señor Carbonell Bassett again, search for actual images of the Unialphabet in practice. Sigh. 

Aspiring paleoverbologist out.

I miss you too much, Wile E.

Wile E., the love of my life, has been put down after 12 dedicated years to the Hugheses. He had a very aggressive sarcoma that had invaded his brain and sinuses, making it very hard to breathe. His birthday was July 1st, 1996. I picked him out 9 weeks later, I taught him 'on your mark, get set, go,' how to earn dinner by waiting patiently, or, alternatively pouncing on his bowl, and to jump PVC hurdles. He would dig with enthusiasm but not with focus, when his toys were covered he would pounce on them like an arctic fox, and he was a very good soccer goalie. He always had kisses to give, and he was a vigilant shepard to his sheep. I will miss his crossed front paws, and his infinite patience with me when I would keep him in my room and he wanted to leave to check on the other sheep. He even let me paint his toenails once. I will miss him an incredible amount. The days I was home that he was at the emergency clinic, the house already felt empty without his chain jingling, sitting in main thoroughfares, and kicking his back leg out when he sat down. I miss you I miss you I miss you. Love you forever, Wile E. 

Wile E. Hughes 

July 1 1996 - October 14, 2008

Best Dog Ever

The Ways of Language: A Reader

Last week I got kicked in the pants by a linguistic celebrity. What happened was that at Andy’s 24th birthday party, 2 guys talking about their difficulty in finding suits their sizes were forced to talk to me by Andy. (I who was being forced to constantly drink more champagne.) I forced the conversation to linguistics as I do, and one of the smartly-dressed chaps suggested I email any famous important linguistics person I could think of in the world and ask for advice. Well I did, and I expected a surrogate response or a cokkie cutter statement but NO, Erin McKean the editor of the New Oxford American Dictionary and all-around good American lexicographer, WROTE BACK... TWICE. It was almost too much to take.
Anyhow she suggested that more than having a job in the industry or taking specific classes what I should really be doing is keeping up on Historical Linguistics literature. I almost jumped out the door to buy some big happy books when I realized I already have 8 that I’ve tried to start and then lost motivation for. “If you think it will be hard to motivate yourself to do the reading set yourself a public goal and blog your progress,” said the mighty lexicographer. And so I am.

I’m beginning with Raymond Pflug’s “The Ways of Language: A Reader” that my mother bought for me in New York. It’s small and green from 1967, a collection of essays on various topics, it’s the perfect place to start and I only chose it randomly by bothering my boyfriend into choosing a number between 1 and 8. good job boyfriend!


It’s a great review of things I’ve learned in beginning Linguistics, philosophy of linguistics, and history of english classes. There is one fabulously dated passage which reads:

Currently, dictionary men are wrestling with such terms as “exurbanite, “duopoly,” “musicology,” “medic,” “litterbug,” “hard-top,” “elasticize,” desegregation,” “egghead,” “tranquilizer,” and “paperback.” Are these words?

I love several things about this passage, the first being ‘dictionary men.’ Was women writing dictionaries not allowed or was it before the extreme sensitivity to pronouns was put in the front of so many minds? It’s so MadMen I adore it. Another thing is that when I read recent articles, or when Grant Barrett mentions a list of new slang words on A Way with Words and wonders which will endure and which will fall out of use, you get the feeling you know which will stick around, but with that list of 11 words, so many of them surviving slang status for 40 years, I just can’t say what’s coming next. And ‘tranquilizer’ is that young?

I'm happy for the kick in the pants. It's got me on the move. Updates as they come.

Bad Things and Life Plans

Things are not so bad. It's odd, actually. I make plans in my head all the time, and when I was home for graduation parties my brother said he does the same, and even if its for small stupid things it runs my day when it doesn't happen. Right before I graduated I said that it was the end of the world, the photo album of the last week of school was 'end of my life,' and I meant it. 

In 5th grade they made me create a life plan, imagining what I would do and where I would be. I said I was a paleontologist and found an important bone which linked something together with something unrelated and got an award. I threw the award in there, and I was thinking at the time that it was all so optimistic and that would probably never happen, it takes years of patience and different projects to get good at excavating, luck, timing, just generally not very likely to get an award.  In high school I said I would be a botanist in South America, looking for medicinal cures in exotic amazonian plants, again, finding success. But let's be honest here, they made me make those plans, they were not things I didn't even think mattered like, "i think i'll get a saint cupcake today, and if i don't i'll be pissy to no end even though that's a stupid plan." (thankfully i DID eat all the MF ING delicious little cupcakes I ate within 2 hours of purchase. 

What I'm saying is, I don't have a life plan, and it doesn't bother me because I didn't think I had one. I am being a little upper middle class princess about what a pain it has been to find housing and a job, but really, I didn't have a fantasy right-after-college plan so it's fine. I never thought I would go to Europe or cross the country, go home or anything. In fact, the plan has always been to mope around in Portland until I feel like it. So this is the plan. Huh. Anyway, I thought I would share other things that are in my life plan, because instead of having a career, I have very small goals that could happen anytime anywhere in my lifespan. (Which I still secretly believe/fear will end before I am 30, so you know.)

I want to live and work in England for more than 6 months, and have some friends there, at least 1, so I'm not all on my own.

I want to visit the pandas at the Wolong Panda Reserve in Chengdu, China. They all survived the earthquake and they are thinking of moving them somewhere else, but I'd like to go where ever they all end up.

I want to try out for Jeopardy when I am 25, 27, 28, or 29. I didn't do it in college, because in college they expect you to know everything, and that is too much pressure.

If I can, I want to help buy my mother's family's home in France, I think in Angouleme. It's not much of a house and it's apparently feet away from a highway, but it makes my mother happy so I want to help.

If I had a large mansion it would include: secret passageways (there is a real company that does this: hiddenpassageway.com!) an armillary sphere, a large library, billiards table, pinball machine, moon globe, spiral staircase, furnished attic, furnished basement, dumb waiter, moving sidewalk (no matter how short) bernese mountain dog puppy, fennec fox, a bridge in the backyard over some sort of creek or stream, typewriter, slurpee machine.

Maybe a hybrid car.

Maybe go to: Great Rift Valley, the Artic (for the polar bears), India, Germany, Sweden (for Anders), Egypt, Santa Croce in Florence (for Galileo), Inner Mongolia (for Genghis), St. Petersberg (for Mendeleev), Moscow (for Prokofiev)

People I would like to meet: Stephen Fry, Jason Schwartzman, Zach Condon, members of Dispatch, Will Shortz, David Mamet, Orson Scott Card, Sergio Aragones,  Billy Collins.

People I would like to see in concert I haven't seen: Jason Schwartzman (Coconut Records), Zach Condon, Dispatch, Danny Elfman, Jon Brion, Fiona Apple, Regina Spektor, Rufus Wainwright, Presidents of USA, Coldplay, Jason Mraz, Lily Allen, the Arcade Fire, Barenaked Ladies, Ben Kweller, Squirrel Nut Zipper, Radiohead, Panic at the Disco, Neutral Milk Hotel, Missy Elliott, Moldy Peaches, Juanes, Jill Sobule, Ima Robot, Harry and the Potters

Things aren't so bad, there's just so much that could be happening. GET OUT OF THE SHIRE. 

Review: Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull

This review contains spoilers, I guess. 

I LOVE The Last Crusade. It is one of the movies that you should not watch with me unless you love people saying lines right before they happen, and little "eeeee!!!" noises all through the hours. I am only annoying fangirl like that with Dead Poet's Society and State and Main, but nothing is as bad. Examples of little girl explosions:

"We're turning around, they're taking us back to Germany"

Vintage dirt bikes with sidecars!

World War II Tanks!

X marks the spot!

Nazis! (I have a theory all movies with Nazis are good, including Illinois Nazis)

"The penitent man shall pass."

(not) dying off the cliff.

The leap of faith.

I LOVE it, ok?

So I saw the new movie by myself, but my dad warned me on the phone right before I should look away when ants start crawling on people. (He loves me!)  My herpephobic  friend did not appreciate the snake/rope conundrum but I did find it amusing that Indy kept getting a snake in his face. 

Ok. Neutral things: I thought Shia said his name was Mud, not Mutt. I don't know why he was on a motorcycle out of the mist at the train station, but whatever. a lot of combing hair, was cute when he prepared to die that way. A little less swordplay than I was expecting, thought it would come in later, not so early. In the end, it didn't matter whether his friend was double or triple, he was greedy and in the end that's what got him, not being a traitor, so I wish it wasn't such a big deal when it doesn't affect anything except make him look more and less evil depending on the scene. Which again, doesn't matter. 

Weird unnecessary confusing bullshit: 

The skull itself reminded me of clear plastic 3-D puzzles that I have no tolerance from. It is magnetic, and natives and ants fear it. It is crystal but sturdy enough to be used to clobber someone over the head when in a bag. And all of this is answered with: alien technology.  As annoying as "mystery of God" answer.

Indy does not need to look deep in the eyes to understand his friend, he's BRILLIANT anyway, dammit. He understood the ancient riddle before, and realizing his friend needed paper didn't take an alien genius.

Groundhogs in the beginning. Why? It was awkward, it was not a metaphore for the chase and they were not endearing.

The line at the end. "Well, the word for gold translates as treasure. But their treasure wasn't gold, it was knowledge. Knowledge was their treasure." What a terrible redundant fretarded quote. Someone needs to hire me for copy editing, and fast.

The establishing shot for the cemetery. was. a. model. with. flashing. lights. It was so obvious, I could not believe it. I had to downgrade my standards to youtube quality effects because I can't believe that's what Hollywood allowed to go through to the final cut. MAN it looked like a tiny model. I would not have been surprised if someone's hand or food was in the shot, gigantic in proportion. Terrible terrible, no suspension of disbelief.

There were no hammer and sickles placed obviously around. Irina had one on the back of her jacket, but its only because I was looking the whole time that I found it.

Mind control is hawt, but Irina did not use it at all during the movie to any advantage. The skull did things, but she did NOT. booo false advertising. Also apparently knowledge sets you on fire. I would have rather that she learned everything and killed herself. Or they killed her because they realize she is evil. But not continually asking for knowledge and then combusting.

Whatever. It was ok. Lucas may live.

First Candidate for Worst Job Ever

Occupation: TSA employee who sits at security checkpoint exit making sure no one comes in that way. 

When I finally got to PDX after waiting 3 hours after missing my 6am flight from SJC, these are the thoughts that came to me when I walked past that guy.

1. This job sucks because he has no friends. He doesn't get to chat with fellow employees about their tired feet and their noisy neighbor and their plans for the weekend. You need at least one person there, like conquered territories in Axis and Allies, but you it's not a main area and you don't really need to worry about a big rush of people moving upstream wrong way past security. He's only there because it would be stupid to leave the "how about I keep my laptop in my bak and my jacket on my back and just walk past this empty stool." That guy is bored, his job is to look for something interestingly suspicious, but mostly just sits by himself quietly, not listening to music, not hearing gossip, not interacting socially at all. 

2. If he suddenly is useful, it is never for an exciting reason. I can't think of the last time the plan of the dangerous persons was to blatantly go the wrong way through a bureaucratic security checkpoint that requires you have 1. valid I.D. 2. valid ticket 3. no sharp or wet things. If that TSA man ever actively stops someone, its going to be an old person who is confused, a baby who is running aimlessly, or someone who wants to hug their loved one 5 steps sooner than the government would standardly prefer them to, someone trying to see their loved one around just a little more of the corner. what an everyday hero this man could be in his finest hour in this occupation.

3. What he does get to see, 90% of the time is people tired bored annoyed frumpy in a hurry preoccupied passing him from behind and the highlight of the job might become seeing other people reunited with their cousin/grandmother/son/college buddy/aunt but then, how many of those do you have to see to start thinking about who would come to greet you, who has, who hasn't in the past, who you would be willing to pick up, how lonely you are there with your walkie-talkie and stupid shapeless uniform pants with people noise all around for 8 hours a day. that is a hell made entirely from other people. Think about it the next time you watch the end of Love, Actually.

4. In broader terms, I feel like working at an airport has got to be the biggest depressing existential metaphore for anyone, working in a place where everyone is going places but you. You move the luggage for exotic places, sell souvenirs for your own town that you live in and don't think is so special, take tickets to places that require passport stamps without ever necessarily going to any of those destinations. Sure airline blah blah stewardesses and pilots go, but compared to the big pie chart of airport jobs, they are not actually there that much and do not make up the majority of jobs.

Anyway, I welcome further suggestions for bad (not gross) jobs. Jobs that will eventually destroy one's dignity, sense of self-worth, and/or hope in the kindness of humanity. I understand that the guy sitting at the security exit probably rotates into other jobs where he gets to pester and bore countless passengers, but any time in that seat is time wasted, no, time sucked out of one's lifesource, like the machine in Princess Bride. 

Suggested musical accompaniment for this post: TSA Gangstaz by Zack Selwyn. Warning: excessive boob grab/ wand up a skirt. 

Cinematic Lifestyles

So I walked with Bryan to the St. John's Theater to see The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and it was raining. I had made previous comments about how I felt we were in a movie, and I decided that the rain would make more sense if we were in a romantic comedy. That isn't possible, gender preference-wise, but it did make sense at the time. 

The movie was good, I had heard about it for months from NPR Movie podcasts, it sounded fascinating from the beginning. The sewn eye was something I immediately looked away from, but the scene where his father calls him and neither can visit the other is heartbreaking in a terrible wonderful way. The alphabet is repetitive, but I had been told for months that it was amazing, so I did love it. 

Anyway, tonight Em and I went downtown via MAX to have a pool party. We went to the Boiler Room and Blitz, briefly passing Hobo's which had pool tables but also seemed like a film set, fancy and piano music and smoky but not too smoky. It just didn't seem like the place for two alcohol-drinking multilingual seniors to be having a crazy little time in. Anyway, that was kind of odd. BUT THEN.

As we were waiting for the Yellow Line to return to NoPo, a person approached us. "no, i don't have money for you" said my normal downtown voice. He said "if you know how to get around, please help these two cowboys get home." What? They were dressed as cowboys, adorable little plaid shirts and genuine hats that didn't care the older one was standing right under a waterfall from an awning. They didn't understand the MAX, they live in Clackamas. They were here at the Colliseum for a Rodeo. The older one's brother had punched his friend here and left them, stranded them. They were really genuinely cowboy people, and I gave the older one a bus pass. The other had one already. It felt good, and was minimal social experience with maximum output. Also I have a lot of bus passes so life is good.

Em and I almost went out to our pool party with fake names: Starlight (her) and Moonbeam (me) from Fairbanks, Alaska. There because we watched Into the Wild last night. Like the father-son scene from Diving Bell, the beginning of Into the Wild made me almost cry constantly, because I knew how it all ended, having read the book in solitude in Maguey Largo, Mexico. As the end grew nearer, I was less and less on the verge of tears and more anxious for when and in what circumstances they would show it. I understand why they ended with his death, but most of the facts I remember were from truths outside of his journal, things not known until after like the poisonous qualities of the seeds, the first visit his parents take to the bus, the fact that there was a way to cross the river only a few miles away and only because he refused  a map did he die. ... spoiler alert? I have no remorse.

Anyway, it's not like my Hispanic Cinema class is blowing me away, and it's not my first exposure to knowing more about movies than what you see without knowing shots and angles and soundtrack and movement and light. It's curious but I like it. I hope there's a happy ending, and that I get a better writer to resolve everything gracefully in the conclusion.