Several people have asked me about good Catholic charities to send money to to help the victims of the tsunami.
I haven’t commented on this publicly because I try to do my best to research what the best, most effective charities are.
While I don’t have all the data I’d like, at present I’m recommending Catholic Relief Services.
FOX NEWS IS NOW ON THE AIR IN THE GREAT WHITE NORTH!
Now y’all can find out what all the hubbub is about. (If you can find the channel; apparently it’s being up way high up in the numbers in cable systems up there.)
ALSO, CHECK OUT THEIR WEB SITE.
Enjoy!
Highlights:
Highlights:
A reader writes:
I read an article that stated learning a second language in middle life is really good for the mind. I was thinking of trying either German (I work with a few from time to time) or Japanese (as I really like that place and their food). Any idea which would be easier? Also do you have a suggestion on something I could buy for my PC or listen to in the car that would help me learn more quickly? I am not really interested in being able to read or write the language at this point.
Any help is GREATLY appreciated!
I think I can be of help. I’ve had some experience studying both languages, so I can give you some info that might help you figure out which would be easier for you.
The main advantage of studying German is that it belongs to the same language family as English (English is a Germanic language), which means lots of common vocabulary words. Often, you’ll feel like you’re just saying a familiar English word with a funny accent. German word order is also similar to English word order (at least compared to some languages).
The disadvantage to German is that it has way more inflection in it than English does. Inflection is when words change their forms to encode grammatical information. English is a very low-inflecting language (even Spanish has more inflection than English does). There are only a few suffixes in English that encode grammatical information (e.g., -s, -‘s, -ing, -ed).
German has way more than English does. In fact, the noun system in German has cases, like Latin and Greek do. This means that every noun in every sentence will be changing form depending on the function it is playing in the sentence (e.g., is it the subject, the object, a possessive). Cases make learning the noun system of a language more difficult since we don’t have cases in English (except for our pronouns, which do change form based on case).
Now for Japanese:
The disadvantage to learning Japanese is that it is not from the same language family as English. (It’s a Japonic language, you may be stunned to learn.) This means that it will have very little vocabulary in common with English. Except for loanwords that we’ve swapped between the two languages, none of the roots will be the same.
What’s more, Japanese word order is very different from English. This is often thought to be the hardest thing to learn about the language (though I don’t think it’s that bad, myself, at least from what I’ve studied thus far). Here’s a concrete illustration of how the word order is different: They don’t have prepositions. They have postpositions.
Prepositions are tiny function particles that we put in front of words that show how they relate to each other. If I say "the king of Gondor," then the preposition "of," which follows "king" shows how the king is related to Gondor. We call them prepositions because we put them in front (pre-) of words.
Japanese, like some other languages, doesn’t put its function-executing particles in front of words. It puts them after (post-) them, so they’re called postpositions. For example, in the Japanese sentence "Nihongo ga wakarimas ka," the word "ga" is a postposition that, more or less, tells you that "Nihongo" (the word for "Japanese") is the subject of the sentence, which means (or can mean) "Do you understand Japanese?"
The advantage to learning Japanese is a big one: It’s got almost no inflection in it. This means very few word endings to memorize. Most words keep their form all the time, like in English, only moreso.
In some ways, Japanese grammar is even easier than English because it doesn’t encode all the information that English does in a sentence. It relies more on context to tell you things that you’d have to say expressly in English. For example, you often don’t have to do anything to a sentence to indicate what its subject is (e.g., are you talking about yourself or someone else). Context fills that in.
Overall, which language is easier? Hard to say. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. It depends on what you’re up for. Personally, I like learning languages that are as different from English as possible. At times I find the modern European languages a little . . . boring compared to Asian languages (though I plan to keep studying them). They’re not exotic enough for me. But if you make your own decision. Just remember: All your base are belong to us. You get signal?
Now, as to what study method to use, longtime readers already know what I’m going to say: Get Pimsleur. It’s an all-audio method that has no textbook and that gets you to speaking in conversational style immediately. You just drive around in your car and listen to the CDs, talking back to them. It makes learning languages incredibly easy and non-threatening.
The Pimsleur sets can be expensive (though discounts are available), though not compared to taking a course in the language, and they are far easier than typical courses. You might start with one of the tiny, introductory Pimsleur sets to see if you like a language before buying a big set. Some of the small "Quick & Simple" sets are so cheap (like $10-$20) that you can even get one for German and one for Japanese and see which you like better.
A reader writes:
Mr. Akin,Your post about coke-soda-pop usagebrought to mind a question I have about southern accents. A friend told me
that while visiting up north a sales clerk asked her what part of Tennessee
she was from. Connie was surprised by the question and asked the
clerk how she knew that she (Connie) was from Tennessee. The clerk replied
that only people from Tennessee say "dudn’t", as in "He dudn’t like any kind of
ice cream but vanilla".
As soon as Connie mentionedit I realized that I also say "dudn’t". However, I am skeptical
that it is only used in Tennessee. I’ve lived in Louisiana and
Oklahoma and no one ever commented on my use of "dudn’t" so that makes me
suspect it is fairly common, at least in the south. What do you
think?
The phenomenon you’re talking about is a common feature of Southern accents. It’s a feature of my own accent, as Fr. Vincent Serpa (Catholic Answers’ chaplain) pointed out to me. (Previously I had been unconscious of it.) Listen to the radio show sometime, and you’ll hear me using it.
What is going on here is that the /s/ and /z/ sounds (both sibilant or "hissing" sounds) are being dentalized (pronounced againt the teeth) in certain circumstances. Thus "wasn’t" > /wadn’t/, "isn’t" > /idn’t/, and "doesn’t" > /dudn’t/. ("Wasn’t" and "doesn’t" commonly uses /z/ in non-Southern speech, while "isn’t" commonly uses /s/.)
This shift isn’t surprising since the point of articulation for both sibilant and dental sounds is just behind the teeth.
The more interesting question is the circumstances in which this occurs. I don’t have enough data to tell for sure, but my guess is that it’s due (at least in part) to the /n/ sound that follows the /s/ or /z/ in the cited examples.
/n/ is a nasal sound (you may be stunned to learn), where the airflow is directed through the nose. If you’re gearing up to make a nasal sound like /n/, it might be a little harder to make a sibilant sound (where the airflow is directed through the mouth with the teeth in a particular configuration to allow us to hiss), and so a simplification of the situation might be to dentalize the sibilant in preparation for the nasal /n/.
Alternately, the speaker may be so focused on getting ready for the /n/ sound that what he is doing is omitting the sibilant, and the resulting pronunciation effort creates a de facto /d/ as he makes the transition.
Further research (or a professional linguist) could tell us for sure whether such conjectures are correct.
See, there’s this whole interesting world of pronunciation that occurs unconsciously to us most of the time, but linguists spend endless hours pulling apart transcriptions of what sounds people use when they speak and trying to figure out the arcane rules that we’re unconsciously obeying.
The study of these pronunciation schemes area is called "phonology," and each accent within a language is basically a different pronunciation scheme or set of rules that people unconsciously follow when pronouncing words. There’s even a different module in our brains that governs phonology (separate from the modules that govern grammar and meaning). If you’re learning a new accent, you’re building yourself an additional phonology module.
Kewl, huh!
A reader writes:
Mr. Akin,Your post about coke-soda-pop usage
brought to mind a question I have about southern accents. A friend told me
that while visiting up north a sales clerk asked her what part of Tennessee
she was from. Connie was surprised by the question and asked the
clerk how she knew that she (Connie) was from Tennessee. The clerk replied
that only people from Tennessee say "dudn’t", as in "He dudn’t like any kind of
ice cream but vanilla".As soon as Connie mentioned
it I realized that I also say "dudn’t". However, I am skeptical
that it is only used in Tennessee. I’ve lived in Louisiana and
Oklahoma and no one ever commented on my use of "dudn’t" so that makes me
suspect it is fairly common, at least in the south. What do you
think?
The phenomenon you’re talking about is a common feature of Southern accents. It’s a feature of my own accent, as Fr. Vincent Serpa (Catholic Answers’ chaplain) pointed out to me. (Previously I had been unconscious of it.) Listen to the radio show sometime, and you’ll hear me using it.
What is going on here is that the /s/ and /z/ sounds (both sibilant or "hissing" sounds) are being dentalized (pronounced againt the teeth) in certain circumstances. Thus "wasn’t" > /wadn’t/, "isn’t" > /idn’t/, and "doesn’t" > /dudn’t/. ("Wasn’t" and "doesn’t" commonly uses /z/ in non-Southern speech, while "isn’t" commonly uses /s/.)
This shift isn’t surprising since the point of articulation for both sibilant and dental sounds is just behind the teeth.
The more interesting question is the circumstances in which this occurs. I don’t have enough data to tell for sure, but my guess is that it’s due (at least in part) to the /n/ sound that follows the /s/ or /z/ in the cited examples.
/n/ is a nasal sound (you may be stunned to learn), where the airflow is directed through the nose. If you’re gearing up to make a nasal sound like /n/, it might be a little harder to make a sibilant sound (where the airflow is directed through the mouth with the teeth in a particular configuration to allow us to hiss), and so a simplification of the situation might be to dentalize the sibilant in preparation for the nasal /n/.
Alternately, the speaker may be so focused on getting ready for the /n/ sound that what he is doing is omitting the sibilant, and the resulting pronunciation effort creates a de facto /d/ as he makes the transition.
Further research (or a professional linguist) could tell us for sure whether such conjectures are correct.
See, there’s this whole interesting world of pronunciation that occurs unconsciously to us most of the time, but linguists spend endless hours pulling apart transcriptions of what sounds people use when they speak and trying to figure out the arcane rules that we’re unconsciously obeying.
The study of these pronunciation schemes area is called "phonology," and each accent within a language is basically a different pronunciation scheme or set of rules that people unconsciously follow when pronouncing words. There’s even a different module in our brains that governs phonology (separate from the modules that govern grammar and meaning). If you’re learning a new accent, you’re building yourself an additional phonology module.
Kewl, huh!
Karl, Jerry, and I did the honors.
Highlights:
UPDATE SINCE THE SHOW: I looked up the Latin for "through the same Christ Our Lord," and it’s "Per eundem Christum Dominum nostrum." The pronoun corresponding to "same" is thus eundem, which is the accusative masculine form of idem. I’m running into different authors classifying it differently as to whether it’s a reflexive or a demonstrative pronoun, though. There now, a little Latin embiggens the smallest prayer.
I recently bought the DVDs for the first season of My Favorite Martian, a 1960s sitcom that I have never seen but often heard about.
Just watched the opening sequence of the first episode and was laughing out loud in moments.
The first shot of the first scene of the first episode is of an alarm clock, which procedes to ring.
The single guy sleeping in the bed next to it (a very young Bill Bixby) shuts it off.
Then second alarm clock rings. To shut it off, he must get out of bed and walk over to a birdcage, which contains the sounding clock. He opens up the birdcage and shuts off the alarm.
He’s still so sleepy, though, that he is about to lay down in bed again when a third alarm clock sounds. To shut this one off he must leave his bedroom and go into the next room.
He seems invigorated by the trek, rubs his hair with his hands, and marches back into the bedroom to get dressed.
But sleepiness again overcomes him and he hits the bed.
Great visual comedy! And not a word of dialog in it!
Had to laugh because, not presently having a wife to poke me out of bed (unfortunately!), I happen to have three alarms set to wake me up in the morning. My cell phone goes off first. Then, fifteen minutes later, it goes off again. Then, almost immediately, my regular alarm clock sounds.
Guess human nature is now what it was in the 1960s.
Will let you know how the series turns out.