livingdeb: (Default)
I just got to a horrible chapter in my shorthand textbook: the chapter where they tell you, with no apologies, that the same letter is used for long a, short a, and the ah sound. And the same letter is used for long e, short e and short i.

This means that not only are main and mane spelled the same, so is man. I'm guessing pin and pen are the same, just like in some southern accents. Each and itch are probably spelled the same.

That makes for easy writing, but what about reading? And it's shocking when I know that Gregg was all about phonetics and was even pushing to have our spelling system changed to be phonetic (just like other reasonable people try to get the US on the metric system). Well, when you yank out all the silent e's and whatnot, then it doesn't work so well having the same vowel stand for more than one sound.

It's probably going to be okay, though. After all, some languages have almost no vowels at all for grown-ups. (In Hebrew anyway, the consonants are big letters and the vowels are mostly little dots and dashes, mostly beneath the big letters, and these are used mostly only in kids' books.) Surely those languages have plenty of words that look the same without their vowels.
livingdeb: (Default)
Saturday we drove to a large suburb north of Dallas to visit a childhood friend of Robin's and her family. We stopped in West, Texas for kolaches, and the pickings were slim because this weekend was WestFest.

I learned that if you are having trouble remembering that your son is learning to play the bassoon, as opposed to, say, the oboe, just remember that it looks like a bazooka. (Bazooka and Bassoon sound similar.) Bassoons come apart into four pieces for putting away in their cases: the piece by the mouth, the piece at the other end, and the two side-by-side pieces in the middle. Yes, the bassoon is double-barreled. And it is totally dangerous looking, and this is why you, too, can barely resist wanting to own one.

I learned that the Target stores closest to this family were much bigger and better than our Target and they don't even have a name like SuperTarget or SuperDuperTarget or HolyMotherOfGodFantasyLandTarget, just Target. For example, my sister had been wishing that she could try out a sofa/footrest combo, but they didn't have any on display at our Target. Both their Targets had one on display. (These sofa/footrest combos are moderately comfortable, not fabulously comfortable.)

I also decided that if anyone is trying to figure out the best possible gift card to give me for a present, the answer is a Target gift card. This place is full of things that are cool but that I normally resist but that I wouldn't mind not resisting if I had a gift card, and those are the kinds of things that make perfect gifts, right?

There are such things as SuperTargets, but I think that just means they have food. So if Target P R people had named waiters, they would be called SuperMen (men with food). Caterers might be SuperTruckDrivers. I think Walmart uses this prefix the same way. So, during birthday parties at work, we can call our break room SuperBreakRoom. And we can refer to meetings and to SuperMeetings.

Am I off topic? No! Because I don't have a topic! Ha!

I am done, though, because that's about all I can remember from Saturday. There were also some construction, some dogs, some kids, and a Chinese buffet with fabulous "butter shrimp" (which I didn't try because shrimp are yucky). There was no wireless internet, and no time for writing anyway.

Profile

livingdeb: (Default)
livingdeb

June 2025

S M T W T F S
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930     

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 17th, 2025 02:08 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios