The One with the Thoughts of Frans

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A Clove of Day

The Middle-Eastern man opposite him was characterized by a distinct garlic smell. Why did people make such a fuss about the smell of garlic by making funny faces, especially when there were disgusting smokers stinking up the air, with what seemed like years’ worth of cigarette fumes stuck in their clothes? Yet it would be strange to assume smokers washed their clothes any less than other people. The tram was driven by a madman — no, a madwoman. Better yet, by someone trying desperately to keep the tram on schedule. The big truck trying to turn in a tight corner didn’t help, but the driver was determined to make it to the next stop on time. She wasn’t going to make these poor people miss their connection. Earlier that week she’d been reprimanded because her GPS-based performance review was below average. You need to drive faster. I’ll try, she said. Choo, choo!

He was just about the only white person in the tram. Was it racist to notice? Of course it’s not, not unless you think the other people don’t belong. Fuck, I’m an immigrant myself. Not that he was what the haters thought of when they used a word like immigrant — they didn’t think of Caucasians who spoke their native language. Spoke it better than they did.

As the crowds mysteriously dissipated inside the central station, he sat down to study a bit before the train arrived. A couple of pages till he had to move would be nice, but just about everyone seemed to have a cold. Sniffing, sneezing, wheezing, coughing, blowing noses — the other travelers were trying their best to produce an orchestrated cacophony. Their timing was impeccably unrhythmic. A whiff of garlic sauce interrupted.

Oh yes, it was lunch time.

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New E-ANS Location

I couldn’t find the E-ANS website (a Dutch grammar), but apparently it moved to a new location without any kind of redirect (via).

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The Days of Terror

Here’s a silly story I wrote about a decade ago.


When I was born, I was immediately aware of everything around me. I was aware of my father, who also was my mother. Or maybe something entirely different. In a way, I was my father. But that doesn’t matter now. It’s not important for the story I’ll tell you. A story which is of great importance, for I am the last still alive born prior to the End of the Suffering. Therefore I must relate my experiences from the first days of my youth. This knowledge should not be lost.

Like I said, I was immediately aware of my surroundings. Unlike the larger creatures, formerly the masters of the earth, we are as you know one big, conscious growing process. When we are cut off from our base, we stay alive long enough to pass our acquired knowledge to our main body. It’s partially because of this, that I can account of these events so well.

When I was only a few days old, I had my first experience with what is now only vaguely remembered as the Days of Terror. Compared to our present freedom, the Days of Terror lasted longer than any of us can remember. Nevertheless, it was gruesome.

I wasn’t prepared for it. I was just standing there happily, gazing at the sun, when suddenly I heard screams in the distance. First I couldn’t hear what the screams said, but the screams seemed to come closer and closer. After a short while, although it seemed to last for hours, I could finally hear what they were screaming. No! Not again! Spare me! I will stay small!

As the young lad I was, I didn’t understand it at all until suddenly it hit me. A sharp piece of metal hit my body and sliced me in two. Part of me was lifted by an air stream generated by the sharp piece of metal. It was then that I, or rather a long-dead piece of me, first met Him. We must not let this happen to us without doing anything! is what He was shouting at anybody who would could hear. We must fight back!

It was an unwilling crowd. All the pieces of the older ones retorted that it had always been like this. They were not prepared to do anything. But I was, having experienced this terror for the first time and being completely shocked that something like this could happen. So I replied: What do you propose, what can we do against this terror?!

We must attempt not to grow to the sun, but stick to the ground! He replied. So this is what we did. We stuck to the ground. The older ones didn’t do so, however. And so, a few days later, when the Terror came again, they had grown all the way up again. Suddenly scared, they grabbed the few of us lying down on the ground, pulling us with them. Thus it happened again, struck by the Terror for the second time. But now those surrounding us had seen that we were initially not harmed. That day we gained many new followers.

A few days later, we could already celebrate our first little victory. None of those around Him, me and the few other original followers were harmed. This was a vital breakthrough, and the news spread quickly among our brothersisters. I considered this to be the end of it. I thought we could all live like this, happily ever after, until the end of days. But it wasn’t like that for Him. He was far from satisfied. Only the first phase of His big plan to change the world forever had succeeded.

None of us knew what He was up to at first. He was busy with something, but none of us knew what it was. It was such a novel idea that we didn’t even grasp the idea when he first succeeded at what he had been trying for so long. To make a long story short, he had somehow managed unrestricted movement. This might all sound very strange to you today, but at the time, none of us had ever done it. Millions of years had passed and yet He was not only the first to think of it, but also the first to actually achieve it.

With His new abilities, He went to visit all of us. While those close to him, including me, were trying to master this new technique, He walked further and further, visiting those who had but barely grasped the idea of lying down. Walking was an exaggerated rumor to their minds, until they saw it in real life. As I was still relatively young, I did not do much with this new technique, but the older among us, who knew they were going to die quite soon, set out for exploration. They walked up to our great brethren at whose feet many of us still grow, and tried to initialize communication with them — another novelty. After a while they even succeeded, but they were not enthused by the concept of walking.

Many of those exploring never returned. Newer expeditions found out that it was due to lack of food, so newer expeditions decided to be in the ground half of the day to prevent starvation. Because most of us preferred to wander by day, this became known as night rest or sleep in common parlance.

He was happy with our achievements for a while, but as soon as most of us were able to move as well as He could, He wanted more. Instead of avoiding the Terror, he argued, we should attack the Terror. It might take some victims, but it would be worth it in the end, for we would be rid of the Terror. We felt like we could do everything after having mastered movement, so almost all of us agreed with whatever He could come up with.

So the days went by and inevitably the Terror came again. As it was not the metal, but the two things behind it which were important, as He argued, we should shrink away from the metal and then attack the two things behind it. He would give the sign.

Lying down, we waited for the metal to pass. Then, on his signal, we all extended over one of the two things. I don’t remember what we expected, but something much larger was attached to the thing and it fell down, crushing many of us.

The others, who had been waiting at the side, now jumped on the most important part of the Terror. The destructive metal didn’t seem to be doing anything anymore now that we managed to take down the controlling Terror behind it. We jumped all over the Terror, tying it. The Terror tried to get away and a long struggle ensued. At last it stopped moving.

Those who hadn’t actually helped getting the Terror down now went to look. The thing, which had given off warmth before, seemed to be cooling down. But then, not too long after having killed this one, another Terror approached. It was moving much faster than we were used to, so first it crushed many of us while running towards the lifeless Terror on the ground. But then we got hold of it. Tying it down to the ground, we repeated what we had done before. Again we succeeded.

As the months passed, we spent our time taking out an ever increasing number Terrors. Also, thanks to our movement technique, we found out that both we and the Terrors were with many more than we ever had expected. More importantly still, we were with many, many more. Our army kept on steadily growing and growing as we continued our struggle, The Terrors applied many different ways of fighting us. Billions upon billions were murdered in blistering flames. Later, these weeks became known as The Days of Terror, as the Terrors seemed to have reached a turning point. However, we found out that drinking our weight in water, while making us only barely able to move, also protected against the flames. From that moment, the war was all but won. The Terrors were cowardly running retreating. They fled to places were we couldn’t follow. As you know, they are still there. But they dare not harm us any more.

Finally having gained our freedom, we also thought He was appeased. But He was not. He wanted us to think of new techniques to better our lives. But it was then, that he suddenly passed away long before His time. A sudden frost struck us, and like many He was frozen. Still, the casualties were few compared to the battles we fought against the Terrors.

Our first independent new idea was to protect ourselves from things like frost. If we could battle the Terrors, why not winter? The Terrors left their dwellings behind, and we occupied them. Our scientists, as those with an aptitude for coming up with and testing hypotheses are called now, researched these dwelling. They found a lot of interesting stuff, but not all has yet been uncovered.

Recently the purpose of the objects made out of the dead bodies of our great brethren was discovered. These contain knowledge. The very kind of knowledge you are looking at right now. Yes, He changed the shape of the world forever. As the last of those who were there, it is my time to go now. I can already feel life flowing out of me. I’m no longer able to drink well any more.

I hope this message will not be lost over time. Do not forget the past. Do not become new Terrors yourself. Good luck living in the most exciting of times.

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Debian: International Fonts

Ubuntu comes with a large swath of international fonts installed by default, but Debian requires a little more attention. Although I can’t read the languages, I can recognize which script is which. Besides, boxes are just ugly.

  • East Asian: apt-get install ttf-arphic-uming ttf-wqy-zenhei ttf-sazanami-mincho ttf-sazanami-gothic ttf-unfonts-core (source)
  • Indic: apt-get install ttf-indic-fonts (source)
  • All together: apt-get install ttf-arphic-uming ttf-wqy-zenhei ttf-sazanami-mincho ttf-sazanami-gothic fonts-unfonts-core ttf-indic-fonts

These are merely the ones that I missed the most. I may update this post in the future.

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On Balls

For some reason male genitalia came up a couple of times in the past week, so I might as well share what I learned about German balls and repeat my plea for not only the acceptance, but the embrace of the word ballsack.

On Wimpsthe Weak Balled

The author of some book claimed that German has no word for wimp. Someone else replied that Weichei carries the load perfectly, but that it’s not something you’d put on the cover of a children’s book. I wondered why, because “I always thought it referred to how easy it is to break an egg: a metaphorical reference to how easy it would be to break a Weichei’s confidence.” As it turns out, because Eier doubles as slang for testicles in German, it actually means as much as weak ball(s).

This misunderstanding might’ve occurred because “In Dutch there’s the expression een zacht eitje. Saying ‘he’s a soft egg’ means ‘he’s a wuss/wimp,’ and there’s another usage, ‘it’s a soft egg,’ meaning ‘it’s a piece of cake’ (as in ‘it’s easy,’ but translating an idiom with another certainly seems more appropriate).”

On Ballsacks

A few days later, someone remarked that they felt embarrassed because their kid used the word “ball sac [sic].” I replied,

Ballsack is a perfectly ordinary Germanic word for a part of the male anatomy. Some people seem to prefer the Latinate scrotum, but I disprefer it. In Dutch as well as German the respective words balzak and Hosensack (lit. pants bag or perhaps more appropriately, pants sack) are perfectly ordinary words, and indeed the standard words for referring to the ballsack. If anything, saying scrotum carries negative connotations in Dutch. As a fellow speaker of a Germanic language, I implore you not to continue this treachery and disrespect toward our ancestors and to proudly scream ballsack from the roofs!

While a humorous veil covers what I wrote, I’m hardly kidding.

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Semantic Concord in American English

The number of X are, when X is semantically referring to individuals rather than a group as a whole. Just when that is the case, however, is not as straightforward as it sounds.

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What Is a Malamanteau?

The following article appeared on Wikipedia for a very short time due to a recent xkcd comic. It’s a reference back to Language Log, which references xkcd sometimes, but the reverse seldom happens.

A malamanteau (plural malamanteaux) is a neologism for a portmanteau created by incorrectly combining a malapropism with a neologism. It is itself a portmanteau of malapropism and portmanteau. In a less strict definition, a portmanteau of a malapropism with another word can also be considered a malamanteau. The contained malapropism must be typically a very common one, probably most people are not aware of, in order to be able to regain the meaning of a malamanteau.

A malamanteau often is created when somebody tries to use a neologism (alternatively, an idiom) but mistakenly confuses a word with another one. However, unlike a malapropism or an eggcorn, the fumbled word is not completely replaced, but merely transfixed to the new one. A famous example is: “misunderestimate” which was popularized by the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush. Probably it was intended to be “underestimate” but mistakenly jumbled with “misunderstand.”

Examples

  • Somebody describes his misunderstanding of what someone was saying by stating, “I misconscrewed it up.”
  • Somenone explains his inability to talk while being upset by saying he was “flustrated.”
  • A meaningful malamanteau is “ambiviolent,” as in: “Beatrix Kiddo in Kill Bill was ambiviolent. She didn’t know who to kill first.”

I was going to write more about it when I made this draft, but by now it’s two weeks later and I’ve lost interest. Booyah.

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IPA Fonts on the Web

Nowadays, the most obvious way to blend all kinds of UTF-8 characters in nicely with all the other text on your page might be Webfonts, but I think there are definitely valid reasons not to utilize those to achieve consistent display of IPA characters on a page. This post will focus on a very simple method which ensures that IPA will look decent across a variety of operating systems and browsers. The issue is nothing but aesthetics; however, the importance should not be underestimated as the following screenshot will demonstrate.

ipa-font-test
You can try the results of this yourself, but what it will look like depends on the fonts you have installed.

What I used to achieve the cohesive look of the IPA characters is this simple line of CSS.

.IPA{ font-family: "DejaVu Sans", "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode" }

It’s an easy concept. Slap class="IPA" on some element—I used SPAN—and it will automatically display in one of these fonts, ensuring that no characters look out of place. DejaVu Sans is a font I like a lot; It comes pre-installed on most Linux installations, and is freely available for everybody else. Lucida Grande is a font with the sufficient characters that comes with Mac OS X, and Lucida Sans Unicode is a font that, as the name implies, is very similar to Lucida Grande. It is available in Windows 98 and up.

References

“DejaVu Sans.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 12 Dec 2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=DejaVu_fonts&oldid=329693253>.
“Lucida Grande.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 12 Dec 2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lucida_Grande&oldid=314108882>.
“Lucida Sans Unicode.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 12 Dec 2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lucida_Sans_Unicode&oldid=324714228>.

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Voiced Velar Fricative Above All

There are three sounds usually represented in writing as g or ch that I can produce.

  1. Voiced velar fricative /ɣ/, as in Dutch gaan, transcribed as [ɣaːn].
  2. Voiceless velar fricative /x/, as in German Kuchen, transcribed as [kuːxən].
  3. Voiceless palatal fricative /ç/, as in German ich, transcribed as [ɪç].

From this list, you might guess that there is also a voiced palatal fricative, and you’d be right. I cannot, however, produce the /ʝ/, which can be seen as the Flemish equivalent to my Dutch /ɣ/.

According to commonly accepted Dutch phonetics, the second g-sound occurs in words like acht, thus transcribed as [ɑxt], and also in words like chaos, thus transcribed as [xaɔs].

For me, this is not the case. I pronounce all of my words with the voiced velar fricative. It’s definitely true that not all people do this: in the east of the Netherlands, where I lived for a few years, most local people thought the way I pronounce my gs at the end of words sounds aggressive merely because they employ a slightly different g, the /x/, in final positions. They may utilize it in certain other positions as well, but I’m fairly sure they do no such thing in a word like chaos. I may be wrong, though.

I decided to investigate this further, and I think I may have found a possible explanation.

  • If I force myself to pronounce echt with a clearly pronounced /t/, I do indeed find myself slightly more likely to use the /x/, although by no means as any kind of constant. This may very well be affected by my knowledge that it is more or less supposed to be this way, however, and I’m not sure if I would normally have done this at all.
  • In normal usage, however, I’m more likely to either drop the /t/ or to come really close to dropping it, thus rendering echt waar into /ɛɣʋar/. I postulate that this might aid to preserve the /ɣ/ in my speech, at the possible expense of other phonemes that might weaken it.
  • Nevertheless, I fully retain the /ɣ/ in acht, and also in things like acht gulden.
  • As far as I can tell, Utrecht (or sometimes pronounced as Utrech), [ˈʏtrɛx(t)], is the only word in which the /x/ is actually established in my speech. I wonder if living there for a year might have affected my pronunciation of the name of the city, while leaving the rest of my speech unscathed, or if I’ve always pronounced it that way.

This unscientific analysis would not be complete if I didn’t add that some words, such as Michiel, and vliegje are pronounced with the /ç/. In other words, [mɪçil] and [vliçjə]. As far as I know any Dutch speaker will pronounce these words the same, though as should be obvious due to the very reason I’m writing all of this, I may be wrong.

In conclusion, save for an almost negligible number of exceptions, I pronounce each and every g or ch that is not pronounced as /ç/ as /ɣ/.

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Life as an Expat

My experience here in Antwerp has been very positive, but there were (and perhaps still are) some amusing language barriers here and there. I’ll mention a few.

I call a fuse a stop. Here it is called a zekering, which I almost exclusively associate with playing around with designing electronic circuitry yourself. So while I completely understand the Flemish usage from that perspective, the first time it came up I had no idea how to communicate what I was talking about. I had to use an explanation about washing machines being broken and leaking electricity before the Flemish person was able to tell me they call that a zekering.

I say, Hoe duur is dat? (How expensive is that?) to inquire about the price of something. One Flemish store owner told me I should stop using that because they consider the implication that something has to be expensive rather offensive. In English it sounds similar to me, but in Dutch as it is spoken in the Netherlands it doesn’t imply anything about something being expensive. Instead they exclusively say Hoeveel kost dat? or Hoeveel is dat? (How much does that cost? or How much is that?). Or at least, so that store owner says.

To me, morgen (morning) is roughly from 6 AM to 12 PM (in English morning has different implications), and middag (afternoon) is roughly from 12 PM to 6 PM. When someone was making an appointment for the voormiddag (fore-afternoon) I assumed they meant something like 12 PM – 3 PM. Instead they meant something like 9 AM -12 PM. Middag (midday) equals noon, i.e. 12 PM, and namiddag means afternoon, exactly the same as in English. It makes a lot of sense, but it’s quite different. In my Dutch Dutch the word namiddag does exist, and means something starting around 3 or 4 PM (or possibly around 2 PM in winter), until the end of the afternoon (i.e. 6 PMish, maybe more like 5 PM in winter, although like I said, our definitions are a little more rigid than in other languages). By logical extrapolation voormiddag would mean the period prior to the namiddag, which would be from 12 PM to 3 PM. According to the dictionary it’s even used like that somewhere frequently enough to be mentioned, though where I’m from we’d talk about early in the afternoon. In conclusion, Dutch and Flemish have distinctly different connotations for the words voormiddag, middag, and namiddag. When I think about the actual meaning of the words (fore midday, midday, and after midday), the Flemish meaning makes more sense, but in its own context the Dutch meaning is equally sensible. There’s a reason the concept is called false friends (like German See and Dutch zee).

Speaking of false friends, there is one thing that never confused me, but that does sound funny to me. Over here tas means cup, akin to German Tasse, but to me it sounds like someone wants to drink a bag of coffee (or some such) if the term is used.

Lastly, I still think it’s somewhat amusing each and every time I see things on sale on €x (aan €x) instead of for €x (voor €x).

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