Sport
The topic of sport has come up on alt.fan.pratchett, so I thought I’d share some of my views and preferences here.
Vowel allophones in local dialects
Following on from what I’ve said before, I’d like to say more about vowel allophones in my idiolect, as relative to other Australian speakers.
FTP GUI ideas
If my programming experience were a little better than it is, one application I would like to write is my own GUI FTP client. I’ve tried a whole bunch of free ones, and all of them fell short of my expectations.
In this post, I’m going to summarise my ideas for the ideal GUI FTP client.
Language links
I have already recommended some websites on conlanging and phonetics. Here are some more links to do with language. Some have been added since this post was originally written.
English:
Languages in general:
- Indoeuropean languages diagram
- Evolution of alphabets (recommended in more detail in a later post)
- Language portraits
- Foreign language voices
Specific other languages:
- Latin dictionary
- Hebrew tutorial and a more advanced one
- Swedish dialects page (in my opinion, this is the sexiest)
- Sounds of Gaelic
I have various dictionaries floating about, including a multi-language dictionary (and another), plus specialist dictionaries for Irish, Polish (and another) and Swedish. (Incidentally, I wouldn’t bother looking too hard for any rhyme or reason in why I’ve bookmarked those dictionaries in particular.)
The first port of call for finding a foreign language dictionary or grammar is yourdictionary.com. Automatic translators can be found at Mezzofanti.
Quoting from Nouwen
I have mentioned that Reaching Out by Henri Nouwen is one of my favourite books about spiritual things. Below is an assortment of quotations from it, however the essence of the book cannot be captured in a few short clips.
“I wanted to write this book because it is my growing conviction that my life belongs to others just as much as it belongs to myself and that what is experienced as most unique often proves to be most solidly embedded in the common condition of being human.“
“Does not all creativity ask for a certain encounter with our loneliness, and does not the fear of this encounter severely limit our possible self expression?“
Utility sites
Below is a short list of useful utility websites.
[Update: see also my post on Google widgets]
Vowel phonemes
You know, I would love to report that I have done a full formant analysis of my own vowel phonemes using Praat. Then I could show you a diagram that is to my idiolect what, say, this is to the dialect of young people in Sydney.
However, actually doing a formant analysis is extremely frustrating. Partly because the slightest discrepency in the recording has a huge impact on the result (and if your throat isn’t giving you grief when you start it will by the time you’ve finished, even if you thought you were in perfect health), partly because it’s hard to find a consistent phonological environment that captures the essence of each phoneme, and partly because Praat is, shall we say, not the most intuitive software around, nor the least fiddly.
Some day I’ll make recordings of each vowel phoneme that I consider adequetely representative, and then successfully chart them…
Assorted quotations
These are just some assorted quotations which I happen to like, in most cases because of the point that they so succinctly make. (I got them all from the same book, but never mind that; it’s well out of print by now.)
“Marriage: A community consisting of a master, a mistress and two slaves, making in all two.“
– Ambrose Bierce
“I’m not denyin’ the women are foolish: God Almighty made ‘em to match the men.“
– Character of female novelist George Eliot
“The British have never been spiritually minded people, so they invented cricket to give them some notion of eternity.“
– Lord Mancroft
“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.”
– Winston Churchill (Attrib)
“A committee is a group that keeps the minutes and loses hours.“
– Milton Berle, US comedian
Kepler quotes
Here are a collection of quotations from Johannes Kepler, the founder of modern astronomy (people often say that Copernicus founded modern astronomy, but that’s wrong. Copernicus only changed a detail, whereas Kepler changed a whole paradigm. He was the first to say that the motions of planets are governed by principles we would recognise as physical forces, bound by physical, mathematical laws).
Kepler wrote in seventeenth century German; these English translations are all from The Sleepwalkers by Arthur Koestler.
- “Having percieved the first glimmer of dawn eighteen months ago, the light of day three months ago, but only a few days ago the plain sun of a most wonderful vision - nothing shall now hold me back. Yes, I give myself up to holy raving. I mockingly defy all mortals with this open confession : I have robbed the golden vessels of the Egyptians to make out of them a tabernacle for my God, far from the frontiers of Egypt. If you forgive me, I shall rejoice. If you are angry, I shall bear it. Behold, I have cast the dice, and I am writing a book either for my contemporaries, or for posterity. It is all the same to me. It may wait a hundred years for a reader, since God has also waited six thousand years for a witness.”
Miscellaneous nature sites
Here’s another “website recommendations” post.
I’ve already mentioned some websites that are filed in my bookmarks under science and nature. Several are mentioned here, and websites of individual scientists are mentioned in passing here and here.
I’ll now add a few more sites to that theme. Firstly, a couple of websites containing audios on Australian bird calls:
- One from the Australian Government Department of the Environment and Heritage (in .au and .mp3 format. Incidentally, at least one bird listed is known by different names in different parts of the country, which gives away the website’s dialectal bias.)
- One from an archive belonging to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (in .ram format, so you’ll need either Real Player or Real Alternative, but much more comprehensive than the other site).
Incidentally, if you feel like reading some slightly technical biology, here’s an interesting article about the Australian magpie.
And finally, something completely different: a comic strip about a virus. In my opinion, this is about as good as comic strips get.
[Update June 2007: check out this collection of animal skulls, lots of pictures.]
