Albanian Clitics: Cracking the Code

Nearly all adjectives (and genitive nouns) in Albanian are accompanied by a small proclitic particle, which varies in form for gender, number, case, and definiteness of the head noun. There are only four possible realizations of this particle, but their distribution across these four axes is far from obvious. A few examples of how this looks in practice:

një qen i mirë "a good dog" (nominative, masculine)

macen e mirë "the good cat" (accusative, feminine)

një qeni të mirë "to a good dog" (dative, masculine)

prej maces së mirë "from the good cat" (ablative, feminine)

These Albanian adjectival clitics have bewildered me for years; I have had very little success in synthesizing the profusion of slightly differing forms. Cheered, however, by my recent discovery of a paper laying out Albanian stress rules to a point of nearly full predictability, I decided today to try to formulate a Grand Theory of Albanian Clitics that reduces some of the complexity.

First of all, the data. Here is the form of the clitic in all the aforementioned environments; note that the row labeled "DAT" corresponds to the three cases genitive, dative and ablative, which have experienced syncretism in most areas of Modern Albanian:

		Singular				Plural
	Masc		Fem		Masc		Fem
	Indef	Def	Indef	Def	Indef	Def	Indef	Def
NOM	i	i	e	e	të	e	të	e
ACC	të	e	të	e	të	e	të	e
DAT	të	të	të	së	të	të	të	të

My immediate reaction to this table is that it was clearly laid out by a conlanger who either had sadistic tendencies, a flair for randomness, or who was fairly inexperienced with reasonable linguistic expectations. After a few hours of analysis, though, it turns out that all of this can be summarized in a few bullet points, to wit:

• Masculine nominative singular indefinite is i, feminine is e; other than this, all indefinites are të for all genders, cases and numbers.

• Accusative for all genders and numbers is always të when indefinite and e when definite.

• Dative is të for all genders, numbers and definiteness EXCEPT feminine singular definite which has së. Note that the nouns to which these clitics apply have the unique ending -ës, which is highly mnemonic.

• Definite nominative for all genders and numbers is e EXCEPT for masculine singular, which is i.

Internalizing these rules to the point that I could produce them on the fly is a whole other kettle of monkeys, of course, but nonetheless I'm very pleased that the wall of intimidatingly bizarre Albanian grammar has been lowered by a few notches.

Amelia's World-Famous Eggnog

As served at last night's pre-Yuletide bash! Coming soon: my sugarless Lebkuchen recipe.

Amelia's Famous Eggnog

Yield: about 6 cups

INGREDIENTS

3 cups whole milk

7 large eggs

3/4 cup agave nectar

2 cups heavy cream

1/3 cup bourbon

1/3 cup brandy

1 tsp vanilla

freshly grated nutmeg

PREPARATION

Bring milk just to a boil in a 2-quart heavy saucepan. Whisk together eggs and agave in a large bowl, then add hot milk in a slow stream, whisking. Pour mixture into saucepan and cook over moderately low heat, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until mixture reaches 170F (6 to 7 minutes).

Pour custard through a fine-meshed sieve into a large bowl and stir in the cream, bourbon, brandy and vanilla. Cool completely, uncovered, then cover and chill until cold, at least 3 hours but no longer than 24.

Grate nutmeg over each glass of eggnog immediately before drinking.

A new name-related quandary in transliteration

As you may have heard, as of October 17th Amelia and I are both changing our last name to Birch, and for the first time in my life I'm faced with an option: do I want a middle name? Being as interested as I am in naming conventions, it seems like an opportunity in self-identification way too fantastic to pass up; but it does also bring up this question of choosing said middle name.

Since I'm giving up Brandt, my connection to my Jewish/Yiddish heritage, I've been thinking about...something I don't know how to write, which is indeed the main point of this post, so just pretend for the moment that there's a name here...almost since the inception of discussion about this whole Birch idea. This is my paternal grandfather's original Yiddish name, before he gave it up to avoid persecution in post-WWII Poland, and also the name of his uncle who protected him and helped him survive in hiding during the Holocaust and was killed in Russian-German crossfire in the war's final days. It's a good name, and it makes me feel proud to imagine carrying it around with me.

So that's not the problem; no, the problem is one of spelling. In various systems of transliteration, the name is as follows:

[ˈɡɛɾʃən] or [ˈɡɛɾʃn̩] - IPA
[`gErS@n] or [`gErS=n] - SAMPA
[gārshŭn] - American dictionary phonetics
[GAIR-shin] - Phrasebook English

I just discovered this afternoon that this is actually a Biblical name, and as such in English is generally spelled Gershon (from Hebrew גרשון, "gršun" in transliteration). When my grandfather learned to write, though, he was taught to spell his name גערשן, "geršn," which represents the way it's actually pronounced in Yiddish (Yiddish, unlike Hebrew, uses a phonemic writing system). Now, if I were going to transcribe the Yiddish גערשן into English, the standard system would give me Gershn. And just to throw some further confusion into the mix: since we're talking about Polish Jews, another possibility is the standard Polish transliteration of this name: Gerszon.

So which should it be? Gershon, as the English (and even the educated Yiddish) print standard? Or Gershn as representative of the way it was apparently written in the community of farmers in Eastern Poland to whom I'm paying homage in adopting this name? Or something else? Any input would be very much appreciated.

More lost and found

I just dug out of my wallet a crumpled and bedraggled but historically significant piece of paper: a list of ingredients in green ink on the back of a Port Townsend bed-and-breakfast receipt, being the toppings of a particularly extraordinary pizza that I once consumed in Great Barrington, MA. I'm excited to have found this, not only because now Amelia and I can try to reproduce it next time we make pizza crust, but also because I can now send this scrap to its long home after its five years of following me on my travels, and thereby lighten my wallet by a fractional but nonetheless meaningful amount. Here's the list:

DOLCE VITA PIZZA

tomato sauce
wilted spinach
mozzarella cheese
figs
Gorgonzola cheese
prosciutto
sprinkled with rosemary-infused olive oil and Parmesan cheese

I'll post some pictures if/when we get around to making this...

KEEP ANDREW JACKSON OFF MY MONEY

So Andrew Jackson is on the new dollar coins. I know it's a president-by-president progression, but I'm still incensed.

Part A:

What was wrong with Sacagawea, anyway? Why can't we have a woman on a single piece of U.S. currency?

Part B:

Andrew Jackson was a tyrant whose presidency was an embarrassment to the ideals this country is supposed to stand for. His actions against the Native Americans (with particular reference to his defiance of the Supreme Court and the Trail of Tears) were simply unconscionable and there is just no excuse for our condoning his actions by honoring him in this way. I object to...no, that's not strong enough: I am nauseated by being made to see this blackguard's face a hundred times every day.

That is all.

Why I love the propaganda

Polish Communist propaganda songs are spectacular, and the world deserves more access to this very unique and now sadly vanished art form. To this end, here's a quick on-the-BART translation of one of my favorites, Budujemy Nowy Dom = "We're building a new house." This dates from shortly after WWII when Warsaw had basically been razed to the ground, and in fact Budujemy Nowy Dom was the slogan of the reconstruction movement.

Note that first person plural verbs in Polish often do the job of the English hortative "let's..." even without an imperative ending, so the title of the song might be more accurately translated as "Let's build a new house," which is what I've done below. Try to imagine this being sung in fervent operatic tones.

Let's build a new house
Yet another new house
Unto our future better days,
O Warsaw

Multiply our work with us,
Come share our work with us
For this is our common goal
O Warsaw

From the basement to the roof
May the building joyfully rise
Into my dreams and yours
O Warsaw

May the walls leap skywards
Since the hands are willing
Let's build a new concrete house!

Who wouldn't be excited about a new concrete house? My absolute favorite for sheer ridiculousness, though, has to be Piosenka o Nowej Hucie = "Song about Nowa Huta." Nowa Huta is an enormous industrial suburb of Kraków (Cracow) built by the government in the late 40s and early 50s to try to balance out the intellectual population of the city and make it more amenable to Communist policy. Listen to a little bit of the recording to get the vibe, and then check out what they're actually saying.



My attempt at a reasonably idiomatic English version (thanks go to Jesse for his help with the incredibly difficult-to-translate second line of the first stanza):

On the Vistula, the wide Vistula,
The bricklayers' chatter fills the air in song
And the song of the bricklayer floats up high
And floats through nights and days.

CHORUS:
This is a song about Nowa Huta
This is a melody about Nowa Huta
It's so simple and pretty
And has such a nice melody.
This is a song about Nowa Huta
The words are about Nowa Huta
It's so simple and pretty
And new like Huta is new.

A hundred blocks have sprouted up along the Vistula
And a thousand roads straight to them
The bricklayer's song has grown out into the future
And joins the two banks like a bridge.

CHORUS

And there can be no other future now:
The peace and good that it sends us
And when you're in Huta with your girl
And hear this song, know that...

CHORUS

Remarkably (and sort of worryingly) this song is still reasonably popular today. But come on, is this not a paragon of...well, something we probably don't have a word for yet? The chorus in particular needs to win some kind of award -- a Rory, perhaps -- for the most gratuitous lack of content in a serious song. "And new like Huta is new." Dude.

Next time: Na Prawo Most, Na Lewo Most.

Oh no! Mr. Hat is dead!

From: Dr Usman Bello
To: Jazzschool
Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2008 19:51:22 +0530 (IST)
Subject: My Letter to you reply immediately

- DEAR SIR,I AM DR USMAN BELLO, HEAD OF INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND AFRICA UNIT DU COTONOU BENIN REPUBLIC ,I AM WORKING AS PART OF A BIGGER TEAM THAT COVERS THE ENTIRE WEST AFRICAN REGION INCLUDING INSURANCE BANKS. AN INVESTOR MR HAT DIED WITHOUT NAMING ANY NEXT OF KIN TO HIS FUND IN THE UTB BANK COTONOU BENIN REPUBLIC.THE AMOUNT IS $14,525.000,00 DOLLAR ACCOUNT AND BANKING REGULATION/LEGISLATION IN BENIN REPUBLIC DEMANDS THAT I SHOULD NOTIFY THE FISCAL AUTHORITIES AFTER THREE YEARS.THE ABOVE SET OF FACTS UNDERSCORES MY REASON TO SEEK YOUR PERMISSION TO HAVE YOU STAND IN AS THE NEXT OF KIN TO THE DECEASED. THIS FUND WILL BE APPROVED AND RELEASED IN YOUR FAVOUR AS THE NEXT OF KIN IF ONLY YOU WILL ADHERE TO MY INSTRUCTION AND COOPERATE WITH ME IN ONE ACCORD.I HAVE ALL THE LEGAL AND BANKING DETAILS OF THE DECEASED CLIENT THAT WILL FACILITATE OUR PUTTING YOU FORWARD AS THE BENEFICIARY OF THE FUNDS AND ULTIMATELY TRANSFER OF THE $14,525.000,00 PLUS INTERESTTO ANY BANK ACCOUNT NOMINATED BY YOU.WE CAN DISCUSS COMMINOR PERCENTAGE AS SOON AS YOU REPLY MY EMAIL AFTER YOUR RESPONSE.REGARDS DR USMAN BELLO [emphasis mine]

New challenges facing the modern musician

A man came to the school yesterday ostensibly to inquire about our program. He looked thoroughly normal, recently washed hair, etc., with a tweed jacket -- probably a Larry or a Glenn. We'll call him Larry. Jesse had the...um...good fortune to be the one to speak with him at the front desk, and from my position back in the office I only heard snatches of the conversation, which nonetheless began raising increasingly large red flags as the discourse progressed.

It was an interesting conversation. The guy was definitely a little weird, but there was nothing to specifically pinpoint aside from a demeanor apparently carefully cultivated without the benefit of any understanding of basic social norms -- I consider it something of an accomplishment to be aggressively pompous and worryingly creepy simultaneously. Actually, there was almost a bit of the Senor Cardgage about Larry (aside: Senor Cardgage actually exists, did you know this? I discovered him working at A.G. Ferrari on Piedmont. I am dead serious) now that I think about it.

Anyway, things were going along nicely in said conversation, getting weirder by degrees more or less directly proportional to its duration, when the excerpt I am about to relate occurred. Here is a graph of our perceived sanity of the conversation with respect to time:

The conversation flowed more or less as follows.

Larry: Do you teach your students about the most important thing?

Jesse: [long pause] Um...I'm not quite sure what you mean.

Larry: How not to starve to death!

Jesse: [long pause] Well, I mean...

Larry: [getting excited] Here you are at this college, this college, you know, teaching people, and you don't even teach them...

Jesse: Well, I don't think you really...

Larry: Students need to know, you know! With times changing...our economy failing...

Jesse: Uh-huh...

Larry: ...fuel prices rising...

Jesse: Uh-huh...

Larry: ...the Stargate opening in 2012 allowing us to travel freely through any dimension...

Jesse: Um, I can't really follow you there.

Larry: [nods paternally] Don't worry about it.

So now you know. If you're a musician, don't get left out in the cold when the Stargate opens.

In search of nomenclature

The burning question of the year is this: what on Earth should Amelia and I do with our names after getting married next October? We could theoretically both keep our hyphenated monstrosities in the short term, but this quickly becomes impractical when the storks start dropping off their parcels.

We were both pretty sure we wanted our family to have one name; but which name should it be? We threw around Brandt and Isaacks for a while without definite decision, and then stumbled onto the idea of botany. A new plant-based name for our family certainly seems up our alley of insanity, so the fun began...

I did some research and drew up a list of a bunch of trees, flowers, herbs and other miscellaneous plants that seemed vaguely possible as surnames (or just too hilarious to leave out), and wrote a program to allow us to see each of our first names with all of the last names at random and rate them. Here's the list we were working with:

Alder, Amaranth, Anemone, Arrowroot, Aspen, Aster, Beebalm, Birch, Bladderpod, Bloodroot, Buckeye, Bugbane, Butterbur, Butterweed, Campion, Caraway, Catchfly, Cedar, Chervil, Chickweed, Clammyweed, Cockscomb, Cockspur, Coltsfoot, Cowcockle, Crowfoot, Crucifer, Dragonhead, Fennel, Feverfew, Fireweed, Flameflower, Fleabane, Foxglove, Galax, Gillyflower, Globeflower, Goldcup, Goldenseal, Goldthread, Goosefoot, Groundsel, Gumweed, Hazel, Helmetflower, Hemlock, Honeysuckle, Hyssop, Kingcup, Larch, Larkspur, Laurel, Leopardbane, Lilac, Linden, Liverleaf, Loosestrife, Madrone, Mandrake, Maple, Mulberry, Mullein, Oxalis, Pennyroyal, Peony, Periwinkle, Pimpernel, Poplar, Primrose, Rhubarb, Rockfoil, Rowan, Sage, Sainfoin, Samphire, Sandwort, Saxifrage, Searocket, Skullcap, Snapdragon, Sneezeweed, Soapwort, Sorrel, Spiderflower, Spruce, Stonecress, Sunflower, Sycamore, Tarweed, Teasel, Tickweed, Toadflax, Trefoil, Vervain, Wandflower, Willow, Wintergreen, Witloof, Woad, Zinnia.

...in addition to both parts of each of our existing names. After we'd both gone through all 200 or so possibilities a few times, I weeded out the bottom 75% for both of us (what? what's wrong with Amelia Sneezeweed? and Searocket is clearly awesome) and we went for another few rotations. The last step was to delete all the names that we didn't have in common, which brought us to the following, in approximate order of compromise mutual preference:

Isaacks
Brandt
Birch
Linden
Aster
Alder
Cedar
Laurel
Willow
Aspen

Amelia's favorite is "Birch." It's a beautiful tree that we both love, very unusual as a name but not weird in that context, and goes well with both of our names (though "Josh Birch" isn't great metrically in my opinion) and all the potential kids' names that we've discussed. Josh(ua) Birch, Amelia Birch, Elinor/Eleanor (Ella) Birch, Imogene (Idgie) Birch, Isabel (Izzie) Birch, Julian (Jules/Jude) Birch, Miles/Milo Birch, &c.

My favorite, surprisingly, and also the only one of these that I could instantly adopt without the slightest tinge of misgiving or regret, also surprisingly, is "Aster." I adore it, for all kinds of reasons -- it seems modern and traditional and earthy and celestial and rural and cosmopolitan all at the same time, and the phonological component hits the spot for me as well. I would love to be Josh Aster. I really am, as I may have mentioned above, surprised to find myself having such a strong reaction to this.

I don't think it's a possibility, though -- although it's in our top ten in common, Amelia doesn't really care for it that much, which definitely tosses it out of the running. If we're both changing our names, feeling gung-ho about our choice is a clear prerequisite.

I find I'm ambivalent about "Brandt." I've never particularly loved the sound of it -- a heavy syllable with a nasal vowel as its nucleus -- and I wouldn't particularly have expected myself to push for it in a situation such as, for example, the one we're now in. In fact, for as long as I've had an opinion I've been a staunch opponent of the ludicrous idea of a woman taking her husband's name, so it would have been an impossibility.

Things are strangely different now, though. I'm having this bizarre conservative feeling that I'd rather like it if Amelia wanted to take my name -- and a new allegiance to "Brandt" and its history, particularly since I'm one of the few Brandts remaining from my line after the Holocaust.

In all truth I really have no idea what we're going to end up choosing, or how we'll manage to come to a decision -- the scales seem pretty evenly balanced in every direction. I think I could probably be okay with any of our top options (Brandt, Isaacks, Birch and Linden) or, of course, Aster...heh heh.

And you should go vote and let us know what you think! Who knows, maybe public opinion will be overwhelming enough to sway the jury.

Mistakery as a measure of fluentitude?

Here's a new one for the books: initiagate. I overheard this yesterday in the context of a jocular conversation shouted across an empty restaurant: "Well, she initiagated it!" I'm assuming this lovely coining is a portmanteau of initiate and instigate, and though the semantic gap it fills in the English lexicon is perhaps somewhat dubious, I still think it's useful to have around, and hilarious in a W sort of way.

Also interesting to me is the fact that the perpetrator (initiagator, even?) of this new term was not a native English speaker. I'm impressed by her ability to make such fluent English-style "mistakes," which raises a point in the definition of fluency that I had never really considered. There are a number of languages I would call myself fluent in, but I definitely don't think my speech errors in these languages are of the same ilk that native speakers would make. I'm intrigued -- I want to learn to speak better bad Polish. Or worse good Polish?

And to continue Adam's and my apparently neverending rant, why does no language textbook or reference grammar touch on this area? It seems a ridiculous oversight, the more I think about it.

Yes, please touch my life with your funds

Back on November 5th, the Jazzschool received the following e-mail:

Hi,

I am ill and would die, I want to touch lives with my funds through you please respond.

...and a name. Jesse and I are still trying to figure out what this guy's story is. Could he actually be a legitimate, albeit extremely odd, potential legacy donor? Random lunatic? Prank e-mailer? Not a real person at all, but rather some kind of ill-conceived scam attempt? Pure spam? None of the possibilities seem to fit that wonderful sentence completely.

There are so many great things about it. The opening clause, I am ill and would die, simultaneously and incongruously suggests the style of both an unskilled ESL speaker and a 19th-century author. I want to touch lives with my funds through you, ostensibly expressing philanthropic intent, refuses to stop sounding creepy and/or dirty to me no matter how I reframe it, especially when amplified by the desperation of the unpunctuated conclusion, please respond.

Whoever he is, he has already touched our lives with quite a few days of continual mirth.

Think!!!

I received the following fax at work this morning:

I'm flabbergasted. How is this even possible? I can't believe that Baja Fresh would actually send out such bizarre and incompetently written fax spam, but it's equally improbable that any other party would have undertaken it for heaven knows what purpose. Either way, that's some pretty impressive bad English.

Waiting for the train

With nine years of BART-riding experience now under my belt, I feel it necessary to make a statement about how people line up to wait for the train. For those unfamiliar with the BART system, each train car has two doors, and the edges of the platforms are marked with black to inform you as to where the aforementioned doors will be when the train stops.

As you might presume, people tend to cluster around these door areas when waiting -- not much sense in waiting, for example, near the middle of the train, and having to relocate to the rear of a mass of people who have more wisely been waiting near the door once the train actually arrives. I've come to the conclusion that there are two possible successful strategies in Waiting Technique:

1) Neat lines (e.g. Rockridge). People line up in single file in front of where the train's doors will be. The earlier you arrive, the better your chance of a place near the front of the line and therefore a seat on the train. Deviations from the system are punished by angry frowns by everyone else on the platform, and very possibly being blocked from entering the train until the end by the combined effort of the boarding line.

2) Total chaos (e.g. Downtown Berkeley until recently). No rules, no etiquette; your likelihood of getting on the train first is directly proportional to your pushiness and/or ability nonchalantly to get in front of everyone else. People tend to form semicircles against the platform's edge and then all attempt to cram inwards once the doors open.

Plan 1 is undoubtedly more orderly, but 2 works just fine as well and I've observed general harmony either way. What DOESN'T work, and now we come to the purpose of today's diatribe, is a combination of the above systems. This is the current culture that prevails at Bayfair where I wait for the train every morning, and it is beginning, ladies and gentlemen, to chafe.

In system 1.5, between about a half and two thirds of the waiting public feel the need to stand in a neat line, but the rest wait to the side and merge with the front of the line when the doors open. The thing I don't understand is why anyone is still lining up. It's not doing them any good, because there's no sense of fairness like at Rockridge: the person who lines up nicely is less likely to get a seat on the train because of all the folks cutting in at the front of the line. Since this happens every day at every door, one wonders what on Earth the incentive could be to keep being "nice."

What we're basically seeing here is a small-scale dramatization via our system of social norms of the concept of the Evolutionarily Stable Strategy (ESS) from evolutionary theory. An ESS is a strategy or combination of strategies that can't be invaded by competing strategies because deviations from the norm are punished by a reduced payoff for the deviator. At downtown Berkeley, for instance, anyone who lines up is virtually guaranteed to get on the train last; likewise, at Rockridge, anyone who doesn't line up is virtually guaranteed to get on the train last.

So what in god's name is going on with Bayfair? Is it in transition between the two types, just waiting for one of them to get strong enough to tip the strategy permanently? I sort of don't think so, because I've been watching this for about a year now and I can't say I've noticed any shift at all in the frequency of the two factions. I do have a theory, however.

Because this game is being played, as I mentioned, in the world of human social expectations instead of that of gene survival, there are some other forces in effect that change the rules. When I first started waiting at Bayfair in the morning I was immediately struck by the ludicrousness of this situation and resolved not to put up with it -- I would not be "nice" and line up because, damn it all, I had a long ride ahead of me and I wanted a seat! But the horrible internal social pressure I felt was eventually too much, and I now find myself lining up even though I know it's completely futile and I just wind up grinding my teeth in frustration with the assholes who keep cutting in at the front of the line.

So maybe everyone in this lining-up subset of Bayfair culture fully realizes how utterly pointless it is, but is nevertheless completely unable to restrain himself from trying to align with the perceived correct social behavior.

How do I fix this? Can I stage some kind of nonviolent protest? I'm afraid I might lose it one of these mornings and start berating people in Polish or something.

Jeane, if you're ever in Vilnius

...you should consider renting an apartment from Regina Bulovienė instead of getting a hotel room. They're beautiful and spacious and right in the middle of the Old Town, and very reasonably priced to boot (at least they were in August 2005).

+370-5-2619-098 (home)
+370-685-31-893 (cell)

And now maybe I can finally stop carrying her damn business card around in my wallet.

Another one

...this time perhaps even stranger:


The Welsh in the above sign does not, in fact, say "Cyclists Dismount." What it does say is "Bladder Inflammation Tip Over."

Lest you think this is too ridiculous to even be possible, one theory has it that "cyclists" was mispelled and changed by an automatic spell checker to "cystitis" before being sent over to the guy in the office with a Welsh dictionary.

Anyway, wow. And I thought Wells Fargo was bad with their big fancy sign saying "Comerciales Atención" for "Business Services." Incidentally, here's a BBC article about the heavy goods vehicles sign.

Welsh is even weirder than we thought

Behold a typical bilingual sign in Wales:


So apparently the English in the above sign translates into Welsh literally as "I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any translation work." No wonder I'm having trouble building up my fluency when these are the kinds of idioms I have to come to grips with.

P.S. I think it's absolutely hilarious that Amelia's reaction to my Welsh journal entry was that it was some kind of weird code. Welsh definitely wins my contest for the strangest Latin-based orthography.

Not the shoes!

On a whim, I put on a random selection of Carter Family songs as I was opening this morning at work. One that I hadn't heard before is called "Cannonball Blues," and has the following wonderful line in it:

My baby's left me, she even took my shoes.

I love this because it packs such a huge amount of meaning into those nine words, even though (or maybe because) that meaning isn't overtly stated. If I rephrase this to be less subtle, it loses all its power: My baby's left me, she took everything I own, I have nothing left, or whatever. I doubt I would ever have noticed my revised line, but as it was, it really hit me -- wow! His shoes, even! Ouch! Somehow this way the sense of his having lost absolutely everything really comes across.

So what's the deal with shoes, anyway? I guess they're such a basic utilitarian thing everyone needs just to spend a day in civilization that to be deprived of them seems like the final decimation. I'm curious what other words, if any, we could put in that slot to elicit a similar emotional reaction.

My baby's left me, she even took my mattress.
My baby's left me, she even took my stove.
My baby's left me, she even took my guitar.
My baby's left me, she even took my guitar picks.
My baby's left me, she even took my alarm clock.
My baby's left me, she even took my extension cord.
My baby's left me, she even took my asthma inhaler.
My baby's left me, she even took my glasses.

I dunno, some of these seem to pack no punch at all (stove), while others just seem too mean and not disinterested enough (asthma inhaler). My favorites in the bunch are alarm clock and glasses, but I'm still not impressed. Apparently shoes have some special psychological value I had never realized. I give thanks to the Carter Family for my continuing education.

Addendum: Amelia's recommendation is pants -- My baby's left me, she even took my pants. I feel like this is getting pretty close, but here's the thing I'm realizing about shoes that make them so special: unlike most of these other options, they don't have a lot of emotional baggage attached to them. If she takes his asthma inhaler or glasses, for example, the act seems cruel and petty, and she appears genuinely to wish him injury. Taking his pants likewise seems cruelly embarrassing, as our hapless protagonist will likely have to appear in public unclothed unless a phone somehow got left behind in the rubble.

But shoes don't seem particularly cruel, nasty, injurious, embarrassing, etc., at least to me -- sort of emotionless, in fact. She dispassionately, coolly, calmly took every last thing with her when she went; she exists less as a person, and more as a symbol of the now emptiness of his life and total bewilderment as to what to do next.

WHOSE LOSES FAVOR WITH RELATIVIZED POSSESSORS

In another valiant and heretofore unsung effort to free itself from the shackles of whose, English has produced one more revolutionary in the person of Ben Wenet, who on August 22nd, 2008, was observed to state:

"I have a friend that's mom lives there too, so..."

This is largely the same strategy we saw with Micole Arny, except that she chose what's as the relative pronoun instead of that's. The thing that I find particularly remarkable about this, though, is that the possessor in this clause is animate -- I would have expected a whose to slip out much more easily in this type of situation than when the possessor is inanimate as in Micole's example.

I have a theory: it could be bunnies. OR, perhaps less controversially, that whose is being increasingly considered to have been pushed into a register where it feels inappropriately formal outside of a literary context. It seems obvious to me that users of English are desperately searching for something to replace it with, and trying all kinds of different options (all of which are perfectly reasonable from a cross-linguistic perspective, it might be worthwhile to note). Two other strategies that I haven't commented on yet throw away the relative pronoun (and gap) entirely: my mother's, e.g...

"...houses that their insulation isn't thick enough..."

And, embarrassing though it is to have to admit him to the vanguard of linguistic change, John McCain's, at least on September 26th, 2008:

"We have a defense system that the costs are completely out of control."

I don't know that we have enough data to start making conclusions yet, but this much is clear to me: something is on the move here.

Meddyliau o'n caban wrth y môr

(Nod: heb eiriadur!)

Neithiwr gofynnes i Amelia os ydy hi am fod yn briod da fi, a ddwedodd hi "ydw," wrth gwrs. Doedd hi ddim y dydd o'n i'n planu i'w ofyn, ond oedd y lleuad yn olau iawn pam oedden ni'n cerdded yn ôl o'r lle ble oedden ni'n eistedd yn y dŵr ac doedd dim gen i ddewis. Dw i'n gobeithio oedd hi'n hoffi'r ffordd wnes i hi -- dw i'n moyn gofyn, ond mae ofn arna i. :)

Ac mae hi'n hoffi'r ring yn lawer, mwy na i mi allu gobeithio -- mae hi'n dweud "e'n berffaith!" Ac mae'n ymddangos byddan ni'n briod rywbryd -- fi ac Amelia, pwy basai wedi ei chredu flwyddyn yn ôl? Dw i'n meddwl tai'r dewis da oedd e -- does dim cwestiwn mod i'n ei charu hi, ac ydyn ni'n dda iawn together -- dan ni i gyd yn hapus iawn, ac mae'n trafferthion ni'n anymddangos fis ar ôl mis. Dw i'n credu tai'r byw dw i wedi eisiau trwy fy nyddiau i gyd ydy hwn. Dw i'n hapus.

Y cofnod dyddiadur cyntaf yn Gymraeg

Dw i'n eistedd ar y trên ac yn meddwl. Dw i'n teimlo'n drist, ac wn i mo'r rheswm. Mae'n wir bod Amelia wedi bod yn absennol yn ystod yr wythnos gorffennol, ac mae hwnna'n anodd i mi; ac mae gen i blanau mawr (ti'n gwybod beth ydw i'n eisiau dweud) i'r penwythnos nesaf, ac mae'n siwr fod hwnna'n mwyhad fy ing i. Dw i'n moyn i bopeth fod yn berffaith...

Nac ydw, dydy hwnna ddim yn wir. Dim perffaith, dw i mond eisiau iddi deimlo'n hapus i fod gen i -- dw i am foyn teimlo bod hi yna gen i, dim yn teithio mewn lle arall. Ac mae ofn arna i bydd hi'n aros i mi ddweud y geiriau mawr, ac yn ofydus amdani, ac fydd hi ddim yn gallu cael blas ar yr amser.

Ond beth dw i'n gallu gwneud? Mond aros, bod yn ei charu hi, ymlacio -- bydd hi'n fwy hawdd iddi hi ymlacio hefyd.