April 23, 1915

 
On April 23, 1915 one of the most famous poets of World War I died of blood poisoning en route to the Dardenelles Campaign.

He is forever remembered for the lines:

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is forever England.
There shall be in that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home

It is not often realised that he was not a soldier but a Sub-Lieutenant serving with the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve ashore. Brooke was originally buried by his fellow officers. His body was carried to the olive grove during the night and a simple stone cairn was constructed. A wooden cross bearing the above inscription was erected

Here lies the servant of God, sub-lieutenant in the English Navy
who died for the deliverance of Constantinople from the Turks

At the end of the First World War, at the instigation of his mother, this grave was replaced by the current tomb.

From Free Market Fairy Tales
 

Pick up

 
Geoffrey Chaucer (1340 or so to 1400) was an English writer that is probably most famous for his collection of Canterbury Tales. Chaucer was a ground-breaker in that he chose to write in English - it was Middle English then - rather than in the more popular French or Latin. His characters were also most realistic - to the point of coarseness and even complete vulgarity. Which is of course one reason why high school English students will still consider reading it. The pronunciation of Middle English is difficult and confusing - some say it is a little like a modern Scottish accent.

Anyway, the connection is tenuous at best but  I found these Middle English pick-up lines here.

GALFRIDUS CHAUCERES LYNES OF PICKE-VPPE:

-Do sheriffs administere thee to those who breke the kinges peace? Bycause thou lookst “fyne.”

-Ich loved thy papere, but yt wolde looke much better yscattred across the floore of myn rentede dorme roome at dawne.

-Art thou a disastrous poll tax? Bycause I feele a risynge comynge on.

-Thou lookst so mvch lyk an aungel that the friares haue lefte the roome yn terror!

-Thy beaute ys more intoxicatyng than the OVP openne bar.

-The preeste telleth me that we aren more than VII degrees of consanguinitee. Game on!

-Ich notyce that myn demense and thyn do abutte. Wolde yt plese thee to consolidate ovre powere-base in the midlands?

-Makstow a pilgrymage heere often?

-Let vs breake oure mornyng faste togedir tomorrowe. Shal ich sende a page wyth a message for thee, or shal ich wake thee wyth an aubade composid ex tempore?

-Ich coude drynke a yearlye tun of thee.

-Ich haue the tale of Lancelot yn myn roome. Woldstow rede of yt wyth me?

-Howe abovte a blancmange and the acte of Venus? Whatte, blancmange pleseth thee nat?

-If ich sayde that thou hadde a bele chose, woldstow holde it ayeinst me?

Grammar Challenges

 
Okay, I know I'm in Taiwan and that sometimes even the best schools and universities produce weird grammar and spelling. But perhaps these can be forgiven - or even smiled at, on occasion. Anyway, I cannot take the moral high ground when my Mandarin pronunciation has my wife forbidding me to speak outside of the home and my reading only just allows me to identify the men's bathroom.

But look at this - also from the Language Log. It seems the Australians, or perhaps just the guys from Queensland, have lost contact with Grammar Base.

According to Justine Ferrari, "Grammar guide an 'education disaster'", The Australian 2/20/2010:

ONE of the world's most respected authorities on grammar has written to every school principal in Queensland, warning them of an error-strewn grammar guide distributed by the state's English Teachers Association.

University of Queensland emeritus professor Rodney Huddleston says he was forced to write to schools directly because the English Teachers Association of Queensland refused to acknowledge or correct the 65 errors he had identified in its teaching guide on grammar, printed as a series of eight articles in its magazine.

Some examples:

In The small boy won't eat his lunch,"won't" is an adverb.
In The small boy is capable of eating his lunch, "capable of" is an adverb.
In a set of bowls, "set of" is an adjective.
In Sam's folder, "Sam's" is a possessive pronoun.

Oh my goodness! Maybe they got some of my students - the younger ones - to write this stuff.

 

A Metaphorical Toyota

 
Back at work. It's not pleasant. But one day my children will thank me .....right?

First thing that I came across was an interesting post from Language Log, a linguistics site that I frequent on occasion. It would appear that Toyota - once most trusted of all motor vehicle brands (my father swears by them) - is now an effective metaphor for things that need to be repaired and apologized for. Look here:

“This book is a Toyota,” said Robert S. Norris, the author of “Racing for the Bomb” and an atomic historian. “The publisher should recall it, issue an apology and fix the parts that endanger the historical record."

The background to this quote:

 William J. Broad, "Doubts Raised on Book's Tale of Atom Bomb", NYT 2/20/2010, discusses a minor scandal of historical documentation: the descriptions of a claimed "secret accident with the [Hiroshima] atom bomb", revealed in a recent non-fiction best-seller, turn out to have been based on lies and fabrications.

Salinger and Shakespeare

J.D Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye), the creator of Holden Caulfield  -the most famous teenager in the world (well, after one of those Jonas brothers) - died last week. According to the The New York Times:

J.D. Salinger, who was thought at one time to be the most important American writer to emerge since World War II but who then turned his back on success and adulation, becoming the Garbo of letters, famous for not wanting to be famous, died on Wednesday at his home in Cornish, N.H., where he had lived in seclusion for more than 50 years. He was 91.

Salinger responded to letters on occasion. Eleven years after The Catcher in the Rye was released, he wrote the following letter in response to a request for writing advice by an 'angst-ridden' first-year college student. Advice was certainly present in Salinger's reply.

Oct. 21, 1962

Dear Mr. Stevens,

I must tell you first, offputtingly or no, that I am at best a one-shot letter writer, these days. Along with that, I really never have anything to say when I`m done writing fiction at the end of a day. One thought, and one only, hits me about your letter. Entirely "materialistic," I'm afraid. You need a new typewriter ribbon. Get one or don't get one, but unless you make an effort to deal with things as unabstractly as that, you're stewing quite unnecessarily. You've decided that Things are what matter to people. Of course. Not only with "people" but with you, too. Everything in your letter is a thing, concrete or abstract. Avidya and vidya are things. For me, before anything else, you're a young man who needs a new typewriter ribbon. See that fact, and don't attach more significance to it than it deserves, and then get on with the rest of the day. Good wishes to you.

(Signed, 'JDS')

For more go to this great website: Letters of Note

John Hinckley Jr., would-be assassin of Ronald Reagan, as well as Mark Chapman, John Lennon's killer, both had copies of The Catcher in the Rye. Hinckley's was in his room and Chapman apparently carried his copy around with him. (I should mention that this gives the novel a certain morbid appeal among high school students.)

And the word assassin has its own story. Apparently, originating from an Arabic word meaning "takers of hashish (cannabis)", it refers to a group of Shia Muslims who specialized in taking out members of the Sunni elite - as well as Crusaders - during the Middle Ages.

Most notably, the word assassination was created by William Shakespeare and first used in literature in the ultimate tale of ambition, regicide and the power of a nagging wife, Macbeth.  Some controversy surrounds this piece of writing, too. There are those who claim the play is cursed and when performing the drama, actors superstitiously do not refer to it by name but as the Scottish play. The curse has caused theaters to burn down and actors to be killed or injured during productions. Supporters of the curse theory believe that Shakespeare wrote actual incantations provided by real witches into the play. Double Double Toil and Trouble Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble... Skeptics state that Macbeth  is simply a dangerous play to perform with many fighting scenes and lots of poor lighting. Mmmm...