Our friend Ruth with whom we have taught in Asia the last two summers has been here in Greenville on an extended leave to help her elderly parents and is now preparing to go back next week. One month before her scheduled departure, her university there informed her that since her passport would run out in 5 months, she would need to get a new one. We were all amazed that she was able to get her passport renewed and then get the necessary visa in it in 18 days! She loves the confirmation that Someone wants her there this school year. One evening this week our little team of teachers from last summer is taking her out for Asian food before her return next week.

Recently Ruth forwarded a list of ways you can know you’ve lived in China too long. My wife and I have lived there only two months, so we had not experienced all the things in her list, but we saw enough to know that nothing in the list is out of the realm of likelihood.

You Know You’ve Lived in China Too Long When…

You think a 30-year-old woman’s carrying a Hello Kitty lunch box is cute

All white people look the same to you

You like the smell of the bus

You no longer need tissues to blow your nose

You find Western toilets uncomfortable

You think it’s OK to throw rubbish, including old fridges, from your 18th-floor window

You believe that pressing the button 63 times will make the elevator move faster

You aren’t aware that one is supposed to pay for software

You are not surprised to see your tap water run dark brown

You think that a $7 shirt is a rip-off

You started to buy an XXXL T-shirt in a store when you returned home

You think it’s silly to buy a new bike when it’ll get stolen soon, and stolen bikes are half the price

You feel cheated if you don’t receive a full head and shoulder massage when getting a haircut

You blow your nose or spit on the restaurant floor (of course after making a loud hocking noise)

You no longer wait in line, but go immediately to the head of the queue (=the line)

You no longer wonder how someone who earns US $400.00 per month can drive a Mercedes

You regard it as just part of the adventure when the waiter correctly repeats your order and the cook makes something completely different

You accept the fact that you have to queue to get a number for the next queue

You are not surprised when three men with a ladder show up to change a light bulb

You honk your horn at people because they are in your way as you drive down the sidewalk

You have a pinky fingernail an inch long

You burp in any situation and don’t care

You have absolutely no sense of traffic rules

You start cutting off large vehicles on your bicycle

You go to a local shop in pajamas

You think - pollution, what pollution?

Someone doesn’t stare at you, and you wonder why

You wear out your vehicle’s horn before its brakes

Forks feel funny

Chinese remakes of Western songs sound better than the originals

You get homesick for real Chinese food when away from China

Your handshake is weakening by the day

You have compiled a 3-page list of weird English first names that Chinese people of your acquaintance have chosen for themselves

Your collection of business cards has outgrown your flat

The last time you visited your family, you gave each person your business card

You and a friend get on a bus, sit at opposite ends of the bus, and continue your conversation by yelling from one end to the other

You cannot say a number without making the appropriate hand sign

You start recognizing the Chinese songs on the radio and sing along to them with the taxi driver

You feel insulted when you enter a restaurant and only three greeters welcome you

Signs like the one below don’t look odd to you…

quotation…

“We have a low estimation of how much prayer can change our circumstances.” - Dr. Drew Conley

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Rob

Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond to it.

I wanted to post a really nice Easter story I’d received by email some time back, but when I did a web search, I found that I could use it only with special permission. I wrote the author for permission, but it has not yet come. If you’d like to read the story, you can do so at http://www.cresourcei.org/jegg.html where it is posted with the author’s permission. My link to this site is not an endorsement of everything else on the site.

I ran across something in my files the other day that I thought some of you might enjoy - a Shakespearean Insult Kit. Use it if you need fresh ideas for when boorish rubes intrude upon your serenity?

Ye Olde Official Shakespearean Insult Kit
(I’ve seen this attributed several times to Jerry Maguire, English teacher at Center Grove High School in Greenwood, Indiana.)

With this handy-dandy Shakespearean Insult Kit, you can have the spleen of The Bard at your disposal, with all his lexicographical command of vituperation.

To construct a Shakespearean insult, combine one word from each of the three columns below, and preface it with “Thou.” To enjoy this fully, you really should try to say the Shakespearean insults out loud.

SAMPLES:
Thou unmuzzled beetle-headed ratsbane!
Thou surly tickle-brained measle!
Thou reeky hasty-witted bugbear!

All’s well here. *Lots* going on at this time! I’ve been in a “grading vortex” this week with many compositions and tests to grade. (Who makes these assignment sheets anyway?!) Yesterday we attended this year’s Living Gallery with several neighbors who really enjoyed it. Tomorrow morning is our monthly Men for Missions breakfast at church. After that we have choir practice till noon for Sunday. Sunday we’re having two identical services for Easter at our church, with lots of special music. Monday Becka and I will be celebrating our 30th anniversary.

Our grandson is 4 weeks old today and is doing fine. Megan is feeling much better and would be feeling even better if she got a full night’s sleep! The other day I posted several new pictures of him (see the blog entry under this one). When I posted those, Becka wanted me to put out several pictures of our flowers out front. The pictures don’t do them justice. They’re really beautiful.

quotation…

“God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know it’s me.” - unknown

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Wishing you a Blessed Easter! He is risen indeed!

Rob

Copywight 2007 Elmer Fudd. All wights wesewved.

We are reminded daily here of how difficult and inexplicable our “Engrish” language really is. I can hardly imagine having to learn English as a foreign language. What a task that would be! But I remind my students that their language is also no piece of rice cake either, and I demonstrate at least some of the difficulties when attempting to say some of the few things I know in their language. Suffice it to say, my students are mildly to wildly amused at my feeble attempts in Chinese. I hope they can not only see the reverse problem, but also have more confidence to make mistakes themselves instead of sitting quietly by.

Today’s iv is a poem that points out only a few of the anomalies of the English language.

The English Lesson
attributed to Richard Krogh

We’ll begin with box, and the plural is boxes;
But the plural of ox should be oxen, not oxes.
Then one fowl is goose, but two are called geese
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.

You may find a lone mouse or a whole lot of mice,
But the plural of house is houses, not hice.
If the plural of man is always called men,
When couldn’t the plural of pan be called pen?

The cow in the plural may be cows or kine,
But the plural of vow is vows, not vine.
And I speak of a foot, and you show me your feet,
But I give a boot - would a pair be called beet?

If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn’t the plural of booth be called beeth?
If the singular is this and plural is these,
Why shouldn’t the plural of kiss be nicknamed kese?

Then one may be that, and three may be those,
Yet the plural of hat would never be hose;
We speak of a brother, and also of brethren,
But though we say mother, we never say methren.

The masculine pronouns are he, his and him,
But imagine the feminine she, shis, and shim!
So our English, I think you will all agree,
Is the trickiest language you ever did see.

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you
On hiccough, thorough, slough, and through?

Well done! And now you wish, perhaps
To learn of less familiar traps?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.

And dead; it’s said like bed, not bead;
For goodness sake, don’t call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat,
(they rhyme with suite and straight and debt)

A moth is not a moth in mother.
Nor both in bother, broth in brother.
And here is not a match for there.
And dear and fear for bear and pear.

And then there’s dose and rose and lose –
Just look them up — and goose and choose.
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword.

And do and go, then thwart and cart.
Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start.
A dreadful language? Why, man alive,
I’d learned to talk it when I was five,

And yet to write it, the more I tried,
I hadn’t learned it at fifty-five!

***
Our classes are going fine, and our social lives are quite active. We’ve been invited out to dinner every night this week except Wednesday by students or others here whom we have gotten to know. And dinner engagements for next week have already begun, with Monday already planned.

My wife Becka started getting a cold the other day, and she is sure that it has now gone into a sinus infection. She had brought along a prescription of antibiotic that her doctor back home gave her before the trip, and so she has begun to take that medication. I have completed my Chinese medicine. Phew! I really do feel much better now, and I’m especially happy to have finished the medicine!

quotation…

“One day every knee will bow. Those who see things as they really are are on their knees now.” - Dr. Drew Conley

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Rob Loach in Greenville SC

If a parsley farmer is sued, can they garnish his wages?

Several times lately I’ve been in situations where people were having fun with “pseudo-German.” As a French teacher and a former German teacher, I actually enjoy humor about the languages I love. One article I’m sending today pokes fun at English, and the other lampoons German - both are tongue-in-cheek.

The European Commission has announced an agreement whereby English will be the official language of the EU, rather than German, which was the other possibility.

As part of the negotiations, the British Government conceded that English spelling had room for improvement and has therefore accepted a five-year for phasing in of “Euro-English”.

In the first year, “s” will replace the soft “c”. Sertainly, this will make sivil servants jump for joy. The hard “c” will be dropped in favour of the “k”, Which should klear up some konfusion and also keyboards kan have one less letter.

There will be growing publik enthusiasm in the sekond year, when the troublesome “ph” will be replaced with “f”, making words like “fotograf” 20% shorter.

In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will enkourage the removal of double letters which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent “e” is disgrasful, and it should go away.

By the fourth yer, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps such as replasing “th” with “z” and “w” with “v”.

During ze fifz yer, ze unesesary “o” kan be dropd from vords kontaining “ou” and similar changes vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters. After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis and everivun vil find it ezi to understand ech ozer. Ze drem of a united urop vil finali com tru! Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German lik zey vunted us to in ze forst plas!

***
Germany to Phase Out German
by William Grim

For the sake of those who don’t know German (and you don’t really need to to catch most of the humor), You’ll find a little “glossary” at the beginning of the article to unlock a couple of the otherwise hidden elements of humor. The author himself glossed some of the terms in the article. I also did one minor tweak to the wording to make it more appropriate to my clientel.

GLOSSARY– (the translations within the story itself were made by the author, William Grim, and not by ivman, and are not all completely accurate)

Lappenhund = lap dog
Pferdeloskarriage = horseless carriage
Fragenschlager = question slinger

Berlin - Citing the success of the new Euro currency, the members of the German Bundestag have voted unanimously to phase out German and to adopt English as the new official language.

“Let’s face it,” said German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. “German is one ugly language. I mean, the German word for butterfly is Schmetterling, for goodness sake. That sorta says it all.”

Leading German businessmen, like Deutscheseisenbahngesellschaftdirigent (German Railroad Company director) Guenther Lappenhund, say the language changeover will save the Germany economy billions. “We spend all this money on dual-language signage and for dubbing movies,” said Herr Lappenhund from his Hamburg office. “What a waste. Who wants to watch ‘Hey, Dude, Where’s My Car?’ (’Achtung, Duede, Wo Ist Meine Pferdeloskarriage?’) in German anyway?”

German mental health experts don’t think that the loss of their native tongue will be any more traumatic than the change from the Deutschmark to the Euro, which most Germans took in stride. “It’s not like Germans have much to be proud of,” said Dr. Renate Steinheimer, chairperson of the Psychology Department of Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich. “You don’t see swarms of young Germans painting themselves red, black and gold and running through Dachau chanting ‘Ger-man-y!’ over and over. You think Germany, you still think of ol’ Schiklgruber and Sargeant Schultz of Hogan’s Heroes. There hasn’t been much positive news out of Germany since the Treaty of Westphalia ended the Thirty Year’s War in 1648.”

Although details of the changeover are still being finalized, the general plan appears to be a complete conversion to English by January 1, 2007 with a 20% reduction in German usage each year for the next five years. German words beginning with letters A to D are slated to be retired by January 1, 2003. A national party is scheduled for December 31, 2006 when at 11:59pm the entire country of Germany will yell out “zwischen” (”between”) legally for the last time.

“It’ll be kinda sad,” said Bruenhilde Fragenschlager, a 10th grade student at the Hockenheimer Hochschule fuer Linguistik und Grammatik (Hockenheimer High School for Linguistics and Grammar), “But I understand the reasons for the change. Still, it’s nice that “Gesundheit” and “Kindergarten” are going to be grandfathered in, but I guess that’s because they’re really English words now. Boy, the next time we start a war, I sure hope we wait to invade Russia until after we’ve defeated England.”
___
by William Grim
© Copyright 2002

quotation…

“The gray areas of life are the dwelling place of the defiled conscience.” - Dr. Randy Jaeggli

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Rob Loach in Greenville SC

Change is constant, and the most dangerous place to be is inside your own comfort zone.