at some interpretative point
I found out that the address at my apartment that I was told is the address to my apartment is not the address to my apartment. If anyone has attempted to send stuff to me (postcards, carefully packaged packages, anything that would require a stamp to be sent first-class), I apologize if you have had it sent back to you with the USPS message, “We don’t feel like deducing that 401 M is equivalent to 401 Apt. M.”
Brian Greene’s The Fabric of the Cosmos is really neat. But, so far the first five chapters are identical to what he wrote in The Elegant Universe. Granted, the material is so closely related that the same background material must be referenced once again. Yet, I am haphazardly racing through it with the expectation that thar be more gold to uncovrrrrr.
I had a four-hour nap this evening and it was fun. Now, I am finishing up a report for my Vibrations class that includes very neat graphs like this bumpy thing, this bumpy thing, and this twirly thing.
For the past week, every time I look outside it appears like it is about to rain. Merkwüdig.
June 14th, 2006 at 9:45 am
Merkwuerdig.
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June 15th, 2006 at 12:49 am
I stand corrected. However, my typo correction should be “Merkwürdig” according to my dictionary sources. I was aiming for a mixed expression of “remarkable” and “strange” and felt this was the best compromise.
June 15th, 2006 at 6:01 am
Umlauts can alternatively be spelled by adding an “e” to the vowel. “Merkwuerdig” literally means “notable;” “merken” is to notice, and “wuerdig” is “worthy.” It’s a good choice. Possibly a better one might be “komisch,” which in general usage means something like what the word “queer” might have meant in the 1950’s, a sort of combination of “strange” and “amusing.” It’s something of a false cognate, since the word we think it means (”comical”) would actually be “lustig.”
I just thought of this as well: If you’re at all into verse and interested in trying your hand at reading some in German, I’d look at Heinrich Heine. From what I’ve read of him, he’s relatively easy to read (you’ll need a dictionary, but mostly for vocabulary; you won’t need it every other word) and he’s beautifully German. He was born and raised there, but was forced to flee the country for Paris later in his life because of a combination of politics and the fact that he was Jewish. The poems he wrote about Germany from Paris are just achingly beautiful - check out “Nachtgedanken” for an example. The terrible irony is that these poems, some of the most nationalistic and beautiful verse ever written in German about Germany, were also some of the first to be burned by the Nazis, as early as 1933.
June 15th, 2006 at 12:55 pm
In German, when one is typing and can’t write an umlaut, one puts an “e” after the vowel.
June 15th, 2006 at 12:57 pm
p.s. Nice use of deine vokabeln.
June 16th, 2006 at 12:48 am
Kellan - But one can write an umlaut on a keyboard. For me on my Mac, it is “Option/Alt” + “u”; it gives you a highlighted doubledot and waits for you to input a vowel to go under it. So, look at me ü ä ï ö ë ÿ. And y is a vowel.
Steph - I will absolutely check that out. I have yet to actually buy an English-German dictionary and I may have to get around to that first.