Meanings...

I have to laugh. People can read the same exact words and take them completely differently. Seems like some see them for what they are and some see them for what they want them to mean.

Any language has connotation, and simple phrases can mean many different things depending upon who says it and how they say it. The spoken language is rife with the easy double-entendre, and many people assume the more risque meaning. But that's not even what I was speaking of in the first place. I love facebook, because it is so easy to misunderstand what someone means in their updates. You really come to realize just how many people can't spell, but not only that, how few have a true grasp of their own language. How do they expect the world to take them seriously in the need to use English in America, when they can barely use English effectively themselves?

I was never really a grammar guru, unless someone was actually trying to sound intelligent, then I was always glad to help. I have always been proud of the fact that I can speak properly when I need to, but I also love to mangle the language on purpose. Sadly, too many people mangle the language completely oblivious to the fact that they are doing so. I'm entirely too lazy today to find and post examples, but one of my pet peeves is the current usage of the phrase, "All of a sudden..." entirely too many people are beginning to say, "All the sudden..." Absolutely incorrect, and the most annoying thing going right now. The other one that is killing me, is in the written language, when people say the word "Should've," ( which technically isn't really correct either as it should be "should have") and then spell it as "should of". It kills me!!

Oh well, sadly it will only get worse. "Idocracy" is more premonition than comedy.

what life has in store...

we are born, we live, we die. Everyone follows that basic path in life, but some of us fill the middle part with so much stuff, that it seems like they have lived 3 lifetimes. Other people, well, let's just say that they complain more about what they don't do than what they actually do.

Yes, I am one to complain, but I am also one to go and do too, so I fall somewhere in that middle ground. I like to try new things and see new places, and sometimes even meet new people. At the same time, I am limited in what I can accomplish because of financial or time barriers. Usually the time barrier is based on trying to overcome the financial barrier, but still! So that said, I have found that sometimes it is not the things that we go out and seek that bring the most fun, or satisfaction. Occasionally it is the surprises in life that are really the best things.

I have found that when I am open to new experiences, I find them. Whether it is trying new things, learning something new, or simply meeting new people. Everyday that we walk this planet, we have a chance to try something new. It's simply a matter of making s different choice than you have made before. Step outside of your usual rut and find something different. Have you driven by a particular road for years, and always wondered what down it? Take a few extra minutes on your way home some afternoon and see. Maybe you will find a park or a pasture, or someones flower garden that makes your day. Have you always wanted to travel but can't afford it? Maybe take the time to learn the language of someplace that you want to visit. You don't have to become fluent, but open your mind and perhaps find some friends who speak that language and practice. You will find a new way of seeing the world when you can describe it in a new way.

As a photographer, one of the things that we always try to do ( at least good photogs anyways!) is try to see things in a way that is unique and interesting. There are somethings in this world that have been photographed so many times that you may never have a chance to get a unique pic, but if you are looking for it, you just may find it. How many pictures have you ever seen of the Eiffel Tower in the fog? SO if you're ever in Paris and it's a foggy day, Go take that picture, you may just have the coolest picture ever! And all because you were open to something different.

We are on this planet for a relatively short time and while there is much debate about what comes afterward, the one thing that we know for sure, is that most people only remember one life at a time. Since we only get one chance to remember it, we may as well have some fun with it!

Peevish

One thing that drives me nuts is when people screw up their own language, especially when they do it thinking they are correct! I don't mind it when someone knows better and simply makes a point of mistakes, in a joking manner. Like when someone pronounces "scissors" as "skissors", or when they pronounce the "k" in knife, knee or knob, that is funny and obviously a purposeful mispronunciation . What drives my nutty however, is the misstatement of a normal everyday expression, and there is one in particular that has been bugging me lately and it seems to be getting worse.

For all of my life there has been an expression using an adjective, to express surprise, and the expression is, "All of a sudden..." Somewhere in the last few years I have noticed various people using the misstated expression, "All the sudden..." Apparently it began as the slight misstatement, "All of the sudden..." but somewhere along the line people began dropping the "of" from the expression and they have managed to bastardize an already bastardized expression! What the hell is wrong with saying it correctly? Drives me nuts!!

Now the other thing that I have been thinking about lately has to do with relationships. Specifically, how people treat each other in them. I have been noticing recently that many people in long term relationships treat each other quite poorly. It is odd to me how the behavior that we wouldn't tolerate in strangers, or even our friends, we let our "lovers" get away with regularly. We often let them walk over our feelings and treat us with near disdain, and disrespect. Yet, if the people that we called friend treated us with half of the same disrespect we would drop them from our lives and probably never talk to them again. However, when the person that we share our life with treats us this way, we give them chance after chance, and yet they do it over and over again. If you caught a friend lying to you on multiple occasions, you would walk away from them and find new friends. If you found your friends stealing from you, you would not remain friends for very long, still, time and again those that we "love" are allowed another chance. Stupid people. If you can't be friends with someone, how can you fall in love with them? I just don't get it!

Too many dreams...

Dreams of travel, and dreams of leisure, riches and pleasures. Every day we dream about what could be, and what we feel should be, but mostly what we would like most. Or at least what we think we would like most. Everyone knows the old saying, "Money can't buy happiness." and that is true is many ways, but it can also be a fallacy if taken to be literally true. Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy things that help one find their happiness.

I wish to travel and see the world. With money, I could do this much more easily, with lots of money I could also do it comfortably! To me travel is about learning new things and seeing new places and experiencing things in new ways. Part of this is learning new languages. Since I am not surrounded by the united nations I have to seek out ways to learn new languages, and again that can take money. So money doesn't buy the happiness, but the things that bring the happiness.

There is another old saying, "If you find a job you love, you will never work again." This one I think is much more truthful. Who hasn't been doing something that they thoroughly enjoy, and thought that if they could make a living at it, they would be happy to do it all the time. Everyone has something that they like to do, and that the are at least reasonably good at. I love taking pictures. I like travel, and taking pictures. If I could find a way to pay the bills and travel and take pictures, I would be quite content in my work. To me I wouldn't be working, even with a deadline and the need to take certain pictures. As long as it was all that I had to do to get my pay, I would be pretty darn happy.

Sadly, most of the world does what it has to do to pay the bills. People in generally do what they must do to survive, and that means that most people in the world are not really doing what they love. The brunt of humanity survives, and they find happiness in the little pleasures that life hold. Physical pleasure in sex, or the chemical pleasure in drugs or alcohol. The pleasure of the company of friends who think and feel the same way that we do about our lot in life. The pleasure of a day away from work, doing that thing that we true love to do. Laying in the sun, swimming in the pool or the lake, slicing through the water on a sail boat. Playing with the children, turning the soil and tending to a garden. Pleasure is like beauty, it is in the eye of the beholder. To me mowing the lawn is a pleasure, but to many it is a chore that must be done.

Doing what you must, and doing what you love. It depends on which one can keep you in beer and skittles. Sometimes you do what you must so that you will have the money and time to do what you love. Too many dreams, not enough time to do what I must in order to pay for what I love. Money can't buy happiness, but it can pay for the stuff that makes me happy.

Verbal ticks and other piss-me-offs!!

I have noticed lately that people are more and more writing their verbal ticks into their correspondence and blogs. While I understand a "character" writer using this technique to show the personality of the character, when you are writing as yourself and everyone already knows your character and you're trying to at least seem intelligent, why? Words like "gah" and "meh" and even "like" and "ya know" are becoming more prominent in the written language, and they are a pain in the eyes. They drive me nuts as much as other grammatical bad habits. I can understand certain regional things, but a verbal tick is just insane to accentuate in your writing.

Verbal ticks were recently brought into the mainstream consciousness by no less than the Daughter of Camelot, Caroline Kennedy. In her failed bid to be appointed to Hillary Clinton's vacant senate seat, she was interviewed for a broadcast news show and her verbal ticks became the fodder of the critics for weeks. So much so that it actually made her rethink her wishes to get into politics. She is smart and well written, but when she speaks she has her crutches. Nobody who has read the things that she writes would have expected that in a one-on-one unscripted interview she would come across sounding like an ill prepared teenager, " like... ya know?"

Another Piss-me-off lately that I have been noticing more and more is people saying, "All the sudden..." Where did they learn English? The phrase is, "All of a sudden..." , or "suddenly" I have no idea where or when people began saying, "the sudden", but I remember taking note of it sometime in the last year, because I thought it sounded odd. Then I heard it a few more times and I began to pay attention to it, and I find it more and more in common usage. It sounds like someone who never understood song lyrics, trying to repeat what they have heard. It's a "bad moon on the rise.", not a "bathroom on the right." and Jimmy says, "Excuse me while I kiss the sky!", not "Scuse me while I kiss this guy!"

A few weeks ago I brought up the use of the article "an" in front of the word "historic", and I have figured out the reason for this. Grammar gurus like to remind people that the correct usage is to use "a" in front of a consonant, and "an" in front of a vowel, but when the consonant is silent such as is the usual usage for words like "herbs" and "homage" the usage should be the same as the vowel lead. Historic is a HARD "h" sound!! written or spoken in should be "A historic..." , however the "a" sound should be the long sound as in "pain", rather than the short "a" sound as in "sofa".

Freaking Geniuses!! Good thing there is a freedom of speech.

Huh? What was that?

Ever talk to someone and wonder if they know how they sound? Do you hear your own accent? Does a Texan know he sounds like a Texan? You know the girls sound different from the guys, I don't know why, but they do. I have the opportunity to talk on the telephone to people from every corner of the country and it is funny how some have the quintessential regional accent, and then there are others who seem to have worked very hard to shed the accent, and yet it is still trickling out. Then there are the transplants who have their original accent but "tainted" by their new location.

A lot has been made about Madonna and her British accent, which she shouldn't have since she is from Detroit. What most people will never understand is that as a woman, a singer and a musician she was destined to pick up the British accent. It was completely unavoidable unless she refused to interact with the British people that she was living around. Why do I say this? Well, it has to do with my own experience, it seems to be a natural mechanism of women to adapt to their surroundings and part of that adaption is to absorb the local accent. I'm sure that there is an anthropological reason such as the need to find a mate or some such, and it makes sense. By blending in with the local population it makes the task of fitting in and finding a mate much easier. There are those accents that may never be lost such as the Bronx, or the real deep southern drawl. And sometimes a national accent such as German or Russian may be very hard to shake, but if the ear is good then it is very likely that the accent will be pretty near indiscernible after some practice. A great example of this is The model Heidi Klum, I was recently listening to her give an interview, and although she learned English later in her life, she has nearly no accent to her English. Most people would not be able to hear even the slightest lilt to her English, but to those of us with a good ear can still pick it out.

Musicians and Singers are great at picking up an accent and blending in to a new area. I always wondered why I had the ability to pick up an accent, and then while talking to some other friends of mine who happened to be musicians they made the point that having an ear for music makes it easier to hear lots of other things. Consider that half of the British singers sound American when they sing, it's because they were influenced by so many of the old blues masters who were American. From New Orleans, to Memphis to Chicago the Blues brought American music to the world and the influence gave so many singers an American accent, at least when they sang.

Since I have been studying languages I have found that if I can listen to a native speaker, I can blend right in with the rest of the natives, at least when I speak! I try very hard to learn as much as I can from Native speakers of what ever language I am studying, when I was learning Spanish I listened to Colombians, Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans, when I wanted to study French I listened to the French Exchange student in my school, when I study Russian I listen to the Ukrainians that I know, because that's the accent that I want when I speak Russian. I will worry about Ukrainian later.

One thing I have learned while studying languages is that the more you learn, the easier it gets, and the more you want to learn. I agree with the idea that if you are going to live in America you should be able to speak English. I don't think that one need to be fluent the second they set foot on the ground, but at least make the effort to learn and understand. My belief also is the reason that I study languages, because I also believe that if I wish to visit someplace in the world I should be able to speak that language. Maybe not fluently, but at least enough to be able to go grocery shopping and to get around the city without getting myself in a pickle. They say that Americans are often treated rudely in foreign countries, but I think it is not because they are American, but because most Americans don't make any effort to learn about where they are going. When Americans encounter foreigners who have no English skills, all too often they treat them with the same rudeness. It only takes a little effort to learn a few key phrases in a different language, and just the fact that you are trying makes all the difference. When I was in Ukraine, and looking for a store, I asked for directions, first in my terrible Russian, and then the person I was asking realized that I spoke English and they wanted to practice English! So we made a little team for a few hours, I would practice my Russian, and they would practice their English. It was a great exchange and later I found that as long as I tried the Russian first, I got smiles and all the help I could ever need when I needed it. Sometimes I would resort to sign language, but more times than not whomever I was talking to would know enough English to understand my Russian and I was happy to be understood.

Learn a language. It's fun and you may find out that you need to learn better English. It's amazing how many English words come from Other languages and how much we already know from our own mongrel mess of a language. I once read that a child is born with the capacity to understand and emulate as many as 500 different sounds, and as they develop their language skills they lose those that they have no use for. A child will learn what it hears. Let them listen to the Foreign TV stations , rather than plonking them in front of the cartoons that you understand. Expose them to as many languages as you can. it's good for them, and you may be surprised at how much and how fast they learn.

I wish I had that chance when I was a child.