How to be ridiculous in Hungarian, Estonian, Georgian and Chinese

I've started to pick up on a few fun ways to be ridiculous is other people's languages, it can be super fun so I wanted to share. Rather than take forever putting them in separate SEO optimized posts, with audio clips - I'm going to give the cliff-notes version of them all here.

The easy way to be ridiculous

A lot of other countries use their words a lot more literally than we do. For example if they say "great" they really mean something is actually great. If you speak English from the US - imagine telling somebody a cake they baked is "good" no way - it would almost be offensive; "good" to us has taken on a meaning "not good" we just don't want to say it. "Thanks" in American English it is just a hair away from being sarcastic; and if you say "thanks very much" it might not mean a whole lot of thanks. I enjoy this way to talking and so adopting this manner of speech is my favorite way to be ridiculous in other languages.

Lots of languages have slang terms that evolved from English, you usually have to dig for them since they don't appear in official translations and won't often be taught in schools. It is often funny how the local grammar mixes with English; and even funnier when you say it because nobody will expect it.

Be ridiculous in Georgian

Mariam's Georgian company got acquired by a company from the US and her new boss said something she did was "phenomenal." In Georgian the literal translation is ფენომენალური (penomenaluri) where the P and Ph are very similar phonologically and "luri"is a common Georgian suffix. I never once heard a local say this word in two months of living in Georgia. It is reserved only for the most phenomenal situations; like if St. George himself descended from the sky in front of you. People almost always smile when you use it - but be careful because the word is so powerful that you might sound sarcastic if you don't use it properly.

If you compliment food - Georgians will refuse to accept, often denying that it is truly "penomenaluri" - but if you compliment a landscape view, or refer to Georgia in general as penomenaluri then you will make friends quickly. To use it - point at a thing or answer a question with "es penomenaluria" which means "it is penomenaluri"

Hello in Georgian is გამარჯობა (Gamarjoba), and the best most normal response is "Gaumarjos" but folks will often respond "Gamarjoba" instead - especially to foreigners when it is assumed they don't know Gaumarjos. You can also alternatively say Gagimarjos. Gaumarjos is also used as "cheers" when drinking so it is jovial to say. Here is how to have a whole ridiculous conversation with someone you are just passing by:

You: Gamarjoba

Them: Gamarjoba

You: Gaumarjos

Them: * usually they will laugh here and stop, but if they respond gaumarjos, then it is peak ridiculous to respond gagimarjos

Words change in Georgian depending on how many people you are speaking to - by adding the letters "at" so Gamarjoba is to say hello to one person and Gamarjobat is to say hello to two or more. Except that "garmarjoba" is the exception where "officially" you should always say "Gamarjoba" even if saying hello to multiple people. Probably 90% of people will say it "correctly" but spend some time traveling around Georgia where people are so friendly and everyone says hi - then you will definitely hear "gamarjobat"

To be ridiculous - ignore the exception and say gamarjobat when saying hi to multiple people.

Note: I am of the opinion that there is no "wrong" way to speak - since language is a kind of big collaborative art project. Fun discussions to have if someone wants to argue with you.

Tbilisi Georgia

How to be silly in Hungarian

Hungarian is already a little silly for English speakers. To say hello, people say "szia" which sounds just like "see yah!" in English. Note that Szia is to say hello to one person, sziestok for two people. Then they use the English-derived "Hello" for both hello, and more frequently for goodbye, kind of like the Italian "Ciao." You you can say "see yah" for hello and "hello" for good bye; can't get any sillier than that... but actually you can get significantly sillier still:

Just conjugate "hello" in the form for multiple people by adding "stok" like Szia->Szie-stok, so hello becomes "hello-stok" when greeting to multiple people. Note: this is a kind of teenager slang from the 90's that for sure nobody uses anymore, but if you do - then it is absolutely penomenaluri  (thanks Kristof).

Budapest Hungary

Surprise people in Estonian

This one is hard - it is difficult to get Estonians to show emotion about anything - but one way to that sometimes works is to give way over the top thanks in true USA style. Literally translating our casual "thanks very much" into "suur äitah teile." In sentiment - this again goes way over the casual way we use it in the US - but that is kind of the point.

Another way is to use the Estonian/English slang phrase for "what the heck" which literally translates to "what a hedge" but you can really easily say it with a lot of emphasis "Mida hekki" which is awesome, almost like you are singing. Interestingly in Finland they say "mitä helvettiä" which is "what the hell" ... so rude.

Kõrvemaa Bog Estonia

How to be silly in Chinese

People teach you to say Hào chī when complimenting food, but it is much funnier to go way over the top and say it is Měiwèi 美味. One benefit of this is that the tones make is super easy to be emphatic about it, you say it kind of like you are stamping your foot on the last syllable.

People are super nice in China - so as soon as you say more than three words in Chinese people will compliment you saying that your Chinese is great, or sounds great. The humble way they teach you to respond is saying "Nǎlǐ nǎlǐ" meaning "where where" kind of like saying "hey obviously you aren't talking about me." This is a tad funny - but MUCH better is to say "it isn't" Bùshì and follow up with saying your Chinese is Mǎmǎhǔhǔ 马马虎虎. This translates literally to Horse Horse Tiger Tiger but it is silly idiom to mean "so so" or "a clumsy person" so people will always crack up if you say that describes your Chinese aptitude.

This isn't something you say out loud - but in text "3Q" means thank you, because the mandarin way to say 3 is "Sān", and reading Sān-Q phonetically sounds like "Thank you" with a Chinese accent.

Shanghai China

What to teach other people to say in English:

It is nice to learn local slang - but to be fair I try to teach folks some words that came to English from my part of the country, the greater New York City area, and donated by my own immigrant family's native language Yiddish.

The word is Schlep.

And the thing I like about "schlep" is that it doesn't just describe to haul or carry something - it describes how you feel about the act. You definitely do not want to be schlepping anything - and if you have to then you will do it begrudgingly. Also a versatile word, you can schlep yourself too and whether it is across an ocean or from the couch to answer the door - if you have to schlep there then you really didn't want to. Now there are a few select people out there who know only three to four words of English, and one the words they know is schlep.

Lower Mystic Lakes in Medford (basically Boston, USA)

Visiting world heritage rice terraces of YuanYang China 1/2

My goal for this visit to China was to see the rice terraces of Yuanyang County, Yunnan – a world heritage site. I've wanted to go ever since seeing this photo on the Bing homepage.  The photo is by Jialiang Gao, who has an impressive collection of photos on wikipedia - and an equally impressive number of uncredited photos on posters and tourist guides around the region.

Like many things in China - the scale is most impressive. Supersaturated telephoto pictures like the one above make it look like painted terraces going on for infinity - but seeing them in person in the context of the larger mountain still is quite impressive. If you can't visit yourself, please take a tour YuanYang on Google earth:

The terraces are stunningly beautiful, and part of that is knowing how much effort went into building them, all manual labor by people sometimes waist deep in mud and always using hand tools. The scale is so vast that you can barely see the people when there in person.

Up above all this - there is a little tourist villa - with a jacuzzi I could see through the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the terraces. I travelled there to see the terraces myself – but sitting in a jacuzzi watching working people pile mud for kilometers around me ... seems a bit too similar to the Monty Python sketch with Arthur and the "peasant."

To make things at least slightly better, the actual farm workers don't appear to live in poverty. They have nice houses with out-of-place looking water buffalo wandering everywhere. Lots of babies and kids lived there, tended to by the older generation - but middle aged people and young adults seemed to be completely missing. Likely off working in the cities. After thousands of years, I'm afraid this World Heritage Site will quickly become an archeological site.

One thing that was interesting - is that the colorful local dress you often see in pictures of women from Yunnan - that actually is the way they really dress - and not even just on special occasions it seems they wear super-colorful headgear non-stop, even while working in the fields.

OK now for just a bit of detail on how to get there in case you want to see it in person for yourself. First fly to Kunming (one of the biggest cities you've never heard of - with a metro area population of over 6 million).

Then take a train to Jianshui, a nice little historic village (population 490,000). From there - the rice terraces are only a 3 hour drive away. There are tourist busses, but I shared a cab for a total price of about $80 for the day, which included gas for the trip - and stopping whenever we wanted to get out and take pictures. (email me to get the contact info of the local driver who was awesome).

Even the local Baidu maps was directing us down roads that were too narrow to drive down, but Google maps definitely cannot be trusted at all navigating the more remote areas since it doesn't even have roads in the right locations.

Some particularly scenic places were actually in just about the right google maps locations here and here.

And here are a few more photos that I took along the way. Notice the water buffalo in this one:

Stay tuned since the next post is going to be all about the engineering of these things!

Illustrated Guide to Cutlery Nomenclature

This is a fork:

This is also a fork:

Courtesy of IKEA, this is a threek:

Similarly, this is a twook:

This is also a twook:

Which makes this a pile of wunks:

I know I am not the first to note this, but I wanted to provide an illustrated guide.

Caption Contest

"Mr. Bean drives a convertible with his feet." Any more good ideas for captions? . . . (This seen between NY and Boston).

Credit Card Security

Its a good thing that they make you sign those electric pads whenever you use your credit card. Otherwise - how could they be sure of your identity? Notice my signature printed out there. I recall they have a better system in England, but I can't seem to remember what it is . . .

Soap Lettering

Hey everyone,

10 points to anyone who can figure out why the words are backwards. This is not photo-shopped at all.

hint: you may be looking at more than one bar of soap . . .

The northern lights

I went to Labrador - didn't see the northern lights but I heard a lot about them. The locals all had interesting opinions about when they come out. Here are a few of the highlights:

• "You can only see them in the summertime, I see them all the time then."
• "It needs to be a very chilly night"
• "Its usually above a river, something in the moisture makes them appear"
• "They only come out in the winter, and never in the summer"
• "You need to walk outside at night and whistle then they will come out"

Note that when people said these things they were stating them as facts, not theories. They truly believed it.

(photo from emagine-travel.co.uk)

Spring break at the Manicouagan Reservoir

Two weeks ago I introduced everyone to the manicouagan reservoir crater from outer space. Now I will show you what it looked like up close last week.

A small herd of Caribou stroll along the lake surface, purportedly frozen 6 feet down.

There is the Manic-5 Dam, it is the worlds largest multiple arch and buttress dam (214 m tall and 1.3 km long), its hard to get a sense of scale from the photo.

There is one road that goes past it, Rt 389. It is an amazing road, well isolated from civilization but surprisingly well traveled even in winter. The road goes 561 km without a single city or town and only 3 gas stations. We did make it to Labrador city in the end.

Labrador city is just past the 52 Parallel.

Craigslist: Teflon pot with a hole in the bottom

My roommates pot sprung a leak the other day so I'm giving it away on craigslist. See my ad here. Now this is the second time I'm posting it, it was flagged and deleted the first time - I don't know why. Below the picture I've copied the text of the post.

I have a great non-stick coated pot which you can have for free. It is unusual in that it has a tiny hole in the bottom. This posting was previously flagged and deleted, I would like to clarify that this is not a joke. I have a real pot (see photo) that I would like to give away, and it has a real hole in the bottom. It is the sort of hole you don't notice until you have spent five minutes boiling water in it wondering why your stove is making funny noises. It could be useful for cooking pasta, by the time it is cooked all the water will have strained out. If you are not interested in a pot full of liquid oozing onto your stove-top do not despair! This pot is perfectly suited for heating smooth pebbles and other ingredients too large, solid and dry to fit through the small hole. These objects are also guaranteed not to stick to the bottom (although nonstick may be scratched).

The uses for this pot are nearly endless so I'll only put a few short ones here:

• It could be possible to use this pot as a small boat for a short period of time. I don't recommend leaving anything valuable inside the boat because in about 10 minutes it is likely to fills with water and sink to the bottom of your bathtub.
• It would be perfect as a display or decorative pot, for example to hold plastic cheerios for a photo-shoot
• The tiny hole lets in some light and it would probably make a great pinhole camera, if you know what that is.
• If you don't have very many pots, this one could keep your other cookware company. I don't really recommend this though because it has become quite bitter since its debilitating accident.
• Well suited for a Johnny Appleseed costume, unlike most pot/hats, this one is slightly ventilated to keep your head cool and dry. Adding fur to the handle would turn it into a decent Davey Crocket costume.
• No mess when cooking dry ice, nitrogen and other gases.
• One could use it as a model for artists drawing still life. The pot has a fantastic aptitude for holding still, even with loud distractions or a hot fire burning under it is brass
• The pot would also make a great vegetable peeler, if you melted it down and built a vegetable peeler out of it.

Update:

The post was flagged and removed, lets see why?

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/forums/?forumID=3

Idolatry in Chestnut Hill Reservoir

While walking in the park near the Chestnut Hill Reservoir near Brighton and Brookline MA I noticed something quite inexplicable. I found in the snow an open completely new bottle of Solignac Cognac, the lid to said bottle, two upright and unlit candles, two lit- but not smoked cigars and a pack of matches with only a few missing.
You might think this sort of thing happens not so often, but earlier this winter I saw a similar thing. That time there were two empty martini glasses, a filled a bottle of rum, another filled bottle of some hard liquor, an open a pack of cigarettes with just one or two missing, two ceramic plates filled with sand and again two lit but not smoked cigars. It looked like they had left in a hurry but it may have just been the wind scattering the things.

Anyone have any particular theories about what this is?

GREs and ETS

The ETS website seems to have been programmed by an incompetent two year old. Its operation reminds me of the old phone systems where you need to enter the same information five times at each step of the way. I show just one example when I tried to send my scores to an institution.

After all my personal information has been entered I expected to see a nice set of check boxes where I could see my test scores and select the ones that I want to send. Instead I was faced with not one but three pieces of information I needed to provide in order to bring up my test.

They first needed one of the following:

• Web Registration Confirmation Number. You might expect this number to be in the confirmation email. There was some number in this email but it wasn't this one!
• Registration Number. This number was only on the paper thing they mailed to me.
• Appointment Number: This must be an internal GRE thing that only they know.

Then they asked for two more points of confirmation, just so that I can select the score. But they know all the tests I've taken!!! Why must I remember all these things and enter such an excess of redundant information!!!

For a company that charges $20 to print a piece of paper ¢3 put it in an envelope ¢3 and bulk mail it ¢44, (thats a markup of about 40 times the actual cost) you would think they could hire a web developer rather than having their sloppy cousin's kid hack it together (presumably).

Here are some tag words to go along with this post:

GRE, ETS, SAT, EVIL, Bulshit, French, pain in the neck, tortuous, maddening, sloppy, childish, unprofessional, monopoly, extortion . . .

Please feel to leave any more adjectives that come to your mind when you think of ETS and the GREs or the SATs.

Who would win in a fight, bricks or mortar?

Many of you have seen the mysterious case of the worn out bricks on that road, 95 which goes out of NY. I can't find the exact place I took this photo, but here is the general area on street view.

Here is my theory.

The mortar is stronger than the bricks, the bricks gets washed away by wind, sand and water. The mortar sticks around longer because it is stronger.

Any other ideas or reasons why this could be happening?

Wikipedia Donation

I donated $20 to Wikipedia today - it went through as anonymous, you can see my donation here. It was in honor of Dror, who is one of the founders of the Hebrew wikipedia. His picture (copied below, he's on the bottom right, wearing a red shirt, behind the guy taking a picture) is on the main donate site. See his picture and donate here.

Dror has been previously mentioned on this blog from wikimania.

Browns Stages of Productive Syntax

Notice that that Early I goes from 1.01 to 1.49, and Late I goes from 1.50 to 1.99, with Stage II starting at 2.0 etc.

I find it very interesting that they would have chosen a discontinuous scale whereby children with a reasonable "MLU" of say, 1.995 would not not lie in any of these categories. In fact there are uncountably infinite numbers between 1.99 and 2.00, something that these child linguisticitians are apparently not aware of.

The new Googleism, Google Suggest

Back in the day googlism was a site which allowed you to find out what google thinks of you, your friends or anything. Now you can use Google suggest (graduated from Google labs).
Just go to Google.com and type in a few words and see what comes up:

It shows what people are searching for, what people are really thinking about in America and the English speaking world!

Starting with politics, this goes to show what everyone already knew, most of what is written is slander, with very little positive!

My favorites in the politics category: Republicans are Happier, democrats are destroying america, obama is god, george bush is an alien.

My favorites in the people category: the pope is the Antichrist, Michael Jackson is still alive, Brittney spears is fat, French people are Italian people in a bad mood.

My favorites in the things category: banks are more dangerous than armies, my apartment is infested with koalas . . .

Apparently a lot of people are wondering: Italy is located where and in what continent. The ones wondering in part of what country Italy is, are in for a surprise. I'm glad though that they are at least trying, perhaps they will learn some geography from Google!

Lastly my it is only appropriate to see that people are searching for "Google is going to take over" the world!

Open Letter to the BU Farmer’s Market

Dear Kelly,

I have recently purchased my books for the semester from the BU Barnes and Nobles and so I have no money left. Do you know if the BU farmers market will accept an arm and/or a leg instead of cash? I heard that is the way they do business.
Thanks,
-Jonathan

As you can see in the photo, squash is $3 a pound. The same squash is $1 a pound in my local market but in a less fancy basket.

Below is the email to which I was replying, the green font was their choice because of the amount of green cash required to make use of this farmers market:

About the Farmer’s Market:
Dining Services is a proud sponsor of the weekly market featuring locally grown
fruits and vegetables, fresh baked goods, and crafts made by area artists.
Stop by every Thursday through the end of October and support your local
vendor community!

New Clock Design

The minute hand broke off of my clock the other day so I fixed it by adding "ish" to every number.

Okay - the truth is that I was inspired by a joke of Demetri Martin in his show important things and actually cut the minute hand off myself.

Initially just a joke, in just a week I have grown to really like this clock for a few reasons. When I don't have somwhere to be, I generally want only to know the time to "ish" prescision. This makes reading the clock extremely fast and easy, even from a distance. Yes I know that reading clocks is already a fast and easy task for most people, but imagine it being *even more* fast and easy!

I have found myself able to read the time on this clock without my glasses on. As someone with terrible vision - I can't gather the time from a normal clock more than a few inches from my face. On the other hand (no pun intended) I can read this special clock just as accurately with and without glasses.

I think that we should make these clocks standard in all places except airports, train stations and bakeries.

Harmonograph

Some of you may remember a harmonograph I constructed a very long time ago. A few months ago it was noticed by someone from Barnes & Noble who was involved in the soon-to-be book The Art and Science of Spirals. Below is the picture that I expect to be in the book when it comes out in August.

In fact, they even wanted to pay me for this, and asked for an invoice. I then created my first invoice ever, No 001 and sent it to them. Its copied below.

I N V O I C E Jonathan C. Lansey [address removed] Right to Publish Image Sold to: Barnes & Noble, Inc. [address removed] New York, NY 10011 Invoice No Date Date Uploaded to Ftp Server 001 1/28/09 1/22/09 Quantity Description Price 1 Rights to use image drawn by my Harmonograph in the book The Art and Science of Spirals. $100.00 and a free copy of the book when it is published Invoice Total in US Dollars $100.00

And to my near disbelief, they actually sent a check a bit later!

So expect another blog post when I get mailed my free copy of the book - hopefully soon! (they say "August").

Open letter to Scott McLaughlin, PhD

Dear Professor McLaughlin,

My class in language development is using your text, Introduction to Language Development (second edition, Thomson) and I have run across something which I would like to ask you about.

On page 86, Chapter 3, the section on Physical Contact, second paragraph (last one on the page) I quote:

"Physical contact between infants and caregivers is as necessary as breathing. In the most basic sense, infants would not survive without it."

First, by what metric do you define "as necessary as," or in what measure of necessity are they equal.

Second, what references do you have to back up this claim. I could not find any myself and so I suspected you may have accidentally written the statement in language implying it were true.

Thanks very much for your help in this,

-Jonathan

When I brought this up in class the other students and professor were actually defending it. But it turns out that saying "they have done studies" when you can't name a single one, is just like saying "I made it up."

Update, Professor McLaughlin responded extremely politely with a good answer to my question. The statement was metaphorical. You may also notice that he is a talented author as this email is very well written

Hi Jonathan,

First, I want to thank your for taking the time and showing the interest to inquire about my book. I'm always gratified that someone has chosen to use my book. When I decided to write it, I never planned on getting rich (and I have not), but I was enriched by the thought that maybe my approach to the subject matter would be helpful to someone - an instructor or a student. I hope you have found it to be a "student friendly" text.

With regard to my statement about physical contact being as necessary as breathing, on one level I would say that it is metaphorical - the way someone might say, "I would just die if I couldn't watch baseball every night." On the other hand, in a more real way, there were a number of studies that occurred in the U.S. during the 40s and 50s investigating the effects of "psychosocial deprivation" in orphanages. They found that even though orphaned babies were provided with sufficient nutrition, the ratio of infants to caregivers in the institutions was so high that infants were fed regularly but rarely cuddled. As a result, they had stunted physical and neurological development - failure to thrive - even to the point that some died without any apparent physical cause.

Because mine is a "normal development" text, I didn't think to go into that kind of background information to substantiate my metaphor, but you may be correct in the suggestion that it should be substantiated and maybe even backed up with citations. At the very least, I might include a "text box" that relates the anecdotal evidence from the orphanage studies I mentioned in the next edition.

I always appreciate any suggestions or questions that serve to improve the book so thank you for taking the time and interest to pose your question. Good luck in your studies - ours is a very complex, exciting, and challenging field so continue to give it your all!

Sincerely

Scott F. McLaughlin

Boston T Party

Last sunday I organized a party on the Boston T (thats like the subway for Boston). I haven't had a chance to blog about it but there is actually a website for the event, check it out BostonTParty.org

It got a bit of press from the boston globe blog and Ike and I actually did a radio interview with the NPR station WBUR. I don't think know if you can still get a sound clip but the link to the show is here.

It was fun, about 50 people showed up for it.

My friend Fanny made this great logo - which based on the "charlie card" which is like a metro card for Boston.