(no subject)

How many European languages can you tell what are? (Note: This is different from being able to speak them -- you just have to be able to tell them from each other.) See here: http://explorers.whyte.com/34l/default.htm

I have an appointment at the evil perio guy's office today, which means I get to drive to Cumberland (about an hour away) in the torrential rain. Yippee. I am looking forward to both the drive and the appointment with what we will refer to as negative enthusiasm.

(no subject)

I didn't die at the Evil Perio Guy appointment. It just cost $140.00.

In other news, Not-Our-Real sent me the following in email: 今日は、仕事で、MISが「SSHが判らないものだから、使ないで下さい。」と言う電話した。 Well, except it was in romaji because she knows my email isn't all *that* kanji-compatible. For our non-Japanese-capable audience, that comes out "Today, at work, MIS called to say that they knew not of this SSH thing and therefore I would please stop using it." More or less. I had some contextual help, here, because I know that MIS is in charge of N-O-R's work's internet policy, that SSH is a tool for talking to servers without physical access to 'em, and that N-O-R talks to her server at home via SSH when she's at work. But I was pleased that I could read what she wrote, anyway, without a dictionary. Go me!

Also, here is a poem, written in Mandarin Chinese, that provides a look/listen multimedia argument against a phonetic alphabet for Mandarin Chinese. It's pretty neat even if you don't speak the language. Be sure to click on the Cantonese audio link, too, so that you can compare Cantonese to Mandarin. (Cantonese is the language of Jackie Chan movies, just so you know.)