This is a question for those who know Latin.

It is an off-the-wall question, but it was something I thought of during the hour of workout (that I couldn't haul myself out of bed to do this morning, but did this afternoon because I realized the vague aches and not-feeling-rightness were probably the result of having not exercised). You need something to think about during that time. (And I don't own an iPod onto which I can download podcasts, and I'm too cheap to go out and buy books on tape and can never seem to remember to stop off at the university library to see what they have).

Anyway. I remembered in high school, some of the Latin students came up with what they thought was a clever slogan (it was to replace "Lux et Veritas" - which, yes, I know, was cribbed from Yale - that was in our school's crest). It was supposed to be a translation of "Always wear underwear" but what they came up with was "Semper ubi sub ubi." Which even I know doesn't work, as "ubi" is "where" and not "wear" and it's not a homonym in Latin.

(And if gender matters here - just assume it's a group of males being told not to go Commando.)

I'm guessing the "wear" part is going to have a port- root, because if I were saying the same in French, it would be something along the lines of "Portez toujours les sous-vetements" (with an accent circumflex on the first e of vetements but I'm too lazy to look up how to do that in html.). Which, yeah, isn't nearly as funny as something that rhymes (and it's not short - and there wasn't a lot of space to cram in the slogan on the shield). But anyway, I'd kind of like to know. Just for old times' sake. (They had boxer shorts made up with the modified crest, but it was so small you couldn't really read the new slogan).

And I don't know. Maybe "Semper ubi sub ubi" wasn't original, maybe it's something generations of Latin students have (mis)stated to be funny. But I don't know many Latin mottoes, besides the one about no accounting for taste (which I can never remember the correct order of gustibus, disputandum, and est for) and one that contains the words "carborundum" and "illegitimi" which is probably as faked-up Latin as the "semper ubi sub ubi."

If I had but world enough and time, I'd LEARN Latin. Because it seems interesting. But I'm finding that my times becomes increasingly short (I mean, free time) with each passing month. I must learn to say no to doing things for other people.

A blessed Easter to all who celebrate.

It's been kind of a quiet weekend, but quiet is good. (I've often said: peace and quiet are highly underrated in this society). I got quite a few things completed (pictures and discussion tomorrow) and also got caught up on grading and some teaching stuff.

It was also a cold weekend, so no garden stuff. I stayed in and drank a lot of hot tea.

Charlotte: the German meat patties are something you can make at home (I don't know if they're commercially available, like as a frozen foodstuff, or not). I think I posted a recipe once but I realize I left out the egg (They turn out okay without it but I think they are better with the egg).

You use 1 lb. of ground meat. I think pork is probably the traditional meat, but I use turkey instead. (You can use the real low-fat turkey if you put the egg in). Beef or venison would doubtless work too.

Mix in between 1/2 and 3/4 a cup of bread crumbs. This can be "fresh" bread crumbs (rye bread is good) or I've successfully used either panko or regular dry breadcrumbs, and my mother says she's used cracker crumbs.

You season them with 1/4 cup (or less) of very finely diced onion (I usually use less and grate it on my Microplane grater)

Add 1/8 to 1/4 cup of fresh parsley (if you have it; if not, a smaller amount of dry works fine)

Use 1/8 t nutmeg or allspice or both (I usually use both).

Then add the beaten egg, and a bit of milk if the patties seem dry. (You mix it like you would a meatloaf).

Then you form it into patties about the size of a hamburger, dredge them in flour, and fry them in a little fat in a pan (I use olive oil which is probably not traditional.)

I have no idea how "authentically German" they are but they are a recipe my grandmother (who was of German extraction) passed on to my mom when she married my dad.

You could probably also form it into a loaf and bake it as you would a meatloaf, but I kind of like it as patties.

Speaking of German - the German class concluded last week. I think I'll miss it (tho' I won't miss being out until 9 pm on Mondays). The teacher alluded to possibly offering a continuation class. I will take it if she does (unless it's on a Wednesday night, when I'm otherwise engaged).

I also bought the "German, Quickly" book that Lydia suggested (Thanks, Lydia!) I'm really enjoying it - I take about 15 minutes or so each afternoon and read a chapter or part of a chapter. I'm not very far yet but I want to try to absorb the information fully - and it's kind of nice not to be working to any sort of a deadline. Already I'm seeing things about the structure of both German and English that I kind of "knew," but not explicitly (like, the difference between active and passive voice being the relative order of subject and object - and in German, passive-voice seems to be a lot more common and "normal" than it is in English).

And I'm starting to get the hang of the "separable" verbs - where there's an adverb that modifies the verb that you can put at the end of a sentence (and it sometimes changes the meaning). This was a big mystery to me because my dad had a record of German drinking songs and there's one on there where they'd do a sentence...and then at the end say "Um" (pronounced "oom") or "Am" or something like that, and everyone would laugh. I asked him about it and he would always vaguely say, "Well, it's funnier if you know German...you can't really explain it in English." (When I was a teenager I assumed that it was actually a dirty song, and he was just putting me off. But now I kind of see how it works. I still think it's probably funnier if you're sitting around with a bunch of friends after a few beers.)

For some reason learning a language now is a particular joy to me. I think it is because it uses a part of my brain I haven't had to use as much for a while...it's kind of like being able to stretch muscles that you haven't used.

It's so much fun too to look at the "compound nouns" and be able to break some of them down to their component parts, or to find nouns that have a similarity (like, lots of nouns end in -heit. Like Wahrheit (truth), Gemutlichheit (which is hard to translate into English but "coziness" and "friendly-feeling" come close)).

I also like that Wilson uses German proverbs as some of her "translate these" sentences. There's one that is used to describe a heavy downpour, which literally translates to "It's raining bratwurst!" Heh. I'd like to see the Weather Girls take THAT one on.

(There's another sentence, which I'm guessing is another saying, that translates to "Farmers like long bratwurst and short sermons." Hahahah. I assume that's an aphorism or a proverb because it seems too random to just be a sentence made up for the book).

I think if I can find a copy of "Guten Tag" (a PBS German learning program Frau Teuber suggested we could use for further learning if we were particularly interested in grammar), I will either borrow or purchase it.

Thanks, Aven!

I do think I'm going to either make up (or have made by one of the label companies) labels that say "[MyName] me fecit" and leave a space for me to write in the year or the date and the year. I do agree that the idea of an object claiming its maker is kind of endearing.

I really think I need to track down some good grammar books, and also maybe look into a "serious" dvd or cd based course in German. I'm really, really getting interesting in the language and how it differs from English but because the class is a "conversational" class, I don't want to be all anorakish and always be asking these detailed grammar questions.

Last week the instructor let it slip that German has four noun cases: nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative. She also remarked that dative is really not marked any more in English.

That got me curious enough to look them up. The best I can determine from my reading is:

nominative is if it's the subject
genitive is like when it posesses something (in English, we usually use 's for that)
dative is like the indirect object
accusative is like the direct object.

In English, we don't specifically mark (with different articles) the dative and accusative cases, but apparently in German they do.

Which makes me want to go and track down a book on "proper" English grammar and sentence-diagramming (I know there is one out there - called something like "Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog"). I had a tee-toncy bit of sentence diagramming in 8th grade English but not enough to make me feel like I don't have a hole in my education. (Yes, most of what I know of grammar is absorbed by osmosis - from reading and from speaking with people who use good grammar).

Yeah...I know. People fought against diagramming sentences 20 years ago and now I want to learn it. Whatever. It just is something that interests me now that I'm trying to learn another language - seeing what parts of English grammar have become obfuscated to us as the language changed. (I never understood the subjunctive totally until after I took French, where "le subjonctif" is a for real and true part of the conjugation)

I worked a bit more on the Hiawatha shawl last night - I have now turned the third corner (which will be the last "real" turn - the fourth corner is grafted to the start).

I'm back interested in working on it again. As I said, the long sides are a bit easier (less tight; I should not have bound off so tightly on that second short side!) to knit the edging on to.

And I noticed something as I worked on it - and this is something odd about me. I had a feeling of relief, of "I'm finally getting this done!" I don't know why I impose "deadlines" on myself and poke at myself ("Hey, you've been working on this since September 2004! You should be done now!") but I do. And so, when I work on any long-term project, I feel a certain relief - it's like clearing something out.

So I think I'm going to make a concerted effort to finish this, and finish Bloom, and finish the Samus cardigan (which still exists only as the bottom band which is not-quite-knit).

I have a big rubbermaid tub that I was tossing half-finished projects into (long story but: I was having to have workmen over, it might have been at a time when I would have had to ask a friend to come and watch my house, I didn't want her to see the depths of my craziness, having eight different knitting projects going). The problem is, when I bung something into a container, I am very good at forgetting about it. And so, I kind of forgot Bloom and Samus and even Hiawatha. Until the most recent house-clean, when I started digging through the tub.

(And I also found the Regia Bamboo sockyarn I bought last fall, and some of the Berroco Keltic I bought for gloves. And I found the "Spring in Door County" socks, which I should rip back and restart at a slightly bigger gauge).

I don't know why I'm good at forgetting things like that but I am. It's one reason why I do not like to accept late work from students - and I try to articulate this to them - I will put the work in a pile because I can usually get to a whole mess of labs at once and grade them, but just one, I have to find time for, and sometimes that time isn't immediately forthcoming - and the old "out of sight, out of mind" comes into play. If it's really critical, I will write myself a list of things I need to do, but it's really easy for me to put projects or tasks out of my mind if I'm focusing on one.

And that can be a problem sometimes. I've missed meetings because I was deep in research and forgot I had to go to the meeting. Usually people are very nice about it and all, but it gets to me when I realize I've forgot something.

*****

Last night was a late night. It was the first week of the Conversational German class I signed up for here on campus (7-9 pm Mondays for six weeks. Not sure how much I'll learn in six weeks but at least it will be a start).

I knew I was in the right place when I walked into the building and heard German drinking songs playing loudly on a CD player. Hahahahaha. Our teacher is American of German descent but she is married to a German and lived in Bavaria for a dozen or so years, working with the Army and Air Force, teaching the new arrivals to speak basic German.

She is teaching a little German culture and customs along with the language. I know a little bit about Fastnacht now, and why you don't want to buy a car built the few days after Fastnacht (because, she says, a lot of the workers are hungover). And I know that supposedly it's bad form to cross arms when you're going to shake someone's hand.

I know a little bit already:

Ich heisse Frau Corbett (and the instructor tells us that professional women, married or not, now refer to themselves as "Frau" - kind of like Ms. I wanted to ask her the correct order for Doktor in there - I vaguely remember my mom telling me it meant different things if Doktor was before Frau and if it was after - that in one case it was the Frau herself who was the Doktor, and in the other case it was her husband...but I didn't want to slow the class down or look like I was going "Look at me! I'm Doktor!")

(Karin, if any of this is wrong, please correct me. I'm just going by what Frau T. says).

I know a few names of places:

das Rathaus (the city-hall)
das Denkmal (the monument)
die Schloss (the palace)
das Postamt (post-office)

I know already the feminine-masculine-neuter thing is going to screw me up. I'm not even sure I have the gender on those things correct. (I may start subbing French genders. I suspect I will. In French, "house" (maison) is feminine; in German, it is neuter.

I realize this is a very Anglophone-centric thing but I'm not sure I get the rhyme or reason of gendering inanimate things. Especially since it seems to differ between different languages. I am sure there is a linguistic reason that makes sense given the history of the language, but when it's 8:30 pm and I'm trying to wrap my mind around the concept of "Wo ist die/das/der..." I'm not so inclined to be excited by the fact that there are different genders for things.

Oh. I do know one thing that would be important to me if I ever went to Germany:

Wo ist das Kaufhaus?.

(hahahaha. "Where's the department store?" Well, at least in the absence of having the words for Yarn Shop or Bookstore, that would probably be a pretty important thing to me. She also taught us the finger-system for ordering beers - that you hold up your thumb if you want "eine Biere." )

You know? Even though it makes for a late night on Mondays, it feels REALLY GOOD to be using my brain in a different way than I normally am using it and trying to learn something new and different. I can feel my brain stretching and new neurons connecting to each other, and that's a good thing.

Even though this is just a basic 6-week course, aimed at getting us to the point where we could kinda-sorta navigate if we went to Germany without a translator, I think I might invest in a cd or dvd based REAL course in German; one where I learn some of the grammar and syntax rather than just common phrases. I think it would be good for my brain. (I like the idea of a CD based one; I could listen to it and learn while I work out.)

I think German, while less practical given where I live than Latin American Spanish would be, will be more fun. It's different enough from French that I'm going to have to think kind of hard about it.