a wolf angel is not a good angel

Watching CBC’s National, we’re talking about how Canadian and US values are diverging. (Did those votes for Harper mean otherwise? No. I might find them frighteningly right-wing for Canada, but they’re pretty much in line with the Democrats in the US.)

One question was “Should the man be the master of the house?” 52% of Americans said yes, 21% of Canadians did. And what was one of the explanations the pollster gave: older people are leaving Canada for the great random sample in the sky.

http://www.dubyamovie.com/

from defective yeti

(Oddly, the image I got had me as Wacky/Odd/Lucky/Frisky/Ambitious/Normal/Gentle/Enchanting/Legendary, but the words here are all different. Redoing it got me two different sets altogether.)

I am intending to do a big order of books-for-holidays this week. So I need suggestions. In particular, I would like books that take more than a few hours to read (no serial killer novels) but are still fun. Intelligent, but fun. Also, books that cost less than 20$ (Cdn) would be nice. These ought to be books I would like to own since, well, I’ll be buying them. Fiction and non-fiction are both great. Anything with the first chapter available online is even greater.

In a comment, Cougar mentioned a family where one person speaks English and the other Polish.

There are a few kinds of conversations mutually bilingual people will have. You’ll have the ones where people switch between languages whenever they feel like it — by word or by sentence. You’ll have the ones where each person just speaks in the language they’re more comfortable in. (This is, for instance, how I correspond with a friend — in speech it varies, though mostly is English, but he almost only writes me in French, and I wouldn’t dare try mine. It’s also quite common in romantic relationships and between generations in families.)

My favourite kind is one that is almost entirely limited to service relationships — an employee at a coffee shop, say. I go and order in French, and they can (usually) tell that I am an anglophone (often because I start by saying ‘uh’ instead of ‘euh’). So they respond to me in English, trying to be helpful. I can tell they’re a francophone, so I respond to *them* in French. With conversation limited to talk about coffee, it’s not really a big deal (anymore, though sometimes I forget that), but you still end up with both people speaking in their second language and having comprehension just that much harder, to be helpful.

Today I made nutmeg scones, because I was so fond of the scone with butter and jam breakfasts, and I needed a recipe that had only things I had on hand. Nutmeg is nice and autumny, too. (Hey, it’s almost December which means eggnog in stores. Yum.)

I’m not sure if I like this recipe as much as the other, but I think one problem is that my jam isn’t the best combination. It’s not a sweet jam, and my scones were a bit short on sugar (things I had at least partially on hand, I guess). They smell really good, though. I need more different scone recipes. Then I can get the really good jams that don’t last because there are no preservatives that I’ve been wanting to buy from this nice place on Laurier. On the other hand my mother much prefers this recipe, because she doesn’t like food that has things in it — INCLUDING CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES! I am the child of the devil.

Canadian call centres are all in Quebec or the Atlantic provinces (the accents have it), while American ones are all in India. Okay, it’s cheaper to have them there. (The supervisors and stuff seem to also be in the Atlantic provinces.) And it’s cheaper for a Canadian company to have both languages in one place as opposed to halfway across the world from each other, I guess.

A few things I haven’t understood, though.

• If *you’re* Canadian and *I’m* Canadian, even though we’re talking about an American computer, can we call the letter zed? Especially when I hear you say that and then correct yourself to zee. (Also: which letter is normally learned in India upon learning English?)
• If you’re in India, we all know that your name isn’t really George Foster. Is there some reason you’ve been given new names by the company? Indian names aren’t *that* hard. Note that I can often tell who is new based on how much they stumble over their name.
• Since you are given a new, American name, do you get to pick it yourself (out of some list, perhaps, so you don’t get the recent-immigrant issue of choosing names like Dolores and Edna[1]) or are they assigned? How are the names made up, anyways? Is there a list of n first names and m last names, and we just multiply out?

[1] Apparently Jews outside of Israel do the same kind of thing, choosing dead grandmother names for their kids (like my name, which one Hebrew teacher I had changed on me. Though since my name means “good mother”, I wasn’t too annoyed). I assume this is true of most people moving somewhere and having to choose a new name before they get an idea of the culture, so basing it on what sounds nice in their first language.

1. Does anyone in Quebec know English?
2. How do Canadians buy bathing suits?
3. Do you take a dogled to the border?
4. Doesn’t your igloo melt when you heat it in the winter?

Answers:

1. Je m’excuse?
2. We wait until we cross the border.
3. Yes. There’s a kennel there for the dogs.
4. No. Just in the summer.

(Note: I have been asked every one of these many times.)

I slow down so much by the end of the day. I’m tired and — tired.

I want to get to a certain point before I stop, probably another half hour’s work. I’ve planned out my (sigh) next three days. Then I’ll recheck my numbers to see how far I need to get each day. If it’s what I think it is, probably I will be ahead of schedule a bit. (If I get as far on Sunday as planned: possibly not.)

After I finish this last bit of work, I can take a long bath and then go to bed. Won’t that be lovely? And yet I procrastinate: check around online, walk, stretch, play Freecell. I don’t know why I do this.

I have, somewhere in the works, a post about feelings of (in)adequacy and (in)competence and wait what have I done what do I want?-cakes.[1]

But I recently noticed a job announcement on Linguist List which I am actually qualified for. (I’m a little short in industry experience, but not that much.) I don’t entirely want it (place, and too much dependence on phonology, and I don’t want to quit this job), but I’m *qualified*. It’s sort of hard to believe: I have the skills and experience that someone might want.

It doesn’t actually make me feel more competent, but it’s cool anyhow.

[1] Yes, I am using it as much as I can. Soon it will be second nature!