Stupid Roman alphabet

[cosmolinguist]

"Holly, do you want to go to class today?" mllesarah asked me.

"Mmmrph," I said into my pillow. I knew the right answer. This is an easy one. I tried to sit up. "No."

"Okay," she said. We're pretty agreeable on this sort of thing; we'll probably notify the other of our lack of desire to go to class, but of course we both know this has little to do with how likely we are to actually go to class. I've skipped everything else a couple of times, but not grammar. Besides, we're doing fun stuff now: language more than grammar. Besides, she told us on Monday that we'd get our midterms back today. That thought was enough to make me want to fall back into bed, since I was sure I hadn't done well on the test. I'd found the test difficult enough, and I knew I'd messed up a couple of things. This didn't seem to bode well for me.

But I put on clothes, brushed my teeth, and we were only a little late to class. We talked about how you get from Indo-European to Germanic to Old English, which I found really cool. "How did Germanic get to England?" our professor asked. "Well, a bunch of people who spoke Germanic got in boats, went to England, killed some people there, sat down and lived where they'd lived." We all laughed. "It's true!" she said. We know. The chapter we were supposed to read for today starts with, "The making of English is the story of three invasions and a cultural revolution."

It's commonly recognized that English is a mess of a language, borrowing words and rules from all over the world, which is why it makes no sense and drives anyone trying to learn it crazy. But finding out how it became that way is actually fun.

Janet showed us the runic alphabet, and, looking at the runes, I mumbled, "Oh yeah, I remember this!" I was a bit excited. But only a bit.

The girl next to me, a friendly acquaintance of mine, said something like, "Oh, stop showing off." I think she was teasing me, but I was worried for a second. I could sound like such a pompous ass in grammar--not becuase I actually know everything, but because I've acquired random bits of knowledge on the subject before I took this class, and what I didn't know I seem to absorb quickly. But I know lots of people struggle with it more than I do, and of course I respect that and don't want to sound superior just because I don't have to try as hard as they do.

Either way, though, my response would've been the same: I showed her how trivial my knowledge was. "I only know this becuase of Lord of the Rings," I told her. It hurts me to say it; I'm not that much of an LotR nerd, but in this case it's true: when I was a freshman and said once I didn't have anything to read, my friend setharoo gave me The Hobbit. And I remember seeing the title and some inscriptions in the book in runes as well as in the Roman alphabet. So I figured out which runes go with which letters (or sounds, really). I think I made a sign of something written in runes, but I can't remember what it said.

"You're a dork," she said. I freely agreed--which made her laugh--though I'd say it's a nerd thing instead of a dork one ... but I don't expect other people to use smeantic distinctions that I made up. we knew what we meant.

Usually I'd hate to be called a Lord of the Rings nerd, but then I thought about marlowe1 saying that Tolkien wrote "something that was the culmination of decades of delving into the classics of Europe - at least the Epic fantasies. It was a love letter to the anonymous writer of Beowulf and countless other epics that experts know about." And that sounds really cool. I can handle being a nerd for something like that.

Oh, and, to my servere shock and the perpetuation of the myth that I am good at grammar without having to try, I got 93/100 on my midterm. I hate it when people whine about how badly they did on a test, only to say later that they aced it or something, but I think my excitement and happiness is justified here, as I really did not believe I could've done as well as I did.

Comments

[arcane.livejournal.com]

Ha! In one of my speech classes I was whining about doing so terribly on a test (I thought I was going to get an 83) only to score 98/100. My classmates threw things at me when I got the test back.

[cosmolinguist]

As they should! It's the only proper reaction.

And come on. How terrible is an 83? :-) I guess I've just never had that high of standards, as far as my grades go. Grades don't seem to have a lot to do with anythng that's important to me (except eventually getting a job someplace better than McDonald's).

[arcane.livejournal.com]

I'm really obsessive about my grades. It began because the only way to get a scholarship being a white male is to have high marks. Pretty soon my gpa was 3.9 and now it's a matter of some weird principle to maintain that.

[skarphedinn.livejournal.com]

Heh, you're a grammar queen too! I know a lot about runes if you ever want a nerdy discussion about them (from a language perpective rather than a sickly magicky one). Really, way too much.

[elthar.livejournal.com]

I have heard it said that English is the result of Norman soldiers trying to pick up Saxon barmaids.

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah, I could see that. :-) English has such a cool history, because nobody thought it mattered much for so long that it could change into whatever it wanted, there weren't people trying to keep it "pure" or something because no one cared about it. And now, it's come back to conquer the world! Ha!