Resonant Golf Wisdom for Phil Fans This Morning

“Golf is good for the soul. You get so mad at yourself you forget to hate your enemies.”

-Will Rogers

Frisian: language of my ancestors, sibling to English
‘On Language‘ 6/7/06
see www.nbierma.com/language/frisian

With a vague sense of ethnic pride, a vaguer sense that I owed it to my great-grandfather and a complete ignorance of the Frisian language, I attended the 50th and final Frisian worship service in Grand Rapids, Mich., last month.

For me, the service hammered home a key distinction about my own ethnicity. I usually say that my ancestors were Dutch. But my great-grandfather, who immigrated to the U.S. in 1890, might have objected to that claim. Technically, he was Frisian, and for Frisians, that is more than just a technicality.

Friesland is a province of the Netherlands along that country's northern coast, but dating back to the ancient days when it was a vast kingdom and maritime power, it has always been its own country, in a way.

The Frisians are one of the oldest ethnic groups in Europe and one of the most doggedly independent. A famous Frisian slogan is "Frysk en Frij," meaning "Frisian and Free."

The Frisian language also represents a piece of linguistic trivia: Old Frisian was the closest relative of Old English, its sibling in the West Germanic language family. Linguists tend to say that in its earliest days, English used to sound a lot like German. But it's closer to the truth to say that English used to sound a lot like Frisian.

So as a Frisian descendant and an aspiring linguist, I had two good reasons to attend the final Frisian-language worship service in Grand Rapids, where an annual Frisian service has been held since 1957 in an area church.

...

Slate Blogs the Bible
xpost with Worship Weblog

Christianity Today's Weblog recommends Slate's series 'Blogging the Bible'. CT says:

It's really quite interesting to read the non-observant Jew's reactions as he goes through the first few chapters of Genesis. He's a wonderful writer, if not the world's most trained exegete. ...

It's fun and refreshing stuff, especially for us Protestants who have a long history of believing that all the answers to Scripture's mysteries are self-evident if we'd only read it for ourselves. For now, Plotz is only up to Genesis 25—we'll be even more impressed if he gets beyond Leviticus, the bane of many a "read through the Bible" project.

(That's non-observant Jew, not non-observant writer...)

Update: Erica (a Rev) likes it too

Beware of Pretend WMD's
From Meet the Press last Sunday:

RUSSERT: Not having found weapons of mass destruction, why do you think Saddam engaged in this cat-and-mouse game and didn’t come clean?

BLIX: That’s a good question, and one possibility is that he was like someone hanging a sign on the door, “Beware of the dog,” without having a dog--when he wanted to tell Iran, and he wanted to tell others that “I’m still dangerous.”

Vocab lists: a waste of mind
xpost with Inflections

From a provocative paper in JETS called "Greek vocabulary acquisition using semantic domains" (which discusses NT Greek but has broader applications):

Some L2 teachers have championed semantics-based approaches for vocabulary acquisition. John T. Crow claims that semantic fields are the best way to expand an individual's vocabulary and discourages the use of decontextualized word lists based on frequency of occurrence computations.21 He claims that the use of these lists has been the primary teaching aid of vocabulary, although "rote learning is one of the most inefficient applications of human cognitive facilities."

Cute Budweiser Spoof

Visit to Shawnee Park Book Group
xpost with my Heaven Blog

On Sunday I met with a book group from Shawnee Christian Reformed Church that had studied my book, at the home of two of the members (coincidentally, just about a quarter mile from the home where I met the Neland book group). The group was made up of older readers, and I was struck by one comment one reader made about my generation. She asked if my generation thought more about heaven and the kind of questions I raise in the book. I said that honestly, I thought my generation was very technology-oriented, and thus less prone to think about the transcendent. She commented that her generation didn't ask these kinds of questions at all; they were more inclined to just accept the doctrine that was handed down to them and not worry about any remaining questions they had. My generation, by comparison, she said, felt free to ask big questions. Readers around the room generally agreed, and some said that this was the first they had thought this long and hard about the afterlife. I had assumed that thinking about the afterlife came a little more naturally as you get older, with some of your biggest life decisions behind you, more more funerals of your friends to attend. I was struck by the potental for discussing heaven in an older generation.

At least they don't cheesily say 'We don't have much time' about once every 7 minutes...
I have been feeling pretty smug in my scoffing at those who fawn over 'Grey's Anatomy,' at least one of whom resides in my own house. But then I realized how hypocritical it is given how much time I spent Monday reading the fan forums at TWP about the breathtaking-but-plausibility-defying season finale of '24' ...

Xenophobia in the U.S. Senate

Sigh.

Declaring English to be the national language of the U.S. is about as necessary and meaningful as declaring Going To The Beach to be the National Summertime Activity.

The myth that immigrants to the U.S. lack the incentive and the will to learn English is pervasive but silly. The problem that there aren't enough English classes for immigrants is very real, and widely ignored.

Update: On a lighter note, this has set up easy punch lines for late night comedians:

"The president says making English our national language is not 'discriminatious.'" --Conan O'Brien

Amazon Light 4.0

An alternative interface for Amazon, without all the screen clutter.