Scrambled smidgins of linguistic joy.
Structure
Sword and shield
Give us a farving, 'Squire!
The translation that wasn’t
In my world, words on boxes have to make sense.
Sources of Joy – Day 5
Fear, health centre, acupuncture, and kneeling in general Today's sources of joy lie in the incongruous bordering on the paradoxical. I discovered that fear has no place if one is to relish wholeheartedly in the incongruity of it all. The fear I talk of is much more unsettling than the kind of dread with which... Continue Reading →
Assaulted by infinitude
In an attempt to keep up with what is happening in the world around me, I began reading an overwhelmingly detailed blog by Christopher Mims entitled, How the “internet of things” will replace the web I launched myself jauntily into the text and was happily memorising lots of little bits of information new to me,... Continue Reading →
Cândido Guerreiro revisited
According to my blog statistics, someone read my post of August 2012 entitled, Now or never: translation of a poem and other things I do not know. I felt bad, because before, you could not see the poem and my draft translation side by side. Well, now you can. Head over there to have a... Continue Reading →
A good ‘un
I was checking online whether my translation from Portuguese into English of a Chinese proverb matched the commonly accepted rendition in English. As one does. I should mention that I do not normally take the answers found at wiki.answers.com as Gospel for obvious reasons, but have occasionally found some useful leads there by way of... Continue Reading →
Mushrooms, unicorns and little green apples
Who knew that mushroom caps could be depressed? Well, if you did, then you will have no trouble at all acknowledging that grapevine leaves can be blistered. That was a shameless plug for the ample ampelography section of the Vine to Wine Circle, the most fascinating part of which for me was the morphology of... Continue Reading →
Secure syntax and moral excellence
The picture of a pot purple petunias against a background of a yellow rose creeper cannot be uploaded because of my slow Internet connection. Never mind. It has nothing to do with the blog at all. I had an English Literature teacher in my senior years at school who deplored those who mistook "moral squeamishness... Continue Reading →
Beethoven’s Fifth
I have been most remiss in sharing my monthly indulgence in Doug Savage's delightful Savage Chickens. You may contend that there is more to life than chickens, savage or otherwise. And you would be quite right. With all the recent furore over horses galloping into ready-made lasagna, I thought it best to keep my head... Continue Reading →
That elusive pair of jeans 