A lipogram is: Anything that you draft (usually a paragraph at minimum) which wholly skips a symbol of all writing symbols.

A way you might do this is by abstaining from using any words with ‘A’, ‘D’, ‘G’ and so on. You simply pick a singular symbol, and aviod using it.

If you want to skim additional lipogram writings, you might try this link to ‘A Loquacious Location of Lipograms.‘ Simply amazing.

I am not without skill in writing lipograms, but Mr. Chrisomalis has an uncanny ability with it. You’ll find an ton of linquistic information if you surf a bit past that link.

Anyway, I think that linquistic ‘toys’ (such as lipograms) continually last throughout our history as fun ways to pass boring hours.

Hint: It is not as difficult to do if you abstain from using a symbol that is a consonant.

Did you pick up on which symbol was missing throughout this post?

It’s a fun symbol to try to work around – though also frustrating on occasion, as 2/3 of all words in most works contain it.

Still can’t find which symbol I am hinting at? Allright… I’ll show you by using it just this oncE.

~Nicole

It’s interesting as a mild reference for quick searches regarding possible etymology study later, but is definitely more useful as just a fun little online tool.

It’s called the Name Voyager and requires Java to run in your browser. Worth a look.

~Nicole

Here’s the list…

Only a Southerner knows the difference between a hissie fit and a conniption fit, and that you don’t “HAVE” them, you “PITCH” them

Only a Southerner knows how many fish, collard greens, turnip greens, peas, beans, etc., make up “a mess.”

Only a Southerner can show or point out to you the general direction of “yonder.”

Only a Southerner knows exactly how long “directly” is, … as in: “Going to town, be back directly”

Even Southern babies know that “Gimme some sugar” is not a request for the white, granular sweet substance that sits in a pretty little bowl in the middle of the table.

All Southerners know exactly when “by and by” is. They might not use the term, but they know the concept well.

Only a Southerner knows instinctively that the best gesture of solace for a neighbor who’s got trouble is a plate of hot fried chicken and a big bowl of cold potato salad. If the neighbor’s trouble is a real crisis, they also know to add a large banana puddin!

Only Southerners grow up knowing the difference between “right near” and “a right far piece.” They also know that “just down the road” can be 1 mile or 20.

Only a Southerner, both knows and understands, the difference between a redneck, a good ol’ boy, and po’ white trash.

No true Southerner would ever assume that the car with the flashing turn signal is actually going to make a turn.

A Southerner knows that “fixin” can be used as a noun, a verb, or an adverb.

Only Southerners make friends while standing in lines, … and when we’re “in line,” … we talk to everybody!

Put 100 Southerners in a room and half of them will discover they’re related, even if only by marriage.

In the South, y’all is singular, … all y’all is plural.

Southerners know grits come from corn and how to eat them.

Every Southerner knows tomatoes with eggs, bacon, grits, and coffee are perfectly wonderful; that red eye gravy is also a breakfast food; and that fried green tomatoes are not a breakfast food.

When you hear someone say, “Well, I caught myself lookin’,” you know you are in the presence of a genuine Southerner!

Only true Southerners say “sweet tea” and “sweet milk.” Sweet tea indicates the need for sugar and lots of it — we do not like our tea unsweetened. “Sweet milk” means you don’t want buttermilk.

And a true Southerner knows you don’t scream obscenities at little old ladies who drive 30 MPH on the freeway. You just say,”Bless her heart” … and go your own way.

To those of you who are still a little embarrassed by your Southerness: Take two tent revivals and a dose of sausage gravy and call me in the morning. Bless your heart!

And to those of you who are still having a hard time understanding all this Southern stuff, … bless your hearts, I hear they are fixin’ to have classes on Southernness as a second language!

And for those that are not from the South but have lived here for a long time, all y’all need a sign to hang on y’alls front porch that reads “I ain’t from the South, but I got here as fast as I could.”

(List discovered originally here.)

~Nicole

Yes, I realize that it is probably a touch odd for a techie to be so interested in subjects that are ages old. Likely it is even more odd that I would be perfectly content to train to be a college Professor on those subjects and would relish being a curator in a art museum or library catering to that time period. Regardless, I was doing a bit of research yesterday, mostly out of curiousity to see what the requirements are in those degrees for very upper level U.S. universities.

Essentially, my ‘plan’ has always been to go back to college locally and finish a BA degree in one of these subjects, then try to get into a much more prestigious university and get my MA. In an ideal world, and assuming I didn’t kill my GPA standing along the way, I’d like to end up getting a PhD from a top 5 school in the U.S. The reason for that is two fold. First, I want the access to the best teachers in those subjects. Second, by getting a graduate degree from a top school, I can pretty much be guaranteed the ability to be able to teach at my choice of colleges across the country (and perhaps even outside of it). I definitely see that as possible because before I had to take a break from my courses (and dropped several during pregnancies with my children), I was being heavily recruited by those universities. So, mentally, I have the ability… somewhere floating around in my head… it’s a question of whether or not having two children has muddled my brain to the point where I can no longer use it as much Alas, I digress.

I decided that if I wanted to look up the requirements for graduate degrees (Masters and PhD level) in upper level Universities, I might as well start at the very top of the U.S. ladder and look at Harvards requirements. I came across a bit of surprising information when looking up history MA degrees on the Harvard website – language requirements by history specialty. From that page is this quote:

Incoming first-year graduate students are required to show a satisfactory reading knowledge, met by a performance judged proficient or satisfactory on a departmental language examination, of at least two foreign languages.

Okay, it says “at least two” foreign languages. Allright, well that’s the general statement for all the history specialties but on that page it displays a chart showing the required languages by topic. Here are the ones pertinent to my interests:

I was quite shocked to see that. Truly, I was. Of course, I immediately realized a new reason to justify my interest in learning German – in fact, I easily joked about it being ‘fate’ or some sort of ’6th sense’ that lead me to want to learn it. Unsurprisingly, I found similar requirements of Greek, Latin and German (though Harvard did have the most with their additional requirement of French) on the websites of several other high up Universities in the U.S. By the way, I did find one very interesting history degree plan at Notre Dame – a Masters of Medieval Studies (and subsequent PhD) from their Medieval Institute. Fascinating.

I’m actually quite pleased to see such rigorous requirements for History – the kind of requirements I’d have expected of a linguistics degree (of course, linguistics and history go hand-in-hand at so many levels it makes sense). When I saw the list, I did let out a sigh of relief that I formally studied Latin for several years (my language of choice in high school). Granted, I am a bit rusty, but at least I have learned that one to fluency. I have a rudimentary understanding of Ancient Greek, Hebrew, and Sanskrit that I have needed for translation purposes over the years… but no where near a fluency level needed in any of them – so gaining fluency in Ancient Greek has to go on my list of things to work on.

Now on the German and French… I’m perfectly content to learn those. I’ve been trying to learn German for some time. When I am able to go back and get that BA in history or linguistics locally, I do plan to do it at the only college here that has a decent amount of German courses. The French… well, French has always been one of those languages that I seem to remember with ease. I’ve not formally studied it, but it is the only of the Romance languages that I have that ability with. I don’t know why that is, particularly since I live in a city with an overwhelming amount of native Spanish speakers … but I’ve always been able to remember French better than Spanish. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I think Spanish sounds very unpleasant to the ear (I have a similar view of Italian), but that French has a more pleasing sing-songy rhythm to it (as does Latin). As they say, What you enjoy, you remember.

Regardless, while there wasn’t a particular point to this post, I think that you might be able to assume that what I was getting at is It never hurts to check into requirements many many years ahead of time. I would hate to think of how frustrating it would be to have an interest in studying History, and find out shortly before applying that you needed to pass comprehension tests in four languages. It never hurts to plan ahead.

~Nicole

Here are the ones I find have the most appealing features:

FriendsAbroad.com * I think that I like this one the most right now. Lots of features.
Polyglot
LingoZone
MyLanguageExchange *This one has limits on free members. For instance, free members cannot initiate contact with others – but there are a lot of extras on this site that make it definitely interesting.

All of them have different features, but the nice thing is that most of them offer a built in search so that you can look for people who are native speakers in the language you want to learn, and are also interested in learning the language that is your native language. Makes it nice and tidy to match up with exactly the right people to teach/learn together.

If anyone runs across other good ones – feel free to mention them.

~Nicole

Now, that may sound somewhat straightforward, except that there are great many adjectives that are exactly the same for masculine and feminine. Also, a neuter adjective is most often the exact same as the masculine adjective. So, why bother with making all three genders? I really don’t know. It gets ridiculously confusing at some points because nouns are not separated very rigidly according to gender. In general, you could say that things ending in an -o are male and things ending in a -a are female, but its absolutely not a rule to try to follow because it doesn’t work across the board. In fact, its broken quite a lot. And don’t even get me started on those double-gendered nouns that change gender depending on the context of the sentence.

Some of it is just so … random to me. For instance, dealing with body parts, you’d think they’d be neuter in gender wouldn’t you? Well, if not, I certainly would, but then – I’d be dead wrong. I’m still not sure why la espalda (the back) is feminine and el cerebro (the brain) is male, nor why el pelo (the hair) is male and la cabeza (the head) is female. Oh! And let’s not forget that el mano (the hand), while seemingly a masculine gender, isn’t actually masculine, for some reason its an exception and feminine in gender. Overall, Spanish gender often seems entirely random to me.

For some comparison, let’s talk about how gender works in other languages. Apparently, people across the world cannot decide if something is male or female, so it’s all mixed up. For instance, in Spanish you say el sol (the Sun) and it is male, but in German you say die Sonne and it is female. Another example. In German you say der Tisch (the table) and it is masculine, but in Spanish you say la mesa and in French you say la table and both are feminine.

Just like I talked about with the use of definite articles in Spanish (like el and la) in German we have der, die, and das. Just the same, all these things in both langauges just equate the word ‘the’ in English. Why it is exactly that these langauges have to create so many variations for a single word that conveys the same meaning – I have yet to be enlightened about.

Now, to me German seems a bit kinder on making sure that the words are the gender they are, and using the neuter form in more understandable ways. As I mentioned with Spanish sometimes indicating gender by the ending of a -o (masc.) or -a (fem.), in German it is most often der (masc.), die (fem.), and das (neu.). Okay, well, at least in German you have some similarity to single word foundations because er (he), sie (she), and es (it) are very close and aligned gender correct. Meaning that the masculine ending of der includes the er ending, etc…

Of course, nothing is perfect. Because in German ein is both a masculine and neuter article. While ein, cannot be plural it can get confusing because there are similar words that step into its place such as meine. Perhaps it makes up for that fact in that all nouns, regardless of their gender, become die when they are made plural.

Overall, I find gender to be one of the most confusing aspects of any language. Save only for memorization, I’m not sure that any of them have a set of rules they actually follow all the time. Sometimes, I feel I am both lucky and cursed to speak English (a gender-neutral language) as my primary language – it makes understanding the usefulness of gender in other languages much more difficult.

~Nicole

In the couple of years that I have been trying to actively learn the language, I’ve realized that some of the problems that are occuring are actually pushing my attempts down to a level that is near to non-existent at times. In that, I mean that I live in a place where there are seemingly few German speakers, and pretty much no courses available to me locally.

That said, my desire to learn German has never faltered, but it proves to be quite hard to do when I can only learn through limited online resources. I have tried some German learning books, and had no success there. I expect that the best solution would be an immersion type learning of the language, and yet that is not an option either, as a move to Germany is not feasible at this time.

So, I truck along with it, finding what resources I can to learn, and yet realizing at the same time that none of them are sufficient for what I need. Or so it would seem, as a couple of years have gone by and I have yet to obtain any noteable level of comprehension. I am, however, determined to find a solution. I’m certain one is out there, just eluding me thus far.

As a native to Texas, I am exposed to the overwhelming number of Spanish speakers, and yet do not speak Spanish fluently. Sadly enough, my Spanish is significantly better than my German. Of course, in this environment, there are more Spanish classes than I can count, and native speakers abound. Perhaps it is my own fault in choosing to learn a language that would be so challenging based on my locale, but I am not planning to give it up during this lifetime.

Perhaps I merely need to find a better muse, or a better tutorial.

~Nicole