Comments on: Brain drift

By: fillyjonk

fillyjonk — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 22:14:22 +0000

unimpressed: I tend to consider it a gift, but I think my students consider it a curse. (I have, at least once, been compared to “Ducky” on NCIS. Though I notice they’ve toned down his tendency to ramble in recent seasons.)

By: unimpressed

unimpressed — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 08:57:18 +0000

@fillyjonk: A gift or a curse? (If you’re a Monkophile.)

By: Miĉjo

Miĉjo — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 07:54:08 +0000

I suspect there may be more actual speakers of Esperanto, at least on this plain granite planet

You suspect right. Estimates vary, but a professor of sociolinguistics conducted in-field research to arrive at a figure of about 2,000,000 FSI-level-3 speakers, level 3 being “general professional proficiency, able to speak the language with sufficient structural accuracy and vocabulary to participate effectively in most formal and informal conversations”. The world’s fluent Klingon speakers are said to be able to go out to dinner together comfortably.

As an aside, not all Esperanto speakers are admirers of George Soros. Besides, he essentially parted company with the language when he moved to the U.S.

though few, as the phrase goes, speak it like a native

True, but then, that’s the idea :-).

Esperanto just might be a (temporary) remedy for braindrift. It’s both logical and simple, so you can pick it up quickly and enjoyably, and you can actually use it with the 2,000,000 or so speakers, which are now easy to find on the Internet. But on second thought, maybe not: it’s particularly rich in modes of expression, and one challenge Esperanto speakers often take up is to see how many different, grammatically correct ways they can say the same thing.

By: CGHill

CGHill — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 05:39:41 +0000

Actually, I did not know that before starting this little fugue. Credit it to pure serendipity.

And anyway, one of the hallmarks of this place is the occasional connection of dots no one else would ever see: I suspect no one else would bother to work in a reference to the War of Jenkins’ Ear while writing about Janet’s — “Miss Jackson’s,” if you’re nasty — Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction.

(Yes, really.)

By: canadienne

canadienne — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 05:22:35 +0000

How do you KNOW stuff like the fact that William Shatner starred in an Esperanto film? My brain drifts, while constant, never seem to be that interesting. Your brain must be a fascinating place to inhabit.

By: fillyjonk

fillyjonk — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 23:43:13 +0000

I have to be terribly careful about brain drift. Especially if it starts to happen when I am up in front of a class. Because then my students mind wind up learning about how lichens were used to dye wool, or urine as a dyeing mordant, or how pregnant horse urine was at one time used as a source of hormones for the BCP, or how vets determine that a large farm animal is actually pregnant.

I can also get on the internet to look up “just this one thing” and log off two hours later.

Not sure whether to consider those brain properties a bug or a feature.