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While Arthur's hatred of the French language is a matter of some renown, apparently he has found a new love of Latin. You see, we are terrible parents, and so we let him watch Futurama sometimes (at least, episodes without any serious adult content). One of his favourite episodes is also one of mine: the classic  . And one of his favourite scenes is also one of mine: the part where Bender-A and Bender-B enter the mysterious Universe XVII, where Professor Farnsworth(-XVII) is working on the chalkboard of a weird future Rome, doing arithmetic in Roman numerals. Hence, my love of the scene (Julia has long promised to make me an icon, as yet not made...). The two Benders talk for a while, and then go into another universe through a box. Professor Farnsworth, oblivious, looks up from his work and says, "Quae?" [What?] So now, Arthur is wandering around saying, "Quae?", very pleased with himself. I will note however that while my preferred pronunciation of quae would be /kwai/, Professor Farnsworth (and Professor Arthur Farnsworth also) says /kwei/. But as Julia noted to me, we can chalk that up to linguistic changes in Latin from the classical period to the year 3000. Tags: arthur, language
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So apparently Arthur has learned (properly) that the glottal stop is not really phonemic in English. I can tell this because he pronounces uh-oh /ʌ.ʔou/ as utt-oh /ʌt.ou/. Also, yesterday he was watching some previews on one of his video with Julia, and she remarked, "It's the Hunchback of Noter Daim" /nou.ɾəɹ deɪm/, to which he replied, "No, no, it's the Hunchback of No-tre Dawm!" / nou.tɹə dɑm/. However, when I told him that "Notre Dame" means, "Our Lady" in French, he said, "No, no, that's just gibberish" and, "We live in Canada - we speak English!" Tags: arthur, language
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Today at supper Arthur was reading the Heinz ketchup bottle and asking us about some of the more obscure markings on it, such as the number 57 on the pickle and the kosher marking in Hebrew script (which did require me to make a trip to the Internet to confirm that, as I suspected, that was what it was). But the real debate emerged from one of the more prominent words, when Julia read the word 'tomato' as to-MAT-to. Arthur corrected her, "No, no, mummy, it's to-MAY-to' and despite Julia's rebuttal that no, either pronunciation was acceptable, Arthur would have none of it, and would only accept to-MAY-to. Of course, he initially pronounced Heinz as 'hens' until we corrected him, so what does he know? But it's enough to make me tear up just a little at how my boy is growing more like his dad every day. In other word-foolery, I was very pleased to be able to come up with a couple of instances of verb-verb compound words in which the first verb is irregular: plea-bargain and breakdance. I couldn't think of any others a couple of days ago when Julia brought to my attention an article on ' run-walking' in which the author conjugated the verb as 'ran-walked', which we both agreed was very odd. Of course, it shouldn't, and doesn't matter whether the first verb in a verb-verb compound is irregular: you don't conjugate it either way, although the second verb usually is conjugated irregularly, so if the verb were 'walk-run', it would clearly be walk-ran, not *walked-ran, *walk-runned, or *walked-runned. Which led me to wonder whether there was a tendency, in verb-verb compounds, to put the irregular verb (if there is one) second, which was reinforced by inability to think of other verbs of the form of run-walk. The short answer: probably not. But is it any wonder that my son is turning into a language maven? Tags: arthur, language
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For years - I don't know how many years for sure, but certainly before Julia and I were married, so at least eight - we have had an ongoing debate over the question, "How many surprises are there in a Kinder Egg?" Their filthy Teutonic marketing logic at one point attempted to assert that there were three surprises: "a surprise", "candy", and "a toy". While my otherwise impeccably-correct wife agreed with this reasoning, I insisted that a surprise cannot, in itself, be a surprise, in the absence of some other surprising factor, and that in fact there were only two surprises involved in receiving a Kinder Egg: a toy and candy. And so the debate has raged, lo these many years. This afternoon while at the grocery store Arthur insisted on buying some discount post-VD candy, and chose the abovementioned confection. And just a few moments ago he was eating it as dessert (why yes, we are tremendous parents, why do you ask?) and Julia and I were bantering on the issue once again, with no result. And then Arthur, innocent of this complex philosophical issue, cut through the issue of the missing surprise with a devastating blow: "It's the wrapper!" Paradox resolved. Tags: arthur
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