A "grave" matter

I am procrastinating, no doubt about it. A week ago I had an occasion to write a letter in French. I haven't studied French since 1976, except for a summer audit a few years ago in French for doctoral students who need another language for research. When I wrote my letter to Diane, that's my French friend, I was surprised by how much French I remembered. I did check lots of things, just to make sure that my accent marks were going in the right direction. That's when it occurred to me that the accent grave seems superfluous to an American like myself. I was puzzled by this...I think I was puzzled by this when I first studied French, but never really articulated it to myself. However, the other evening I think I figured out why it seemed so unnecessary to me. As a person who speaks English, there really is no rhyme or reason to the pronunciation of many of our vowels. Whether it's a long E, short E, or silent E is related to simply knowing the word and a few rules on phonetics. I don't need an accent mark to tell me how to say elephant, for example. Likewise, I don't really need an accent mark to pronounce chevre (sorry, I can't insert the accent grave here) properly. Nor do I need an accent mark to differentiate it from the e in mes. On the other hand, I do like the accent acute. If you're going to have an accent mark that one makes sense.

Last night I wrote a letter to Kikka's parents in Italian. Frankly, my Italian is not very good. Not that I can speak French any better than Italian, that's probably a toss up. The fact of the matter is that I intend to visit Italy this summer. Toward that end, I opened up my Italian textbook a few minutes ago. Like the French, the Italians have both kinds of accent marks. However, I haven't been able to discern the difference between the final e in perche' with an accent acute or the word amore without one. To my ear, it sounds the same as the word che without an accent mark. On the other hand, the accento tonico grave as in citta' (sorry, again I can't insert a proper accent here) does make sense.

All of this to say that I really am procrastinating. I want to know Italian, but I'm just putting off studying it. And at that I have succeeded!

Ah, lovely Spring 2010

Isn't spring a lovely time of year? Here is one of my daffodils. The problem with spring, however, is what comes with it--Mountain Cedar pollen is my nemesis, for sure. When everyone else is outside enjoying the weather, I am inside taking Zyrtec. So you can imagine my delight when I had an absolutely brilliant idea on Friday. I was sitting on the fireplace hearth in the office (yes, we have a corner fireplace, but it doesn't work) when John Oliver, the father of one of Billy's former soccer camp coaches who works down the hall from us, had just asked me if he could leave his keys and glasses in our office while he went out for a run. I wasn't going anywhere, so I gladly agreed. Now our office is on the second floor of what used to be a bank building. I was looking into the hall when I had my dead-brilliant idea. I could use the balcony walkway as my own personal walking track! No HPER fees, no UA parking tickets, no inertia over getting TO SOMEPLACE to exercise, and best of all, NO ALLERGENS. I had flats on Friday so I took my first walk. Here are some shots of my new track. This is looking from the north end of the building to the south. Our office is located off to the right on the northwest corner of the building.

In the center of the building there is a connecting walkway. Isn't this the most beautiful track you've ever seen? All of the arches remind me of Roma. In addition, when I get to the south end of the building I can see the Ozark plateau. Best of all, there are no San Pietrini for me to trip on (and break my wrists)!

I took these pictures on Friday, just two days ago when it was warm enough to go without a jacket. Now look at it this morning. According to the TV, we've had 8 inches of snow, and it's still coming down! The only thing holding up the metal yardstick is the snow!

As for my spring allergies, they do disappear with snow. No Zyrtec for me today!