Memo to Self...

Thursday, August 30, 2001

Hello, hello, hello! Blogging for my Thursday classes begins...now.

Capstone Class: We discussed what the study of English is all about, and what an English major can look at. Looked at the origins of the words "language" and "text" (from the verb "to weave"--I like this concept) and exactly what IS a text--which now includes film and plays and musci and the like. Then broke into small groups to discuss how we in our English or other classes have analyzed texts. I proposed "inductive" and "deductive" looks into texts, and then we talked about film for awhile, and our own works. I found that I was not quite as high-brow as the people I was with--neither cared for MST3K, feeling it to be...juvenile, perhaps? Or just a destruction of a movie. Personally, I like it...it's funny and they have a lot of interesting things to say. Plus the variety of movies they watch, especially the Shorts, are a lovely look at an older culture of the US. It's educationally entertaining--how about them apples?
Then we went around class and found out what everyone else suggested. We started to get into that old argument about how Frame of Reference affects the interpretation of an author's work, but then class ended. Whew. There's much to think about in analyzing any sort of work, and it's amazing how it all comes together in the end. I don't know how this'll affect my stories, but...we shall see. :)

Wednesday, August 29, 2001

*yawn* Okay, this must be done before I go to sleep. This must be done before I nap. This must be done, this must be done. (See my commitment? Yay rah yay for me!)

Oh, I should add that I had Language, Power, and Gender last night, and there's going to be a research project where I get to tape record people. O_O In other words, I'm not sure if I'm looking forward to that. Went over the syllabus and talked about an article and some of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, which by now has been crammed into my brain a many-tude of times. I also met with Sylvia Plath (Lauren) and she gave me Good Omens back...and some Black n' Milds. These smell GOOD, though they aren't very yummy.

BE FOREWARNED: The following Spanish entry is going to be LONG. This is because we're covering the preterite, one of Spanish's past tenses, and it has a lot of irregular verbs. The last post about Spanish is nothing in comparison.
Spanish: I almost didn't go. I just made my bus--had to run up the hill, waving my arms--and then when I got off I felt like I was going to break into little pieces. However, I be strong, so I made it to class. And then la Se~ora was late--she had to find her way around two accidents and a parking place. (Parking is very difficult to be had at IUPUI, though Bloomie is apparently worse.) Anyway, she made it into class, but didn't have time to make copies, so we just worked out of the book.
And now...The Preterite

The regular conjugation is as follows, for all three verb endings:
-ar: e, aste, o, amos, asteis, aron (e/o con acento)
-er/ir: i, iste, io, emos/imos, isteis, ieron (i/io con acento)

The Irregulars have nine sections ^^; as follows:
a. Caer, creer, leer, oir, huir, incluir, construir, and atribuir
Verbs whose conjugations of the third person would've resulted in three vowels strung togther, such as "caer" becoming "caio."
The second vowel is changed to a "y" in both third person singular and plural. ex: cayo, cayeron; huyo, huyeron. There is an accent on the o.
b.Poder, poner, saber, caber, haber, tener, andar, querer, hacer, and venir
These are verbs that were irregular before, and heck, why change that for this clunky tense? They're all grouped here because they have an irregular conjugation, a scrambling of two regular conjugations. It goes: e, iste, o, imos, isteis, ieron. There are absolutely NO accents. On top of this, though, most of these verbs have some sort of spelling change:
Poder=pude
Poner=puse
Saber/Caber=supe/cupe
Haber=hubo
Tener/Estar/Andar=tuvo, estuvo, and anduvo
Querer=quiso
Hacer=hice
Venir=vino
Isn't this whole mess LOVELY?
c. Verbs ending in -decir/-ducir plus traer
These verbs all have a "j" in all of their forms, and decir has a stem change, from "deje" to "dijo." This one sort of makes sense, especially in decir's case. They retain the same conjugation structure as group b, but they drop the "i" in the Uds. form.
d-e: ir, ser, and dar:
These three I'm gonna stick together, because these are the oddballs out. Ser and ir have the same preterite conjugation (which looks NOTHING like the two verbs) and dar one day decided it was gonna have the er/ir conjugation MINUS accents. Ir, ser, and dar are not verbs you want to invite to the family party.
ir/ser: fui, fuiste, fue, fuimos, fuisteis, fueron
dar: di, diste, dio, dimos, disteis, dieron.
f. verbs ending in -ir
These verbs have a cambio radical--a stem change--in the third person singular and plural if they had a stem change in the present. I think. These are verbs like sentir, pedir, preferir, morir, and dormir, rather than vivir. There's only one vowel change, not two like the indicative has. The rest of the forms are regular.
e-->i: pido, prefirieron
o-->u: murio, durmieron
g. verbs with the ~
That up there stands for the n with tilde, and this is a little thing I've never heard of before. When a verb such as re~ir (to fight) or te~ir (to dye) conjugates, the third person in pret drops the "i" of the conjugations. Thus you have ri~o instead of ri~io.
-car, -gar, and -zar verbs:
These verbs take a stem change in the yo form in order to keep their pronunciation. "c" becomes "qu" (sacar=saque), "g" becomes "gu" (jugar=jugue) and "z" becomes "c" (empezar=empece). All of them retain their normal accents.
Averiguar
Another thing I ain't never seen before. The yo form of this verb calls for two dots over the u, which are called "dieresis." This, again, keeps the sound of the verb. Thus, "averigue" with two dots over the "u."

WHEW! I be bushed, and have homework, and am hoping this candle does not burn down my little house.

Jya!

Tuesday, August 28, 2001

More schtuff from yours truly about the day...and what I have learn-ed. (My headache is starting to come back, soo...)

American Literature: First of all, it's really nifty to watch the interpreters sign to the deaf guy in our class. I sat in front due to a late entry (long line in the bookstore) and so I got to watch them out of the corner of my eye. The facial expressions really make the conversation worthwhile--very nifty.
Anyhoo, reviewed aspects of modernism and realism and the modernist idea of realism, which in a nutshell is: EVERYTHING ACTUALLY SUCKS. There is no concept of time (skewed story/poetic chronology) and there is not straightforward plot line or idea--works are guided more by theme and character than by plot. All the neat loose ends are not tied up. We also discussed Robert Frost's "The Oven Bird," and talked about how dark Frost could actually be.

Writing Fiction: Discussed "A Jury of Her Peers," reviewed the elements of good storytelling, and did a little writing assignment.

And yes, this post is a bit sparse, but as said, I'm not feeling particularly hot.

Hola and good morning! Sorta. I'm tired and I still don't feel well, so this is gonna be short.

Japanese: Well, it's nice to have the old crew together again. The class is fairly good sized, and the chunk of us from Yonogi-sensei's class all sat in the same curve last night. Kuchenberg-san has left us, but I think we'll manage. We also have a new sensei--Sutanfirudo, which I think can be transliterated as Stanford or Stanferd or something like that. She's this little wisp of a Japanese woman, but she has this great big smile and, perhaps, a good sense of humor. One cannot tell from one class period. There's a few other people in the class that seem of note--a guy who lived in Japan for awhile, Sparks-san (I think that's his name) whose accent seemed flawless from where I was sitting, and a pair of gentlemen that really couldn't be called that who seem to already grate on the nerves. Oooh, fun.
We started reviewing kinship terms, and pages 315-318 hold the vocab and information. Homework is to make a chart of family and write descriptions of them. Remind me to look up "annoying" in Japanese ^_-.

Capstone Class: We finished introductions, discussed some IUPUI programs, and reviewed nineteenth century Lit. Then were set to brainstorm on our senior project. I'm thinking of doing dialect--the linguistics of it and how accurately it's represented in literature. Oh, bow to me NOW, for I am greatness -_-. I also engaged in some literary masochism by starting a book An Inquiry Into the Japanese Mind as Mirrored in Literature, which is a condensation of a work by Tsuda-sensei of Japan. According to the bio, he's a well known guy and the epitome of the scholar-saint. He was even persecuted. It looks interesting, though, and I figure I can broaden my horizons.

On another note, thank you Blogger for helping me remember my HTML tags. Oh, and I started yet another letter to mi koi, since anyone who reads this will of course be totally interested in my social life. You may start taking bets on if he'll send a letter back. (Hint: Those against will probably win.) Tee-hee, wo ai ni, amante!

I'll go now. It's probably for the best.

Monday, August 27, 2001

Hello again, peoples! Did you miss me? ^_^ I'm sure you did. Anyhoo, now for another informative session of...I Have a Lot of Time On My Hands Between Classes So I Use the University Computer. This should be known as IHLOMHBCSIUUC for short. (aye-h'llo-mahb-seeook if you want my pronunciation of it.)

Before I jot down my notes for Spanish class (where the Prof continues to be cool--no fue un sue~o, *mariachi yell*), I should say that I bought books this weekend, and they were expensive. x_x ICK. The reason I mention this is because I just happened to be reading an article as I was eating lunch (mmm, sandwich) which blamed the whole expense of textbooks on Profs. Actually, more the lack of money one gets when selling books back. THat's all the Prof's fault. But they reported that bookstores mark up their books 15-20%, even though they're sympathetic to the "poor college student." I understand markup generates profit, and also they don't have to worry much about competition, but still...yeagh. My SO had to pay some $60 bucks for a tiny booklet of pages. Something is rotten in this system...

Anyhoo, Spanish! Se~ora is really a sweetie, and she reminds me verra verra much of Dana--same accent, same really genki approach to teaching Spanish, same hair color...it's a strange twin sorta thing. I should ask if she knows her, or the two know each other at all. That would be spiffy. Anyhoo, we reviewed the pres. indicative and reflexive verbs today. Pretty much a piece of cake, though I did pick up some new verbs.

Notes:

    Verbs that require stem changes to conjugate:
  • Verbs ending in -cer preceeded by a vowel--conocer, parecer, merecer, nacer--the yo form changes from -co to -zco. (conozco, nazco)
  • Verbs ending in -ucir--conducir, inducir, lucir, traducir--the yo form again changes to -zco. (conduzco, traduzco)
  • Verbs ending in -cer or -cir proceeded by a consonant--convencer, vencer (to conquer) and the spiffy zurcir (to mend)--change the yo form to -zo,
    as in zurzo and venzo.
  • Verbs ending in -ger or -gir--coger, proteger (a), recoger, exigir, fingir(to pretend)--have a change in the yo form from -go to -jo in order to preserve the sound.
    Protego=protejo, cogo=cojo, and the like.
  • Verbs ending in -aer--caer, traer, raer (to scrape off)--have a yo form ending in -aigo, like traigo and raigo and caigo. (If I recall correctly, these verbs also do weird stuff in the preterite. We shall see.)
  • Verbs ending in -uir (not preceeded by "g")--huir (to flee), destruir, incluir, construir--take on a "y" in all forms except nosotros and vosotors. For example, huyo, huyes, huye, huimos, hui'r, huyen.
  • Verbs ending in -guir--distinguir, seguir, erguir*--drop the "u" in the yo form to retain the hard "g"--as in sigo or distingo--but retain it through the rest of the verbs forms: sigo, sigues, sigue, seguimos, siguen. ("uen" is pronounced "en" after a "g"--it's simply there to retain the hard sound.)

*The verb "erguir" has a strange conjugation. It means "to erect, lift up" and replaces that "e" with an "i"--irgo, irgues, irgue, erguimos, erguis, irguen.

Reflexive verbs are still easy, and it's just vocab, but I do need to learn the vosotros conjugation. Essentially, it's "a'is" for -ar, "e'is" for -er, and "i's" for -ir. (Those apostraphes stand for accents, BTW."

Whew! That's all for now, minus the little bit of homework there is to do. I'll be back later this eve, so jya ne!