(no subject)

[camwyn]

It's closing bell at the NY Stock Exchange. Patrick, from Spongebob Squarepants, just rang the closing bell.

This would be a bit more noteworthy if it weren't for the fact that Spongebob himself rang the opening one. The Nickelodeon company figured their current flagship product was the way to go with opening/closing.

Still... somehow a giant semi-anthropomorphic sponge is not quite the image I had in mind for the bloke who throws the switch that starts up the heart of the capital of capitalism.


... oh gods I'm turning into a Brit again. 'Scuse me. Gotta go read some Damon Runyon or something.

Comments

[colubra.livejournal.com]

It bears note that turning into a Brit does not necessarily mean writing with florid/hyperliterate diction: Raymond Chandler, widely acknowledged as a master of the form known as 'hard-boiled detective fiction', was British.

[camwyn]

Oh, well aware of that. It's just that the sponge line reminded me a bit too much of the guys who write Two Chaps Talking. I have periodic lapses of dialect, especially when I'm tired, and they're almost never into my native Noo Yawkish. I suddenly find my speech or writing patterns mimicking something that I've read, heard, or experienced. It's very unnerving when I start yelling at someone and realise that my accent and my word choices are being drawn from the bank labeled 'West Virginia Holler Country', but it happens with Britglish as well. (Different forms of Britglish, too, mind you, sorted by author and/or time period.)

[chaos-wrangler.livejournal.com]

My accent & word choice wander too, also usually when I'm tired, annoyed, or have been talking with someone or reading something with that as standard.

But that's still better than switching languages without noticing, since then I'm not just "weird" but "incomprehensible".

[camwyn]

I don't know enough of any other language to switch out of English, but on two occasions when I was tired I've comprehended sentences in languages I do not, technically, know. One was Russian- someone in the drugstore where I worked was wondering aloud about the ear thermometers- and one was modern Greek, which is only distantly related to the ancient Greek I was studying at the time.

[chaos-wrangler.livejournal.com]

Cool. I can usually understand a lot more than I can say, a point which was brought home recently when I tried to learn Spanish for G's sister's wedding. G's dad is Mexican and the new brother-in-law is from Spain (and his mom speaks no English), so there was a lot of Spanish/bilingual conversation. My comprehension improved to the point that I could follow > 50% of what the mom said, and much more of what others said (Mexican Spanish & American Spanish are easier for my ears than Spanish Spanish), but when I tried to speak Spanish it came out mixed with French and I didn't always notice. When I tried actively suppressing the French, Hebrew started popping out, and at that point I gave up, apologized/explained through someone else, and generally stuck to direct listening & indirect talking. Fortunately for me, everyone except for her and a 4-year-old nephew spoke at least some English, so finding interpreters wasn't hard.

[genarti]

One of my best friends has studied Japanese for several years; I can count to ten in Japanese, but not much more. I've studied French and Arabic, neither of which she speaks at all.

Naturally, when we lived together one summer, we fell into the habit of having multilingual conversations. It really is amazing what one can pick up from context and body language and vocal inflection, particularly if you know the other person well.

(The bad part of this is that now all it takes is one non-English word to throw us both into that pattern, and while we understand each other perfectly it confuses the heck out of everybody around us.)

[colubra.livejournal.com]

Me, when drunk, starts assuming a bit of a British accent (care to guess where I learned to drink heavily?)