About Peter
February 1st, 2009 | View Comments
Ni3 de ma1 shi4 yi4 ge3 da4 wu1 gui1! “Your mother is a big fat turtle!” I proudly shouted at my third grade class, strangely, at the teacher’s request. Weekly trips on Sundays to the local Chinese school were paying off.
I’ve always been fascinated by language. I remember wondering aloud why certain sounds, when put together, created words while others did not. For example, why do we call the writing utensil made of wood and graphite a “pencil” and not a “globsprink”? (Word Nerd Alert: The word pencil comes from the word peniculus, meaning “brush”. Peniculus is a diminutive of the root, penis, meaning “tail”.)
When offered the chance to take a language in middle school, I took to German. To most, the hacking phlegm of the German ch sounded revolting, but I found it beautiful.
In college, I discovered the wonderful world of linguistics: A world in which people did not give me funny looks when I contort my mouth to vocalize a voiced pharyngeal fricative. A world in which people found giddy joy in diagramming sentences. A world in in which language became a puzzle, rather than a string of seemingly random words.
I’m not just here for technical help, but also for pure fun.
Peter posted this on February 1st, 2009 @ 12:14pm in Biographical | Permalink to "About Peter"
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American-born Taiwanese girl who married a Japanese guy. And who forgot about six years' of Spanish grammar and most of the vocab.
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yvonnekao
Korean-American girl who blogs under a Spanish pseudonym because being culturally confusing is fun. Native speakers say that she has outstanding Spanish (which is a definite compliment) and outstanding German (which is most assuredly not).
Elenita
American-born, Taiwanese guy who took five semesters worth of German and ended up with a major in Linguistics.
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