tempest in a teacup...er, coffee cup

the battle raged. brother against brother, babies having babies, the world in chaos, etc. it was epic...eschaton-shaped, even.

but we now have an answer. results have poured in from the internet umfrage:

himonline survey

• grinds: 2
• grounds: 22
• abstain: 6

kelly armstrong messageboard (courtesy of stephanie - thanks, doll!)

• grinds: 4
• grounds: 19

plus all the legwork i did on campus...okay, that's a lie. i asked people in close proximity to me. i'm too lazy for legwork...or any kind of manual labour like that, really. whatever, anyway: overwhelming response for grounds. so, the winner is:

GROUNDS!!!

once again, the power of grammar prevails. we can all sleep at night. well, we could if we were inclined to sleep at night. i'm not. just so you know.

and for all of you who voted grinds: you are disappointments as human beings, proceed to fall upon your stir sticks in shame.

a java-flavoured dilemma

today transpired a hot debate at starbucks...and when i say 'hot' i mean there were 3 of us, and we're fairly attractive. i really don't think anyone else really cares about this particular topic. regardless:

'grounds' vs. 'grinds'

the general consensus was that 'grinds' is a more colloquial term for the pulverized beans, while 'grounds' is the proper appellation. i personally favour 'grounds', on a purely grammatical basis:

'i grind' = present tense. 'i ground' = past tense. in many languages, verbs lend themselves to other grammatical structures, such as participles. there exists a type of participle known as a 'p.p.p.', or a perfect passive participle. these happy little verbal wanna-bes can be attached to a noun as a qualification of some aspect: the coffee having been ground. from there one can adapt the p.p.p. into an adjectival form: 'ground coffee'. several languages, including german and ancient greek, can make adjectives into actual nouns, through the process of substantiation. the adjective now stands in for the noun, and can be modified by means of inflectional morphemes to take a plural form:

grounds.

(yes, i am a crusty old grammarian at the age of 24. i think maybe i missed my calling.)

dangling prepositions make baby jesus cry

this blog really ought to be called 'the adventures of the grammar whore' or something. i can't seem to get away from grammar...or the french. and wouldn't you know, today's entry relates (yet again!) to both.

i was minding my own business, coasting along through the french program cd-rom as i often do, when something so repugnant, so jarring, so ekelhaft appeared that i hit the wrong accent key, missed the question and had to reset the section. yes, my friends, i found...

...A DANGLING PREPOSITION!!!

la mauvaise question: Who do you have a date with?

a piece of me dies to even type this as a second-hand report. after i got over the shock of this pendulous abomination, i noticed a further grammatical transgression: the interrogative pronoun is the object of the preposition here, signalling the use of the ablative or dative case (in english there is no retained ablative, so it's dative by default - regardless, the form for all interrogative pronouns following an english preposition is the same, save the genitive, which is 'whose') - french has abandoned the case system, but retains grammatical differentiation through a variety of pronoun classes - but the question is in english, so the point is moot. yet the interrogative pronoun is in the nominative case! *gasp*

la bonne question: With whom do you have a date?

and so i say to you, mademoiselle french professor,

Vous êtes la plus grande déception depuis la crucifiction!

a linguistic break-through!

scrabblesquirrel and i were procrastinating on msn last week, trying to avoid doing french, as we often do, when we had a break-through. we've answered the question many have pondered since the beginning of time. no, not 'what is the meaning of life?'...much bigger. much more elusive. a question of biblical proportions:

what the FUCK is wrong with the french???

seriously. they pronounce perhaps half of each word contained in the typical french sentence. it's terribly confusing for non-native speakers. not that i generally attribute much original or consequential thought to the french, but on the off-chance that they DO produce something significant, i'd like to catch it. why do they neglect articulation and enunciation? i've pondered this for far too long.

and so i give you...


the msn diaries #1: A LINGUISTIC BREAK-THROUGH

2/27/2005, 5:00:29 PM
serena: ...memories in paraphrase...

haha, i love french syntax - "is it that you have need of some butter for to do the baking of the cake of the birthday?"

2/27/2005, 5:00:36 PM
serena: ...memories in paraphrase...

*snort*

2/27/2005, 5:01:01 PM
serena: ...memories in paraphrase...

seriously, i love it

2/27/2005, 5:01:16 PM
Jessica: Mireille! Ne couchez pas avec Pierre! Il est un LOSER!

hahaha yeah it is amusing

2/27/2005, 5:01:24 PM
serena: ...memories in paraphrase...

latin - as few words as possible

2/27/2005, 5:01:30 PM
serena: ...memories in paraphrase...

french - as many words as possible

2/27/2005, 5:01:35 PM
Jessica: Mireille! Ne couchez pas avec Pierre! Il est un LOSER!

yup

2/27/2005, 5:01:37 PM
serena: ...memories in paraphrase...

more so than greek, i think

2/27/2005, 5:01:45 PM
Jessica: Mireille! Ne couchez pas avec Pierre! Il est un LOSER!

yeah i think so

2/27/2005, 5:01:53 PM
serena: ...memories in paraphrase...

no wonder it takes the french forever to say anything

2/27/2005, 5:02:04 PM
serena: ...memories in paraphrase...

it would take me forever too

2/27/2005, 5:02:19 PM
serena: ...memories in paraphrase...

which is why they slur and pronounce only 1/3 of the words!

2/27/2005, 5:02:25 PM
serena: ...memories in paraphrase...

we've figured it out!!!

2/27/2005, 5:02:25 PM
Jessica: Mireille! Ne couchez pas avec Pierre! Il est un LOSER!

*snort*

2/27/2005, 5:02:28 PM
Jessica: Mireille! Ne couchez pas avec Pierre! Il est un LOSER!

hahaha

2/27/2005, 5:02:30 PM
Jessica: Mireille! Ne couchez pas avec Pierre! Il est un LOSER!

blog entry!

2/27/2005, 5:02:31 PM
serena: ...memories in paraphrase...

oh my god!

2/27/2005, 5:02:34 PM
serena: ...memories in paraphrase...

YES!

2/27/2005, 5:02:45 PM
serena: ...memories in paraphrase...

i've discovered the secret of french!

2/27/2005, 5:02:58 PM
Jessica: Mireille! Ne couchez pas avec Pierre! Il est un LOSER!

congratulations

2/27/2005, 5:03:03 PM
Jessica: Mireille! Ne couchez pas avec Pierre! Il est un LOSER!

i'm proud of you

~*~*~

...so as you can see, this is why the french are incomprehensible. too many words! they simply haven't the time to utter all of the redundant words in a typical french sentence. this is why they slur and ellide like a frat boy at a kegger. honestly, what's the point of an inflected language if you aren't going to pronounce the significant morphemes?

i propose a linguistic revolution. we discard unnecessary particles and prepositions...so, all of them. we introduce the case system - inflectional morphemes for nouns. failing a radical paradigm institution, DEFINITELY the genitive. there. we've reduced french syntax by two-thirds. toss in a bit of crisp articulation, and you have a comprehensible language. actually...

...you have german.

le sigh.