9 Feb 2017 05:06 am
drive by reading meme
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frayadjacentWhat did you recently finish reading?
Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: the Untold Story of English audiobook, written and read by John McWhorter. This was mostly an interesting and engaging book. He focuses on changes in English's grammar, which he argues (and I agree) is a lot more interesting than just word etymologies, and specifically looks at how encounters with other languages changed English. First when the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes came to Britain and had their language changed by the Celts. Then the Vikings came and brought a language that was similar to proto-English, but not the same, and what emerged was simpler than either, in a least-common-denominator sort of way. He argues that the Normans had little influence on English grammar because French was the language of the ruling class and only spoken by a tiny minority (and not for very long). In the last chapter, he speculates on the possible influence of Semitic languages on proto-Germanic to account for the differences between Germanic languages and other Indo-European ones. That hypothesis really is just a hypothesis, without enough evidence to support it fully, but it's interesting nonetheless.
As interesting as the story of English itself was the insight I got into the methods that linguists use to trace how languages have changed. McWhorter also discussed how those methods can lead linguists astray -- for example, by assuming that changes in spoken language are mirrored by changes in written language, which isn't even true for all languages now, much less at a time and place where most people were illiterate.
He also had a chapter debunking the Sapir-Worf hypotesis (of Arrival fame), but I'd already heard and been convinced by that argument in his podcast, so it was the least interesting chapter to me. I get the impression that the Sapir-Worf hypothesis is to linguistics as the Gulf Stream* is to climate science -- its importance is vastly overstated in popular literature, media, and even some introductory textbooks, much to the chagrin of experts.
I like McWhorter's writing and narrating style, and he has a very pleasant voice to boot. The book gets a bit dry at times when he is describing conjugations etc, but those times are brief.
What are you reading now?
Ninefox Gambt, by Yoon Ha Lee. This is working much better for me now than last week. First, I followedisis's suggestion and stopped to read this short story prequel first, which helped me make sense of the world a bit. Second, I realised that the word "calendar" is actually used in more or less the usual sense, to mean tracking time and noting dates -- at first I was convinced it had to mean something totally different and unfamiliar, because it was being used *so weirdly*. Third, I realised that I needed to stop approaching this story like hard sci-fi and start approaching it like fantasy -- I needed to just accept the magical tech rather than hurt my head trying to make some sense it. In a way, it's almost the inverse of the Steerswoman books.
What will you read next?
I'm gonna catch up on some podcasts and then choose my next audiobook. I'm thinking one of the Great Courses history series, but I'm choosing from a few.
* 1) the Gulf Stream is not the main reason why Northern Europe is warm -- the Atlantic Ocean generally is the first reason, and, interestingly, the Rocky Mountains are the second. 2) even if the thermohaline circulation were shut down a la The Day After Tomorrow, the Gulf Stream would still be there, because it's driven by winds which exist because the Earth rotates and the sun shines more on the tropics than the poles -- global warming isn't going to change that fact.
Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: the Untold Story of English audiobook, written and read by John McWhorter. This was mostly an interesting and engaging book. He focuses on changes in English's grammar, which he argues (and I agree) is a lot more interesting than just word etymologies, and specifically looks at how encounters with other languages changed English. First when the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes came to Britain and had their language changed by the Celts. Then the Vikings came and brought a language that was similar to proto-English, but not the same, and what emerged was simpler than either, in a least-common-denominator sort of way. He argues that the Normans had little influence on English grammar because French was the language of the ruling class and only spoken by a tiny minority (and not for very long). In the last chapter, he speculates on the possible influence of Semitic languages on proto-Germanic to account for the differences between Germanic languages and other Indo-European ones. That hypothesis really is just a hypothesis, without enough evidence to support it fully, but it's interesting nonetheless.
As interesting as the story of English itself was the insight I got into the methods that linguists use to trace how languages have changed. McWhorter also discussed how those methods can lead linguists astray -- for example, by assuming that changes in spoken language are mirrored by changes in written language, which isn't even true for all languages now, much less at a time and place where most people were illiterate.
He also had a chapter debunking the Sapir-Worf hypotesis (of Arrival fame), but I'd already heard and been convinced by that argument in his podcast, so it was the least interesting chapter to me. I get the impression that the Sapir-Worf hypothesis is to linguistics as the Gulf Stream* is to climate science -- its importance is vastly overstated in popular literature, media, and even some introductory textbooks, much to the chagrin of experts.
I like McWhorter's writing and narrating style, and he has a very pleasant voice to boot. The book gets a bit dry at times when he is describing conjugations etc, but those times are brief.
What are you reading now?
Ninefox Gambt, by Yoon Ha Lee. This is working much better for me now than last week. First, I followed
isis's suggestion and stopped to read this short story prequel first, which helped me make sense of the world a bit. Second, I realised that the word "calendar" is actually used in more or less the usual sense, to mean tracking time and noting dates -- at first I was convinced it had to mean something totally different and unfamiliar, because it was being used *so weirdly*. Third, I realised that I needed to stop approaching this story like hard sci-fi and start approaching it like fantasy -- I needed to just accept the magical tech rather than hurt my head trying to make some sense it. In a way, it's almost the inverse of the Steerswoman books. What will you read next?
I'm gonna catch up on some podcasts and then choose my next audiobook. I'm thinking one of the Great Courses history series, but I'm choosing from a few.
* 1) the Gulf Stream is not the main reason why Northern Europe is warm -- the Atlantic Ocean generally is the first reason, and, interestingly, the Rocky Mountains are the second. 2) even if the thermohaline circulation were shut down a la The Day After Tomorrow, the Gulf Stream would still be there, because it's driven by winds which exist because the Earth rotates and the sun shines more on the tropics than the poles -- global warming isn't going to change that fact.
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Also, I listened to a Great Courses lecture series by McWhorter about the history of English and found it both entertaining to listen to and full of interesting stuff.
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When air flows from west to east over the Rocky Mountains (or other very large mountain ranges -- the Himalaya and the Andes have similar effects), it is vertically compressed. This is because the air near the surface must rise over the mountains, but the air at the top stays about the same height.
Now, this mass of air has rotation associated with it -- both because it's on a rotating planet and because it's probably rotating itself, this is called vorticity (mathematically, vorticity is the curl of the wind velocity vectors). The vorticity associated with being on a rotating planet is called planetary vorticity, and the other type, for example the counterclockwise rotation of a weather system, is called relative vorticity. The total (or absolute) vorticity of the mass of air is the sum of these two -- this is the actual vorticity in an inertial reference frame. (Sorry if you already knew all/some of that.)
When the mass of air flows over the mountains and is vertically squished, it loses some of its relative vorticity, like a spinning ice skater who puts her arms out horizontally. Then when it flows off the mountains it is vertically stretched -- this spins it up. To conserve angular momentum, the mass of air can compensate by changing its planetary vorticity. The planetary vorticity is higher near the poles and zero at the equator. So when air flows off the Rockies it turns south, and this sets up a very large wave pattern (called Rossby, planetary, or stationary waves) in which the flow turns south and then north.
So, if you look at Panel b of the figure under the heading "Wave Instability" under the previous link, Europe is at about the location of the northmost extent of the wave.
This means that across the Atlantic the air tends to flow from south to north as well as west to east. Furthermore, the Rossby waves act as a wave guide that basically points smaller-scale waves -- i.e., midlatitude cyclones -- at northern Europe. While it usually feels cold and miserable when a midlatitude cyclone dumps on you, their climatological effect is to transport massive amounts of heat from the subtropics to the middle and higher latitudes.
I should add that the Gulf Stream actually does account for significant warmth in a few parts of Scandinavia! But for most of the rest of northern Europe, it's a bit player compared to the massive heat capacity of the Atlantic Ocean and the Rocky mountains.
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