Unmarked Women, Language Confusion, & Other Observations

It's been a while!

A couple of things have been floating around in my brain, but they haven't been significant enough to warrant their own individual posts. So, here's a miscellaneous list of language and/or writing related observations I have!!

1. In AP Lang, we read an essay entitled "There Is No Unmarked Woman" by Deborah Tannen. It links the "unmarked case" concept in linguistics with the social reality that women are always marked, viewed to be a certain way, no matter how they act, what they wear, how much makeup they put on, what title they name themselves. Favorite tidbits: using "he" as the sex-indefinite pronoun was introduced by (male) grammarians, and technically, boys are just born with modified female bodies. Take that.

2. For AP Lang (I do so much for that class, wow) my next independent reading book is Every Word Is a Bird We Teach to Sing by Daniel Tammet. It's about Tammet's personal experiences and encounters with communication and language. and I'm excited to read it!

3. To my disgrace, my 日本語の勉強 has fallen a bit by the wayside... But I'm trying to get back into the swing of things! I'm making a cumulative study guide of what I've learned on my own so far, and I plan to do a little writing project as practice before continuing on with the rest of Genki 1.

a. Random sentences to show that I have not completely forgotten everything: NJにすごく寒いです。寒い天気が嫌いです。夏に遊んで、友達に会って、家族と旅行をしました。いい天気でしたね…今、私は毎日毎日家で勉強しています。たくさん宿題があります :( いつも忙しいと思います。速く、休みましょう…

（すみません！私の日本語は全然よくないです）

4. I might have a problem: whenever I tell myself to go into foreign-language writing/reading mode, I autopilot to Spanish words. My Spanglish has overtaken my Chinglish. Es una lástima que no haya practicado la lengua de mis padres, de mi herencia, desde el examen de AP...

5. Okay, but I do want to maintain my Chinese. 五月天 is a great rock band, and I'm surprised I liked their concert a lot?! I've listened to some of their songs on Spotify regularly, hopefully that'll condition me to be comfortable with Chinese/Taiwanese dialect. 他们的演唱会真的让我很惊讶。我没想到这二十多岁的组合会有真么激烈的音乐。我好喜欢会弹吉他的队员！！哎呀，我已经把我知道的中文词汇都忘掉了。怎么办？？(When I wrote 'guitar 吉他' I almost put "la" before it!!! Like la guitarra!!!!)

5. I'm really interested in Rumi's poems! I hope to know more about them; they're so poignant in English translations that it must be amazing in its original Persian. the two quotes I remember from him are "The wound is where the light enters you" and "You are not a drop in the ocean, but the ocean in a drop" (antimetabole! lang class haunts me everywhere I go).

6. I recently wrote a personal narrative relating to gender issues for the NJCTE competition! I hadn't planned to use this blog as a writing blog, but it seemed to go over well when I posted the "Undressed in Atami" piece... Maybe I will post other writing.

7. New Semantics will be updating tomorrow!!!! Like the FB page to stay updated & FB message the page to get involved ^_^

This brain dump is over... I'll be back soon to talk about NACLO and possibly other things!