بدون

To Open

I always find it interesting to listen to non-native English speakers speak English. To be more precise, I find how they express themselves and translate certain phrases and idioms in their native language into English when they speak, to be highly fascinating.

From my scant observations thus far, the verb ‘to open’ seems to serve versatile for non-native speakers. Garance Doré, a French illustrator who is also known as The Sartorialist’s other half, introduces herself via telling how she came about her blog, as such: “I opened my blog in June 2006.” Normally I think native English speakers would say “I started a blog”, but she writes ‘opened’. In French it makes perfect sense to say ‘J’ai ouvert ce blog’ as opposed to ‘J’ai commencé ce blog’.

Another example of non-native speakers using ‘to open’, is how Israeli or those whose mother tongue is Hebrew say ‘to turn on the television/radio’. Most will say, ‘Can you open the TV?’ as opposed to ‘Can you turn/switch on the TV?”. This is only natural if you think about how you would ask this question in Hebrew: “אפשר לפתוח את הטלויזיה?” (literally, “Can you open the television?” or more precisely, “Able to open the television?”).

I personally find Doré’s usage of ‘opened’ to be the more precise than ‘started’. Opening a blog sounds like opening a window to your thoughts. Starting a blog sounds like you’ve started a project.

I wrote, ‘I started this Tumblog’ in my very first post. I won’t change it though; then that’d spoil the whole purpose of remembering what it was to be me. That is always the point.

Providence?

A couple of days ago I started following a whole bunch of Korean journalists on Twitter, by random selection. Not long after I started following this one journalist, I received a direct message asking whether I had attended this high school - and I had. I vaguely recognized her name through mutual friends of ours. She was two years ahead so I wasn’t as close with the older students. We decided to find a time to meet up. Tonight was the night.

The first thing she said when she saw me was, “Oh, I now sort of remember seeing you in the school hallways!” I was taken by surprise because from our Twitter exchanges I had assumed she already knew who I was. Halfway through our gyozas and rice, she told me the story of how she came across, well, me.

A couple of months ago, she couldn’t remember this quote in a movie that she found memorable (a bit ironic, ey?). She Google searched and the first listing was the on this very blog. [Editor’s note: I asked her to tell me what the quote was and she couldn’t remember what the quote was or which movie it was in. Double irony.] She saw my name on the sidebar and thought, “I know this name”. She asked a friend of hers to see if the friend knew me, and the friend did. She forgot about this whole thing until I started following her on Twitter. Et voilà, we were at dinner.

Status Update

wisdom teeth (-4)
root canals (+x)
tear beneath tongue as collateral damage from aforementioned root canal procedure (+1)
pain (+∞)

*x = TBD

Terms of Endearment

I was going through some of my old notebooks and came across my Hebrew vocabulary list. Of all the terms of endearment in the Hebrew language, my favorite is חמוץ/חמוצה שלי (khamutz, m./khamutzah, f. sheli).  Khamutz means ‘sour, or pungent in smell’, but it also serves an adjective for someone who is grumpy, or bad-tempered. And sheli is the possessive ‘mine’. The endearment would essentially translate as ‘my grump’.

I prefer this one over מאמי or מותק, but I have a soft spot for אהובה שלי.