Non?

The course schedules came recently, and I see that I'll soon be teaching this:

College English - Non English Speaking Foreigner

At least, I think that I will be teaching it, unless the administration really does want non-English-speaking foreigners as instructors.

Iranians Shouting "Go Al-Saud"?

"Go Al-Saud"

Reuters

Sam Wilkin reports that "Iran complains to U.N. about Saudi 'provocations'" (Reuters, January 9, 2016), but despite official Iranian opposition to the Al-Saud regime in Saudi Arabia, based on centuries-long animosity between Shi'a and Sunni, we see that protests in Iran show surprising support for the Al-Saud regime among the protesters themselves!

In the photo above, for instance, protesters support the Al-Saud family with sports' fan enthusiasm, waving banners that urge the ruling family on toward victory, saying, "Go Al-Saud" - and presumably shouting that support as well with chants of encouragement:

"Go Al-Saud, Go! Show 'em What You Know!"

Either that . . . or the Iranians aren't getting their money's worth for the private English lessons they're secretly taking . . .

Some EWIS Feedback . . .

Student

Google Images

I received some feedback from a student who took my EWIS course, and her words are a 'virtual' advertisement for the course:

EWIS Gll is the best course for a student who has a definite content and a specific goal of writing. 1:1 tutorials with the professor, who usually checked an overall flow of a draft as well as concrete details and subtle nuances of words and expressions, were very helpful to upgrade the quality of the draft. Even when a student had an ambiguous direction, the professor helped to develop the idea by giving some guidance of where to get started, how to approach, and whether the idea had a logical flaw. It was a huge advantage not to force students make an outcome in a particular format but to manage a student to write for herself on her necessity. I am preparing to apply for a master's program in the United States, and with the professor's help I completed the three versions of my statement of purpose and CV in the classes. Other students also wrote for their fields and interests and the professor counseled each student and gave her guidelines. In such a process, the students could realize their understanding of their field or interests, and learned how to make a persuasive argument. As for me, I earned a clear concept of writing, for applications that the institutions wanted, by the professor's guidance, and could develop a strategy for each of them. If I had not taken this EWIS GII course, I would have been in chaos, not knowing where to start my writing and how to complete it. In this sense, I think that it was very fortunate to have a chance to take this course, and thanks to that, I could go one step forward to my goal.

Maybe I should spend a bit more time on grammar, but I think what I do is a far better use of time, and I thank the student for her implicit understanding of that.

Misreading an Oddly Worded Teacher's Manual?

Longman Academic Reading Series 4

Reading Skills for College
Google Images

In my College English course, we're using the textbook Longman Academic Reading Series 4: Reading Skills for College (Pearson Education, 2014), by Robert F. Cohen and Judy L. Miller, and we're working through Chapter 8, "Psychology: Aggression and Violence," which takes up pages 195-220.

One exercise is on Note-Taking: Identifying the Author's Assertions and Explanations (page 209), and it concerns an article titled "Reflections on Natural History" (pages 203-204), by Stephen Jay Gould. In the exercise, we find Gould's Assertions and Gould's Explanations, and we have to fill in the blanks in the former and write down the explanations in the latter.

Number 3 states the following:

Man is a           species.

To find the answer, we turn to Gould's article, paragraph 3, which follows a passage asking if we expect a punch in the nose half the time we address a stranger. This query segues into the following denial:

No, nearly every encounter with another person is at least neutral and usually pleasant enough. Homo sapiens is a remarkably genial species. Ethnologists consider other animals relatively peaceful if they see but one or two aggressive encounters while observing an organism for, say, tens of hours. But think of how many millions of hours we can log for most people on most days without noting anything more threatening than a raised third finger once a week or so. (page 203)

The bold, blue-fonted word stands out as one of the chapter's important vocabulary words and is pretty obviously the answer to enter into the blank:

Man is a genial species.

But then comes the 'official' explanation - offered in Longman Academic Reading Series 4, Teacher's Manual, Student Book Answer Key - defending the choice of "genial" by focusing on animals:

animals are relatively peaceful, described that way despite one or two aggressive acts; hardly any aggressive acts noted after millions of hours observing humans (page 130)

I had to re-read this explanation several times before I could figure out what the manual was saying. It at first seems to be answering a question about animals, as if the assertion had been that "Animals are genial species"! That led to my reading the next line as if animals were rarely aggressive even "after millions of hours observing humans"! As though to say that if anything would drive animals to violence, this one horrific thing would, namely, "observing humans." But animals are so peace-loving that even their long-term observation of us only rarely results in aggressiveness on their part.

But the absurdity of such a reading soon led me to a correct understanding of the manual's explanation. The word "hardly" should be understood as if preceded by "ethnologists acknowledge," as in, "ethnologists acknowledge hardly any aggressive acts noted after millions of hours observing humans."

So . . . am I particularly dense, or does anyone else initially misread the 'official' explanation as I did?

Ewha Writing Intensive Seminar (EWIS) - One Student's Feedback

Brain Science
"To get ahead, you gotta have connections!"

Here is some feedback from one of my EWIS students - a wonderful student who worked very hard improving her brain science article:

I am sure your class is the best English class that I've ever taken. While making [my] portfolio [now], I am feeling a sense of satisfaction for the article. There are so many corrections. Even though it differs . . . [from] your field, I am impressed [by] your interest in my article. Through the . . . [corrections,] I le[a]rned a lot . . . . I think writing a good article is the hardest thing in the world. I didn't even know that great writing skill . . . in English is the most important qualification to be a good scientist . . . . I realized that in order to write a good article it is important to read a lot, think a lot and write a lot. I've been learning a lot from you . . . . I already miss our EWIS class [now that it's over]. I feel like . . . I should write a new paragraph and attend the class tomorrow morning! . . . Thank [you] for [the] EWIS class.

Other students also wrote kind emails to me, but this student said the nicest things. I call her a "student," but she finished her doctorate in biology last year, so I suppose she's really more of a colleague.

Completely Disrobed Hominid?

Andong Mummy
Plos One

One of my EWIS students is an expert in forensic anatomy, and she inadvertently provided sufficient information for me to track down a paper that she co-wrote with other anatomical experts:

"Radiological Diagnosis of Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia in 17th Century Korean Mummy"

I looked for a thesis statement, of course, which is usually placed at the end of the introduction, and found this penultimate sentence:

Most recently, in the course of a routine computed tomography (CT) and associated autopsy on a 17th century Korean mummy, we found evidence suggesting that the man might have suffered from CDH.

As I commented to my student in an email:

If only you had gotten to him 400 years earlier, you could have saved his life!

I suggested some Korean ppali-ppali:

Work faster!

And in my ignorance, I asked:

PS What's CDH, anyway -- Completely Dead Human?

My student replied:

Ha-ha-ha That was funny. K-k-k-k . . .

I will let my professor know: "Completely Dead Human"

Actually it is Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia -- the keyword of the paper!

Ah, there it is, in the article's title. Hmmm . . . though it looks like three key words to my eyes, but my eyesight is faulty now that I'm old and approaching my more serious sort of CDH . . .

Arbitraria Deos: The Grammar Gods

Grammar Gods?

Memecrunch

In an argument at the Marmot's Hole over Korean grammar -- about which I know nearly nothing -- Gerry Bevers, who has been working on the language for many years and argues over the finer points of grammar, wrote the following in defense of deferring to grammar authorities:

Americans frequently make ungrammatical sentences, but is that something that should just be accepted? Should American English teachers stop marking those as mistakes simply because many Americans make them? Why even bother teaching grammar if people are simply going to excuse grammar mistakes as colloquial speech?

By way of humorous retort, I interrupted the debate and posted this:

Good point! Follow the lead of grammarians. But . . .

I know I ain't supposed to use "ain't" for "am not" -- I'm supposed to use "aren't," aren't I? or am I not? . . . I'm not sure.

My subtle point is not to throw grammar out the window but rather to direct attention to an absurdity foisted upon English speakers by grammarians so uptight and rigid about excluding a historical contraction for "am not" that they insist on "aren't" as its proper contraction when using a tag question!

I'm right about this, ain't I?

Or would you prefer: I'm wrong about this, aren't I?

Think about it . . .

The Gypsy Gets Interviewed . . .

Tiffany Zappulla

Linked In

Some weeks ago, Ms. Tiffany Zappulla contacted me about an article that she was writing on English teaching in Korea and asked for my perspective on the university sector, along with other questions. She has now published her article, "ESL in the Fast Lane: Lessons in Teaching English in South Korea" (Vagabond Journey, April 24, 2012), which distills the views of various instructors of English here in Korea. Here's where she presents me and my views:

Jeffery Hodges of the blog Gypsy Scholar, who earned his doctoral degree in history at UC Berkeley, tutored in Switzerland and taught in Germany, Australia, and several academies and universities in South Korea before settling at Ewha University's English Program Office in 2009, where he teaches writing and also does editing and translations on the side. Altogether, Hodges has been living and teaching in South Korea for 12 years (and plans to retire there), an impressive stint considering that many who come as fresh graduates don't last out their year-long contracts.

In general, Hodges feels that adult learners are more motivated to learn English, but that students' pre-college education poses limits to Western-style learning: "Students here are too passive and tend to plagiarize because they haven't been taught not to and because their education is mostly rote memorization and doesn't encourage creativity," Hodges said.

The austere hierarchy system -- a remnant of Korea's Confucian past -- can also stifle analytical and critical thinking. "In Korea, decisions are made above and handed down without allowing for much feedback, which is a bit frustrating," Hodges explained. "Know that contracts are not sacrosanct, that decisions are made from above, and discussion won't take place. Also, don't get angry at student plagiarism; just catch it, and explain that it will get students a low grade."

. . .

Hodges also touched upon one aspect of adaptation that holds a lot of weight in a neo-Confucian society: obedience and realizing the goals of the group as a whole. "My method: Do the job, don't complain, be helpful and cheerful," he explained. "I get along with my co-workers, who are mostly Western, so there's little cultural misunderstanding. I also have friendly relations with Korean co-workers and staff." First impressions are universal, and one-time events can come back to haunt you, especially in the workplace.

I wish that I'd known these things from the beginning of my teaching career in Korea. Much would have worked out better. But I can't really complain much -- nor should I, if I follow my own advice!

For the entire article, which includes the views of other instructors, go here.

South Korea Cracks Down on Funny Howling Shleep Demons

Engrish Papparazzi

Schlepping Around with a Camera

Photo by Jin Lee

CNNGO

My diplomatic childhood friend Deva Hupaylo, recalling that I like beer and that I'm living in Korea, put two and two together -- she always was good with numbers -- and sent me a link to this CNN report along with the advice that I can "make some beer money this way."

The CNNGO report, titled "Korea Tourism Organization wages war on 'Engrish'" (December 1, 2011), doesn't post the author's name, though the photo is by Jin Lee -- who I assume is the photographer "Jin Lee." The article is short, so I'll post it all:

Looks like Engrish.com -- the snarky website showcasing error-riddled English signs in Asia -- won't be getting as many submissions from Korea.

How awesome is this? Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) is offering to reward photographers who submit snaps of muddled signs at tourist spots.

The prize? A gift card of ₩50,000 (approximately US$45) that can be used at any vendor that accepts credit cards -- otherwise known as free money.

Although there are no hard-and-fast rules about what constitutes a "tourist spot," you can't go wrong with the usual foreigner hotspots of Myeong-dong and Itaewon.

To enter, create an ID on the Visit Korea website and submit a photograph of the garbled sign, along with its location. Although the event site is only displayed in Korean, foreigners are also welcome to participate in the event.

Submissions will be accepted for signs with mistakes in English, Japanese and Chinese.

Rather bizarrely, the event does not apply to mistakes on road signs, restaurant menus and guidebooks, due to the fact that these categories are overseen by other departments and this particular event is being hosted by the Tourism Service Improvement Team at KTO. The latter will then pay to have the signs fixed.

The contest runs until December 14. The 20 winners will be announced on December 22 on the Visit Korea homepage.

It's permissable to submit multiple entries with one ID.

Unfortunately for me, the website is in Korean, and I just know that my wife won't be sympathetic to a request that she sign us up for this contest, so I suppose that I'll just have to leave the job to those Korean papparazzi reported on by Choe Sang-hun: "Help Wanted: Busybodies With Cameras" (New York Times, September 28, 2011).

But some of you are still thinking, "Actually, Deva put one and one together . . . ." Fair enough, but not sufficiently idiomatic, and I never claimed to be good with numbers myself.

Author Shin Kyung-sook: "meaning . . . lost or misconstrued"?

Shin Kyung-sook

(Image from JoongAng Daily)

I've recently drawn attention to Shin Kyung-sook's novel Please Look after Mom, which has enjoyed such a popular reception in the US, and I've made something of an effort to read every newspaper article coming to my attention that appears in an English version here in Korea about her and her novel in its English translation.

I therefore read with interest an interview by Shin Joon-bong, "Korean author finds stardom in U.S." (JoongAng Daily, April 27, 2011, page 9), particularly its words on the issue of translation and 'translatability', only to find myself dismayed by this remark, reportedly uttered by Shin with reference to her role in the translation of her novel from Korean to English:

While I was involved [in the translation project], I've come to realize Korean is the best form of language from a literary point of view.

I did a double take. I stopped reading. I read again. I thought, "Surely, I've misread that." But multiple re-readings offered the same inescapable hermeneutic: Korean literary chauvinism of the worst sort.

The translation, however, sounded odd in its grammatical structure, conjoining the past passive conjugation of the temporal clause with the present perfect conjugation of the main clause in an impossible combination, but grammar aside, I couldn't bring myself to believe that Shin could be so ignorant as to utter such an arrogant assertion in the original Korean. I therefore inquired of my wife as to what the writer had actually stated in her native Korean. Here's what my wife found in the Korean original at the same site:

이번에 다시 한번 우리말이 정말 아름답다, 많은 것을 포용한다는 생각을 하게 됐다. 문학적 표현에 더없이 좋은 언어다.

This translates as follows:

While I was involved [in the translation project], I again came to realize that Korean is a beautiful language -- even for encompassing many things. It is of the highest capacity for literary expression.

Far more acceptable. The other translation -- in the JoongAng Daily -- is dreadful and inadvertently presents Shin in a exceedingly negative light. This translation offered by my wife has Shin merely affirming that Korean can handle literary expression just as well as the best of literary languages. In other words, Korean is not inferior in this respect. Such a reading fits better with Shin's immediately following statement:

Many of my American readers tell me that the sentences are beautiful and they even linger in their mind. Although some words are replaced or changed, the translation still keeps the original beauty of Korean words, I believe.

If the "translation . . . keeps the original beauty," then English cannot be inferior "from a literary point of view."

Whoever translated the JoongAng Daily version was not quite competent enough to express the Korean meaning in English -- and lacked even competence sufficient enough to provide a grammatically correct complex sentence. Or at the very least, there's surely an editing error behind that clunky sentence.

Whatever the explanation, this is embarrassing -- for the JoongAng Daily, of course, but potentially even more so for Shin Kyung-sook, since it attributes to her a chauvinistic literary view that she does not hold!

The error is also hugely ironic, particularly for an interview that makes such an issue of 'translatability'.

Milton's Polyglottal Irony of Eating Death . . .

The Confusion of Tongues (1865)

Gustave Doré

(Image from Wikipedia)

The lines of Milton's Paradise Lost that speak of Eve's Fall offer an ironic contrast between the semantic content and the grammatical analysis:

Greedily she ingorg'd without restraint,
And knew not eating Death: (PL 9.791-2)

As previously noted, the use of the participle "eating" mimics the use in Greek of the nominative participle after verbs of knowing. The irony here is that Eve does not know that she is eating death . . . or that death is eating her.

We see in process a fall of language here as Eve eats the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, a confusion of tongues prefiguring the biblical story about the Tower of Babel, a confusion suggested by Milton in mixing Greek with English.

The lines thus threaten to break down into two separate languages, and the knowing reader must consciously analyze in both Greek and English to hold Milton's synthesis together. Eve's disobedient act is already causing trouble for her descendents, for knowledge comes dear, as we must work to know both Greek and English if we want to understand Milton's words.

Eve for the time being remains unknowing despite the verb of knowing required by Greek grammar to explain in English her complex action in eating deadly knowledge, an ironic ignorance emphasized by Milton polyglot lines.

Today's babbling 'Babel' of voices is brought to you by Gypsy Scholar . . .

Andrei Makine: Pardonnez mon français, non?

Life is But a Dream?

(Image from Amazon.com)

Michael Kimmelman, whom I've previously cited in Gypsy Scholar, has written a fascinating NYT article, "Pardon My French" (April 21, 2010), on the feared 'decline' of the elegant, elite French language -- feared by the French to be declining, though Mr. Kimmelman is more optimistic.

Foreign-born speakers, however, are taking over . . . for instance, a certain Andreï Makine, who initially encountered difficulties as a foreigner writing in French in France:

[T]o a contemporary writer like the Soviet-born Andreï Makine, who found political asylum here [in France] in 1987, French promises assimilation and a link to the great literary tradition of Zola and Proust. He recounted the story of how, 20-odd years ago, his first manuscripts, which he wrote in French, were rejected by French publishers because it was presumed that he couldn't write French well enough as a foreigner.

Then he invented the name of a translator, resubmitted the same works as if they were translations from Russian, and they won awards. He added that when his novel "Dreams of My Russian Summers" became a runaway best seller and received the Prix Goncourt, publishing houses in Germany and Serbia wanted to translate the book from its "original" Russian manuscript, so Mr. Makine spent two "sleepless weeks," he said, belatedly producing one. (page 2)

Kimmelman has his own point to make, but I find amusing that the Germans and Serbians both wanted the 'original' Russian rather than the original French and that Makine had to stay up for two weeks writing nonstop to produce the 'original' Russian from the original French.

But perhaps there is something more original about a Russian-language edition of Dreams of My Russian Summers? I am curious. Which is better, the French original, or the Russian translation? For that matter, how are the German and Serbian translations from the 'original' Russian? Are they superior to the French original? And what of the English translation from the French Le testament français?

As I implied once before, I am lost among the translators . . .

Atonement not as covering?

William Tyndale

(Image from Wikipedia)

Yesterday's post -- in which I inquired why the English term "atonement" is used to define the Hebrew word for "covering" ("kapara") -- received a comment from Dave (Balashon), a blogger in Israel who uses his blog to investigate Hebrew terms, for he has posted a blog entry for September 28, 2006 on "kapara."

Dave's post on "kapara" is interesting and provides some useful links on the Hebrew term though it doesn't investigate why William Tyndale chose "atonement" to translate "kapara," for that's not Dave's focus, but the post is worth reading for anyone fascinated by the Hebrew that stands behind various English words of religious significance in the Bible.

But I'm still wondering why Tyndale chose "atonement" to translate "kapara."

Maybe he didn't. Maybe he chose it to translate the Greek term "katallagēn" (καταλλαγὴν) in Romans chapter 5, verse 11:

οὐ μόνον δέ ἀλλὰ καὶ καυχώμενοι ἐν τῷ θεῷ διὰ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ δι’ οὗ νῦν τὴν καταλλαγὴν ἐλάβομεν

Here's Tyndale's translation:

Not only so but we also ioye in God by the meanes of oure Lorde Iesus Christ by whom we have receavyd the attonment.

The King James Version (1611) borrowed Tyndale's use of "attonment" (1526):

And not only [so], but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.

Anyway, I make the suggestion that Tyndale was initially intent on providing a translation for the Greek term "katallagēn" (καταλλαγὴν) because he first focused on the New Testament, in 1525-1526 -- even going so far as to translate Martin Luther's Compendious introduccion, prologe or preface vnto the pistle off Paul to the Romayns in 1526 -- before going on to translate the first five books of the Old Testament in 1530.

Admittedly, Tyndale does use "attonement" in the third book of the Old Testament, in Leviticus chapter 23, verse 27:

also the tenth daye of the selfe seueth moneth, is a daye of an attonement, and shalbe on holy feast vnto you, ad ye shall humble youre soules and offer sacrifice vnto the Lorde.

Compare the King James Version:

Also on the tenth [day] of this seventh month [there shall be] a day of atonement: it shall be an holy convocation unto you; and ye shall afflict your souls, and offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD.

But in using the term "attonement," Tyndale may have been making an analogy from the New Testament to the Old, rather than from the Old to the New, for the Greek term in Romans 5:11, katallagē, means "reconciliation," and Tyndale may have been interested in conveying the result of that reconciliation through Christ, namely, the state of being "at-one-ment" with God.

But I'll have to investigate this point further tomorrow, for I'm out of time today.

Atonement as covering?

The Ark of God Carried into the Temple

Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry, Folio 29r

Musée Condé, Chantilly

Place of the Kaporet

(Image from Wikipedia)

Last Sunday during Bible study, the topic of "atonement" came up in discussion, and one of the participants noted that the word literally means "at onement" and that the word "atone" is a back formation from the word "atonement."

I was skeptical and wondered if this were a folk etymology, but I'll be damned if it isn't right!

Or at least partly right. The Online Etymological Dictionary says this about "atone":

1555, from adv. phrase atonen (c.1300) "in accord," lit. "at one," a contraction of at and one. It retains the older pronunciation of one. The phrase perhaps is modeled on L. adunare "unite," from ad- "to, at" + unum "one." Atonement is 1513; theological sense dates from 1526.

This implies that the verb "atone" is no back formation from the noun "atonement" but has its origin in the adverbial phrase "atonen" -- which, by the way, doesn't look like a phrase to me, but I suppose that the lexicographers meant that "atonen" is an adverb formed from the prepositional phrase "at one."

As for the word "atonement," it seems to have been coined by William Tyndale (c. 1494-1536) for his 1526 English Bible to translate the meaning inhering in the Hebrew word "kaphar."

According to the online Blue Letter Bible, "kaphar" has the following meanings:

כפר kaphar

1) to cover, purge, make an atonement, make reconciliation, cover over with pitch
a) (Qal) to coat or cover with pitch
b) (Piel)
1) to cover over, pacify, propitiate
2) to cover over, atone for sin, make atonement for
3) to cover over, atone for sin and persons by legal rites
c) (Pual)
1) to be covered over
2) to make atonement for
d) (Hithpael) to be covered

Also at the Blue Letter Bible site is the Gesenius Hebrew and English Lexicon, which gives the basic meaning of "kaphar" as "to cover, to cover over."

According to Wikipedia's entry on "atonement" (as of November 30, 2008), "Tyndale thought that if [the meaning behind "kaphar" were] translated as "reconciliation," there would be a pervasive misunderstanding of the word's deeper significance to not just reconcile, but "to cover," so the word ["atonement"] was invented."

I confess that I do not understand this. The word "atonement" does not convey any sense of "covering" -- not so far as I can see. Either Wikipedia is wrong (which is definitely possible), or I am wrong (also possible, for I was wrong about the etymology of "atonement").

Perhaps some of the Bible experts who occasionally visit this blog can help me out on this rather puzzling choice of "atonement" to capture the sense of "covering" inherent in the Hebrew term.

Students whose "words have no forked lightning..."

Dylan Thomas

Advice to students considering

whether or not to drop my course:

"go gentle into that good night"

(Image from Wikipedia)

At Kyung Hee University this semester, I'm teaching two composition courses that were originally set up to allow no more than 15 students each but that ended up having nearly 40 each.

I don't know why the additional students were allowed to register, but putting more than 20 students who use English as a second language into a writing course means that individual students won't receive the attention that they need for their writing to improve.

Some of my students cannot even understand a simple sentence spoken to them and have to turn to fellow students for a translation, thus making the course even more taxing for me to teach.

I suspect that some of these students will drop the course as it moves into high gear when they have to conduct research and provide citations and bibliography, but I'd prefer that they drop now and save me the extra time and effort that I'll be wasting on them. Every semester, I endure students who 'work' until they have written the first draft of their essays and then give up when they receive a very low grade (such as an F minus) after I've gone to the trouble of making copious corrections and giving additional advice.

I've just spent a hard two days reading and marking thesis statements written by some of these students, so I can already see which ones might not stick around until the bitter end, but I've also had some moments of amusement at the positions that some students want to research and defend in their semester paper.

Here's one by a student who's concerned about those of us who fall short of using our innate intellectual gifts to their fullest:

Although humans have good brains, many people don't use their brains well because they don't recognize the importance of using their brains well.

In an effort to help him use his brain well, I've cleaned up his grammar and spelling, but I suspect that he will need to force his brain to do a bit more hard thinking before this thesis statement is capable of sustaining a semester-length research essay.

Another student, perhaps having reflected on the oft-expressed comparison of sports to battle, takes that comparison just a little further:

Although military strategy and position are different from soccer strategy and position, soccer is similar to war because it has strategy and position.

I rather like the redundancy of this argument, though I'm not quite clear on what is meant by "position" . . . but at least my insufficient understanding means that I still have something to learn from this student.

My favorite thesis statement came from a student with ecological concerns:

Although many people say that it is not too late to prevent global warming, the earth will be destroyed because it is already getting hotter.

Yes, I've noticed this myself. March has been noticeably warmer than February, and if this trend continues, I expect that we'll be suffering considerable heat by early July and utter destruction by early August.

If the English of these three samples seems better than expected, that's because I've corrected the errors, but when the students get these thesis statements back, they'll face a bit of frightening red ink and a lot of stern advice.

For that matter, every single student in these two classes will face the ink and the advice that will either make them or break them...

Textual Relations with a T-Shirt

Let's keep things in context...

I'm merely trying to help.

(Image from Engrish.com)

Yesterday's blog entry about a woman's t-shirt has occasioned a number of insinuations -- with a bit too much accent on that second syllable:

in·SIN·u·a·tion

Please note that the "sin" here deserves only minor stress, the major emphasis being elsewhere, way elsewhere:

in·sin·u·A·tion

Now as to my other-than-prurient interests in a certain t-shirt, allow me explain myself clearly -- and I will draw upon some of the discussion in yesterday's comments to make my point.

In staring at the back side of that woman's t-shirt, I was -- as I later discovered upon learning the meaning of "allantion" -- merely trying to educate myself about skin care.

Close readers will have noted that my eyes were directed solely to the text inscribed upon the t-shirt, not to the woman beneath that skirt. I mean shirt. Anyway, as I explained in the comments, although postmodernists would have it that all the world's a text -- a convenient philosophy for anyone who might wish to imply that my textual interests extended beyond the text on the shirt to the text beneath the text -- I insist that I was merely looking at the body of text on the shirt. That the shirt was clothing a woman was immaterial, mere pretext.

But I want to say one thing to my readers. I want you to listen to me. I'm going to say this again. I did not have textual relations with that woman.

I admit that I did have textual relations with that woman's shirt, so I should perhaps remind readers of precisely what the text was:

In your life and work, you will meet many kinds of people. Some will be hardworking. Others will be less so. Some will be outgoing. Others will be shy. Some will be kind. Others will be unkind. Some will be your friends. Some will not (etc.) . . . . They all deserve your allantion.

Such was my focus, my attention, and even as I passed the woman bearing this text, I didn't so much as glance at her face, so intent was I upon retaining the puzzling wisdom that I'd just read concerning the fact of everybody needing my allantion.

Not that a glance would have made any difference anyway, for I'm just a little bit too married for any other woman...

They all deserve my allantion?

All the Skinny on Skin

(Image from Wikipedia)

As I was walking up the street toward campus from Bus 273's Kyung Hee University stop yesterday, I happened to notice that a woman just ahead of me and also heading for the campus was wearing one of those t-shirts with a long message on the back:

In your life and work, you will meet many kinds of people. Some will be hardworking. Others will be less so. Some will be outgoing. Others will be shy. Some will be kind. Others will be unkind. Some will be your friends. Some will not...

And so on in that vein of modernist binary oppositions. Kind of obvious, mundane, quotidian. And lengthy. Clearly, I thought, the guy who made that t-shirt was an unfortunate nexus of too much time and too little imagination. Until I read his conclusion:

They all deserve your allantion.

What the...? I thought. My allantion? What's that? Surely 'attention' was intended.

But this was strange. Living in East Asia, I often see what we native speakers jokingly call 'Engrish'. I still laugh about the attractive girl wearing the t-shirt with this message on its back side:

"Excreting."

That one was also strange, yet the word was familiar enough. But "allantion"? Was there some peculiar East Asian confusion of ells for tees that I had totally missed in my long years living here? That's possible. The tip of the tongue is placed in approximately the same place for the "L" and "T" sounds, and could be confused, I suppose, but I've never previously encountered this linguistic confusion.

Or was this some obscure dermatological message, for as I later discovered, "allantion" is a genuine word:

This is a product which is extracted from the roots and leaves of the comfrey plat (sic: plant). This has been used for years to speed up healing. The soothing properties of this skin treatment along with the ability to renew healthy cells makes (sic: make) this product ideal for your anti-aging skin regimen. Allantion is traditionally used to heal bruises, heal wounds, and reduce inflammation, (and) this particular product has recently become well known for its ability to treat aging and damaged skin.

Allation (sic: Allantion) is very good for soothing irritated skin. It also stimulates cell regeneration and moisturizes the driest skin. Because of these factors, Allantoin (sic: allantion) is an active ingredient which is found in many skin care products and anti-aging treatments. It is found is cleansers, toners, sun screens, and speciality skin care treatments.

If this was meant, then I suppose the message intended by the t-shirt designer was that everybody I meet needs good skin care, and that's probably true, but why does everybody deserve my allantion? And why do they deserve it? I neither have any allantion that I'm aware of nor understand why I'm placed under a moral obligation to supply all others with any allantion that I might happen to have.

Well, to hell with that! Socialism has already been tried and found wanting! Any allantion that I come into possession of will be my own allantion! What is it about the concept of ownership that you don't understand, Mr. T-Shirt Maker?

Stupid fricking t-shirt maker, trying to guilt-trip me into supplying the whole world with endless quantities of my own precious allantion...