The Professor

For nine and a half hours (not consecutive), I have been listening to James Wilby read Charlotte Bronte’s first novel, The Professor, and I think I can safely sum it up in one word:

Interminable.

That book could easily be abridged.  It should have been abridged.  It wants for nothing more than a good abridgement.

Well, a good abridgement and a character who was less of an annoying jerk.

At several points during the novel, Wilby’s narration and the fact that it was a CD in my car stereo where the only things stopping me from hurling the book across the room in a fit of annoyance.

For those of you who thought Charlotte Bronte only wrote one novel, the story actually goes like this:

The Bronte sisters, having spent most of their childhood writing poetry and short stories to keep themselves amused, decided to try their hands at writing novels.  They formed their own private writing circle and worked on three novels - which they intended to publish at the same time under the gender-ambiguous pseudonyms of Currer, Acton and Ellis Bell.

Charlotte (Currer) wrote The Professor, Acton (Anne) wrote Agnes Grey and Ellis (Emily) wrote Wuthering Heights.  You may have heard of the last one.

Now, Anne and Emily’s books were both accepted for publication, but The Professor was rejected.  Probably on the grounds it of being, by turns, boring and irritating.

I just want to point something out here – Agnes Grey was accepted for publication, but The Professor wasn’t.  Agnes Grey is a romance novel in which nothing happens.  A governess puts up with children nobody likes while pining after a man who barely looks at her.  The book is roughly three-parts “my goodness, rich people’s children are obnoxious” and five parts “oh, if only he would look at me”.  Right at the end our patience is rewarded with the following exchange:

“So you do love me, then?”

“Yes.”

This book is, it must be said, kind of boring.  It’s still miles better than The Professor.

Charlotte then went on to write Jane Eyre, which you may have heard of.  That book was a roaring success – although, in hindsight, it could be regarded as Agnes Grey on spooky-pants steroids.  She also wrote Shirley (which is interesting) and Villette (which is a brilliant book, even if it has a stupid ending).  Anne went on to write The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (which is less famous than anything her sisters wrote, but more famous than her other novel).  Emily went on to die before writing anything else.

The Professor was never published in Charlotte’s life-time, and I can see why.  It’s terrible.  It was so terrible that she could never convince anyone to publish it, even though her other books made her a well-loved and respected novelist.

Okay, granted, it's not "my goodness, my mental faculties are damaged after reading this book" kind of terrible - and a Bronte completist probably shouldn't avoid it - but it's really Not Very Good.  Anyone who had the misfortune to read this book before any of her others would probably assume she was a pretty rubbish author and never read anything else by her.

It was the first full-length novel she wrote, and it appears someone told her that the trick for writing a novel (as opposed to short stories and novellas) to fill it with pointless drivel.

The first-person narration by William Crimsworth features large sections of the character yammering on endlessly about such subjects as the moon, the misery of old maids, the character of people with big foreheads and the two-facedness of Catholics.

Apart from the fact that he just seems to be talking trash for no reason other than padding out the book, the diatribes are also largely offensive as it becomes quite clear that our Mr Crimsworth is an egotistical bigot.

He is quite unpleasant, and Wilby did well to make him sound like someone not-entirely-terrible.  This is the kind of man you would meet at a party, think was a reasonably nice guy for the first few minutes, but then come to dislike the longer you listened to him talk.  At the end of the party you would probably never voluntarily seek out his company – and may even try to avoid him.

Crimsworth has a low opinion of pretty much everyone who doesn’t fit into his ideal of upper-middle-class English Protestantism.  Are you French?  You are loose of morals.  Are you Catholic?  You are a conniving, inveterate liar.  Are you Flemish?  You’re an idiot.  Are you a woman?  Your faults – whatever they may be, are somehow much, much worse than those of your male brethren.

The man is racist - that's the only way you could describe him.  And to make things weirder, he takes his racism out on Flemish people.  I dread to think what he would have said if he came in contact with a Moor.

I found myself pitying the woman who had the misfortune to be his ideal woman.  The way he spoke about her – the way he talked about how she “grew” under his “stern” tutelage…

It was just a little bit creepy.  I really hoped she would run away with his best friend, but she didn’t.  Instead they lived happily ever after – with his wife continuing to call him “monsieur” for the rest of their married lives (supposedly because she couldn’t pronounce “William” comfortably).

Charlotte, I know you’re dead, so this advice won’t do you any good, but – really, girl, you need to stop idolising Byronic jerks.  And grow a bit of self-esteem, will you?

At a Primary School (Teacher’s) Reading Level

Over the many years I have spent reading about education and reading books designed for educators, I have had several encounters with works written specifically for primary school teachers.

It is the strangest thing, but books and journal articles written for people who teach the lower grades for a living are written at a different reading level than those for high school teachers, which are also at a different reading level than those for tertiary-level educators.

Now, theoretically, it doesn’t matter what level you are teaching – you still have at least one university degree to your name.  You have a tertiary level education yourself, and should be perfectly capable of reading works written at that level…

Yet, without fail, every book I’ve ever encountered that was aimed at a primary-school-teacher audience is written in a simpler, clearer style – usually with slightly larger text and a design that wouldn’t look out of place in a middle-school level textbook.

It’s not a bad thing.  In fact, last year I was secretly pleased that one of my textbooks was written for that market.  It was a nice change from the denser texts I’d been reading – the ones designed for university students and teachers of university students.  After a while, university level texts start getting a bit wearying. 

But I’m still always taken aback by the change in tone, text density and vocabulary – by the implicit assumptions about the audience for the book.

I’m currently reading a short “guide” downloaded from an educational website, and I couldn’t figure out why reading it was making me feel, well, slightly patronised.  It is clearly intended for teachers, but whoever wrote it chose to produce it in a level of language that boarders on simplified.

Then I realised – the target audience is primary school teachers.  This is the sort of stuff people give them to read all the time.

Why is that?  Is it because they spend so much of their day working with texts at very low/young reading levels and would find it taxing to suddenly shift to significantly harder, denser texts for professional development? 

That would make sense.  I find children’s books to be a refreshing read that allows my brain to regain some of its bounce.  If I spent most of my time with the bouncy texts, I expect a dense, jargon-ridden, technical piece of writing would feel a bit leaden and unpleasant.

Or, is it because people who teach at a primary level do so because they like the information they work with to be of a simpler nature?  If you wanted to work with Shakespeare you wouldn’t be teaching kindergarten, after all.

I can’t say.  All I know is that books and journal articles written for primary school teachers definitely seem to assume they can’t or won’t deal with the same level of textual sophistication as people who teach at higher levels.

And that’s interesting.

Lancelot mused a little space

He said "she has a lovely face.  God in his mercy lend her grace - the Lady of Shalott".

Shut up Lancelot.  You're a jerk and nobody likes you.

You know, you can't go around acting like a first class cad for most of the old texts and expect to get away with being everyone's favourite Arthurian hero.  For my money, you'll never be a patch on Gareth.  But does everyone talk about Gareth?  Does anyone talk about Gareth?  No.

And you went and killed him, didn't you?  Here was a knight who was *actually* chivalrous, rather than just being a smug git with an attitude problem, and you go and kill him.  And Gaheris, who was just hanging around Gareth (which seems to be all he really did - hang around with other, more interesting knights).  And Agravaine, but quite frankly he should have expected that - after all, he tried dobbing you into the king for being the first class tosser that you are.

And did you even apologise to their family?  Did you say something like, "hey, Gawaine, I'm really sorry about killing three of your brothers because they got in my way?"

No.  No you did not.

So, you know what, Lancelot?  I don't wanna hear whatever you have to say about the "Lady of Shalott" - especially since we all know that poem was a sanitised version of the Fair Made of Astolat, and you led her on, broke her heart and then acted all surprised when she topped herself.

Jerk.

Speak Latin whenever you can

I just acquired a new book, and it's walking a tight-rope between hilarious and brilliant.

Latin For Beginners by Wilkes (author), Shackell (illustrator) and Priddy (designer).

It's an introduction to Latin, aimed at children, and designed in exactly the same way as an introduction to French or Italian might be designed.

It offers the exact same language learning advice (use it whenever you can) and the exact same situations (at the restaurant, in your home, talking about your hobbies) that you'd find in any modern languages introductory book for kids.

Using this book, you'll be able to tell the waiter at the restaurant that you really like potato chips (amo poma terrestria assa) or talk about what time one watches television (quadrante post quintam televisorium spectat).

And the little visual jokes that would be mildly amusing in a book introducing Italian are downright hilarious in a book introducing Latin.

Connecting Clauses, or: Sharon's Notes, Conjunctiony Things, pt 1

I am preparing for a German exam.  You have been warned.

Okay, kids, we all know what a clause is, right?  Good.  Moving on.

Now, a clause can be a whole sentence and a sentence can be a single clause, but we tend to like smooshing multiple clauses together in our sentences.  Why, the sentence I have just written contains no less than three clauses.

When we stitch clauses together, we do it with the aid of conjunctions and punctuation.

That's what conjunctions are for - stitching clauses together.  And we all know why we shouldn't start a sentence with a conjunction, don't we?  But I digress.

There are two primary types of clauses:  main clauses (Hauptsatz) and subordinate clauses (Nebensatz).  Main clauses can float off on their own and form sentences all by themselves, but subordinate clauses (which supply further information to the main clause) need to attach themselves to a main clause to make a complete sentence - one can't just say "because there were rabbits".

You can combine these two types of clauses in a number of ways:

1.  You can attach a main clause and a subordinate clause using a conjunction like da or weil (because), obwohl (although), sodass/so...dass (in order to)... and, well, a whole bunch of others:  als, als ob, bevor, bis, damit, dass, nachdem, ob, obgleich, ohne dass, ohne...zu, sobald seit/seitdem, solange, um...zu, während, wenn and wie.

You'll notice these all have that same range of meaning - this information is giving more detail or context to another piece of information.  You can usually drop anything that follows one of these words and the sentence would still make sense, but if you dropped the other part of the sentence you'd be left with, well, rabbits of uncertain relevance.

When you combine clauses like this, the conjugated verb in the subordinate clause gets sent to the end of the clause (no doubt for some misdemeanour):

"Tom hat nicht geschlafen, weil Hasen dort waren."

2.  You can attach two main clauses using a conjunction like denn (because) and all the standard clause-joining conjunctions like und, aber, oder, sondern (etc).

In this case, because you have two complete clauses that can both go off and form their own sentences, the verb sits in the "normal" position for a main clause in both clauses:

"Tom hat nicht geschlafen, denn Hasen waren dort."

But wait, I hear you ask.  Why doesn't denn turn the clause into a subordinate clause, seeing as it means the same thing as da and weil?

Well, I have no idea.  I'm guessing it has something to do with the relative merits of the second clause (does it only exist to provide more information for the first clause, or is it more important than that?) and whether it would make perfect sense if the two clauses were, in fact, separated into two sentences placed side by side:  "Tom hat nicht geschlafen.  Hasen waren dort."

Either that, or it's magic.

Dunno.

3.  You can join two main clauses using a conjunction like like totzdem (however) or deshalb, darum and deswegen (various shades of "therefore").

In this case, the verb in the second clause hangs around directly after the conjunction:

"Hasen waren dort, deshalb hat Tom nicht geschlafen."

In this case, I think the entire first clause (plus conjunction) is taking up the role of the "first element" in the second clause.  And, as we all know, when another part of the sentence slips into the first position, the verb stays in the second position and just shoves the subject of the sentence to one side.

And, before I leave this topic and go home for the night, let's not forget the role of the comma.  It's there to separate out the two clauses.  It totally does this for all subordinate clauses, and it mostly does this for two main clauses when there are words like denn, deshalb and aber involved - but it doesn't necessarily do it for main clauses joined by und or oder.

Declination of Adjectives, or: Sharon's Notes, Adjectival things pt 1

I am preparing for a German exam.  You have been warned.

Okay, a lot of the stuff to do with adjectives in German hangs off the case declension thing.  That's going to be the topic of another post, so I'm just going to take it as read, for now, that cases exist and they make words do stuff.

Now, adjectives can be found hanging around in a sentence in one of two places:  after a verb like "is", "seems" or "remains", or in front of a noun.

Let's get that first one out of the way, shall we?  In a sentence like "the apple looks fresh", "the climate is torrid" or "my giddy aunt remains giddy", there isn't actually much happening.  Something is simply existing in a certain state, and the adjective is telling us what that state is.

The verb, in this case, is what we call a copula - it's actually joining the noun with whatever state of existence the noun happens to be in.  And the adjectives are what we call "predicative adjectives" - in that they form the predicate of the verb (a predicate is what you get when your verb doesn't have an object, but still needs to include a concept beyond the verb in order to make sense).

In German, predicative adjectives are free to loll about in their natural state, not taking on any particular ending at all:  "Das Auto ist rot", "Die Frauen scheinen wütend", "Der Mann bleibt dumm".

So, yeah.  That's it.  Predicative adjectives are covered.  Good.  Now onto the attributive adjectives.

Attributive adjectives are the ones that hang around in front of a noun and become part of the noun group.  The noun itself is modified by the adjective.  It's not just "the car" it's "the red car".

Attributive adjectives change their endings depending on:

• The case of the noun group
• The gender of the noun
• The presence of a definite or indefinite article in the noun group

And, while all of these things are highly important, but it's the thing about the article that tends to govern the way we think about German adjectives.

If the noun group has a definite article (die, der, das, etc) or any of the words that are treated the same way as definite articles (the "der words": dieser, jener, derselbe, welcher, jeder and alle [and all their sisters]), then this happens:

Nominative case (singular):  All adjectives, regardless of gender, will end in an -e. 
Accusative case (singular):  Masculine adjectives end with an -en, the others with an -e.
Dative and Genitive cases (singular):  Everything ends with an -en.
Plural nouns: Everything ends with an -en.

Lovely.  It makes no sense at all, but that's life in a German sentence.  At least it's reasonably clear.

If the noun group has an indefinite article (ein or eine, etc) or one of the "ein words" (mein, dein, sein, ihr, unser, euer and kein, etc), then this happens:

Nominative case:  The adjective kind of takes on the same(ish) endings as a definite article - M = -er, N = -es and F = -e. Plurals start forging separate identities, so the nominative plural ends in -e.
Accusative case:  As above, the definite article endings leach over into the adverbs - M = -en, N = -es, F = -e. Pl = -e.
Dative and Genitive cases:  Everything still ends with an -en.*

Mmmhmm.  Okay.  There is a pattern here, but it's a bit hard to see at present.

Things get slightly more sensible when you have an adjective in a noun group with no article.  In this case the adjectives really do replace the articles, so they are adopting more or less the same endings as der words:

Nominative case:  M -er, N -es, F -e, Pl -e.
Accusative case:  M -en, N -es, F -e, Pl -e.
Dative case: M -em, N -em, F -e, Pl -e.
Genitive case: M -en, N -en, F -er, Pl -er.

Basically, what happens is that, in the absence of a definite article, the adjectives take the definite articles' endings for themselves, to try to indicate the case and gender of the noun.

The patterns are really clear and obvious for Nominative and Accusative cases.  Dative and Genitive seem to be bumming around a bit.  This is because the indefinite article is still doing some heavy lifting for Dative and Genitive noun groups.  You'll notice they pull up their socks and start doing something useful when there are no articles at all.

Mind you, Genitive adjectives still seems to be a bit distracted - they haven't gotten around to remembering that Genitive case usually has an -es on the end of its articles...

So, all you have to do is keep track of the case and gender of your nouns, and the adjectives sort themselves out - but let the articles boss them around.

And remember, kids, adjectives stack.  When you have a series of adjectives sitting between the same article/noun combo, they all take the same endings:

"Das alte, verrostete, rote Auto ist noch gut..."



*In one of my textbooks, there is an indication that Genitive adjectives following indefinite articles en in -er.  I haven't seen this anywhere else, but it has left me feeling doubtful.

Perfekt, or: Sharon's notes, Verby things, part two.

I am preparing for a German exam.  You have been warned.

In my former post, Theophilus, I suggested the Perfekt (or perfect tense of verbs) was tricksier than the Plusquamperfekt (or pluperfect tense).

This isn't strictly true.

The fact of the matter is, the rules for making the perfect and the pluperfect in German are pretty dang similar.  The only real difference is the tense of the auxiliary verb.

In the Plusquamperfekt we had two parts of the verb:  the auxiliary, which was the simple past tense of haben or sein, and the past participle of the main verb.

In the Perfekt, we have two parts of the verb:  the auxiliary, which is the present tense of haben or sein, and the past participle of the main verb.

Plusquamperfekt:  "Ich hatte den Hund gekauft."
Perfekt: "Ich habe den Hund gekauft."

And all the stuff about verby rules in German that applied to the Plusquamperfekt also apply to the Perfekt:

• The auxiliary verb takes the position of the conjugated verb (second spot in a standard clause, or kicked to the end of the clause in a dependent clause), and cops all of the conjugation, while the past participle sits at the end of the clause and looks pretty.
• Haben is used for most verbs, but sein is used for verbs indicating motion towards/away from something or a change of state.

So really, when it comes to making the Perfekt, it's no more complicated than the Plusquamperfekt - you just need to know the past participle of the verb and you're sweet.

It's where and how you use the Perfekt that's a bit tricksy for English speakers.

In English, the perfect tense is made by... well, it's made by combining the present tense form of "have" with the past participle of the main verb:  "I have eaten."  Yes, that's pretty much what happens in German, but without much use for the "to be" verb (while they use it frequently).

English speakers use it to indicate something that happened in past - finished, done, dusted - that is relevant to what's happening now.  If you say "I have eaten", it's probably because someone just asked you if you wanted something to eat, and you are telling them that, in your world, at present, the eating thing has been resolved.

So it's a continuum thing (timey-wimey stuff).  If the thing that is over and resolved is relevant to something happening in the present, you use the perfect tense.  If it is relevant to events that are also in the past, you use the pluperfect.

"I have eaten, but if you want to grab a cup of coffee I'll come with you." (perfect)
"I had eaten when Tom and Jack turned up at my house with a pizza." (pluperfect)

If you pay close attention, you may notice that the perfect tense occurs more often in "real-time" communication (like live conversations and email exchanges), while the pluperfect occurs more often in written communication and narratives.

When do we say "I ate"?  Well, mostly when answering questions or narrating events in the past without particular reference to how far in the past those events occurred in relation to other events.

"I ate the spaghetti."

This is the simple past tense - simple in construction, but also in terms of the time-space continuum.  It's just something that happened.

The simple past tense indicates the information is simply pertinent in and off itself, while the perfect and the pluperfect tense indicate the information pertains to other information.

If someone said "I at the spaghetti", we would be content to leave it at that, but if they said "I have eaten the spaghetti", we might feel compelled to ask "so?"

So, getting back to German.

In German, we use the Perfekt to cover both things that simply happened in the past as well as things that still have some baring on the current point in the continuum.  Actually, it even covers the progressive form (things that started in the past and haven't finished yet), which is the really tricksy bit.

So where we would notice a marked difference between saying "I ate the spaghetti", "I have eaten the spaghetti" and "I have been eating the spaghetti", in German - not so much.

"Ich aß die Spaghetti" and "ich habe die Spaghetti gegessen" are (so I have been told) much of a muchness.  Describing the exact same events (in the exact same point of the space-time continuum) you would be more likely to use the Präteritum (simple past tense/preterite) in written German and the Perfekt in spoken conversation.

They say that, in spoken German, you are also more likely to use the Perfekt than the Plusquamperfekt.

So, when talking to your peeps, you'll probably say "Ich habe die Spaghetti gegessen" - which could mean:

• you have eaten the spaghetti (so the spaghetti is all gone, now), 
• you have been eating the spaghetti (so the spaghetti stocks are decidedly lower), 
• you had eaten the spaghetti (earlier today, just before some other stuff happened) or 
• you ate the spaghetti ("but my sister had the pizza - why do you ask?")

Which makes the Perfekt the hardest working tense in spoken German, I'd say.

But, since you are more likely to hear people using the Perfekt as they chat on the street, but more likely to use the Präteritum or Plusquamperfekt in written German, that means you have to pay close attention for your exams and assignments.

Are you writing dialogue?  Use the Perfekt a lot.

Are you writing narrative?  Use the Präteritum and the Plusquamperfekt (unless, of course, you want to say something that actually requires the Perfekt:  "Er hat die Spaghetti gegessen, und will keine Pizza").