Tag: letters

Screw it, let’s give some examples

On By Luther M. SilerIn GeekLeave a comment

I pulled this from my post the other day about the conversation quizzes. Remember, the way this works is I get sentences one at a time, spoken by what sure sounds like a native speaker, and some of the words are blanked out. I get a word bank to choose from to fill in those blanks.

Let’s get into a few explanations, and I’m not looking any of this up right now— I’m typing this on my iPad while watching John Wick 3, so I’m not going to take the time to nail down the details. Basically any of the dots on those letters are for differentiation between different letters. So the difference between a d and a z or an s versus a sh might be how many dots are on the word. Some base letters have as many as three variants. I don’t think there are any with four (no dots, one, two, and three) but I might be wrong.

The little circles that show up here and there indicate a letter that does not have a vowel after it. This was never explained in Duolingo and has never been mentioned in Busuu; I had to look it up.

Dashes indicate short vowels. A dash under a letter indicates a short I, a dash above a letter indicates a short a, and there’s a little curlicue-lookin’ thing that appears above the letters that indicates a short u. I don’t see any of those in this sentence but that might be a font thing.

Here’s the problem: there are a bunch of symbols in those words that haven’t been explained in either of the apps, and I have no idea what they mean. The double-line above the vertical letter on the far left? No idea. The double line underneath the leftmost letter of the second word from the left? No idea. The symbol on the rightmost letter of the leftmost word? No idea.

I can’t read these words if you don’t explain what these symbols mean, guys, and while some of them are vowels, occasionally I feel like maybe some of them represent multiple letters together, or are maybe a contraction of some kind? I can’t just figure this out. Stop fucking with me.

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On By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting9 Comments

Because shit is too serious right now:  you may or may not be aware that my wife’s mother passed away a couple of weeks ago after a long illness.  I alluded to it here a couple of times but I don’t think I ever actually came out and said it.  Do not bother expressing your well-wishes in the comments as I am about to spend this post making fun of my deceased mother-in-law and your sentiments will feel inappropriate.

My wife spent part of her day today helping her dad clean the house out, and in the process of throwing out a bunch of newspapers and magazines somehow came across this.  I am seriously considering getting in touch with the President’s office over at Purdue on the off chance that the letter this is responding to is still in an archive somewhere, because oh my God how batshit crazy must the letter this is responding to be:

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Kudos to President Beering, seriously; this is shade of the highest order and I am very impressed.

(NOTE: This was published, obviously, with my wife’s full knowledge and permission.)

In which… well, not much, actually

On By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting, Teaching4 Comments

My son is apparently reading a book called “The Alphabet for Hippies;” so far I’ve heard him mention that R is for radicchio and K is for kohlrabi; I feel like he should not know what these things are. I barely know what these things are, to tell you the truth. S is apparently for Swiss chard.

C is for cookie, dammit, not “currant.” I rebel against the tyranny of the good-food alphabet!

Anyway.

Featured events for today: One of the two Kids who are Always Suspended came back from suspension today; the other was himself suspended by the end of the day. At the moment I don’t know what for. Another kid has just been put on half-days due to behavior issues and has also been suspended for the last several days; he managed to last literally less than five minutes before getting sent out of the room and then home. That’s not a joke or an exaggeration. Here was his school day: 1) came to school; 2) ate lunch; 3) four minutes of class; 4) sent home.

Also, I intercepted a note from one student to another that turned out to be a rather detailed and surprisingly well-written and romantic description of her first kiss. The girl flipped out in a fashion that was probably supposed to be dramatic but just ended up hilarious; when I stopped laughing I assured her that I didn’t give a good goddamn who she was kissing and gave her the story back. There are certain situations when we find out about stuff that they’re doing where we become mandatory reporters; a two-second kiss is not one of them.

At some point I actually did do some teaching today, too. This has actually been a pretty good week (the absences of both of the Always Suspended twins for the first two days of the week helped) and I’m hoping tomorrow keeps the trend going. Especially since the other possibility is that the week has been saving all of its bullshit for Friday. I’d prefer that to not be the case.

(He’s still reading that book. What the hell is a Xigua?)

Tonight’s activities will mostly involve reading, vegetating on the couch, and trying not to die. Forgive me; I can’t be exciting every day.