On the subject of killing vampires: I've warned even my girlfriend that if she ever became a vampire (or I found out she had somehow been one in secret the whole time!) I would have to put a stake through her heart, immediately, no questions asked. It's the humane thing to do.
Well, I hadn't thought about it that way, but it makes completely sense now. By the way, wouldn't the same apply in English as well? Aren't Cs before A, O and U (cat, could, cup, etc.) hard, and Cs before E and I (ascend, citrus, etc.) soft even in English?
Really? If my BF turned out to be a vamp in the supernatural old-school, Anne Rice, non-sparkly, Underworld rules, fuck Twilight, kind of way I would totally get him to turn me. I work from home, no office. My life is perfect for vampirism.
Yeahh.. I wouldn't pronounce it like that and I hope your history teacher didn't either except to inform you of the contemporary pronunciation. It may be how it was pronounced in ancient roman times, but it's not how it is pronounced anymore. It's kind of like, in English you pronounce croissant in your language, and if you're French you pronounce it the native way.
This may hold true in English, but English spelling is so incredibly idiosyncratic that I hesitate to use it for any example other than as example of idiosyncrasy and English is not a duaghter of Latin. More like a distant niece.
Well, it all comes down to morals. I myself have a strong love for the human race and wouldn't want to risk some sort of slippery slope...also it's a romantic way to lose one's partner. Then again, two vampire lovers hidden from the world is also very romantic, but I still maintain that Vampire is wrong, even done "responsibly,: It's the same thing with rec drugs. They too can be done responsibly but are still illegal.
The problem is I grew up on Blade and Buffy the Vampire slayer. And in those movies (shows) they're killing their mothers and their male model lovers. Anyone who has fangs. They don't give a ****!
Hmm... I didn't really have too much contact with either of these franchises. Buffy the Vampire Slayer doesn't interest me in the least and though I did watch the Blade films, to be honest, I watched them only because of the all the jacked gay porn models that festooned the screen. The vampires that I think of when I think of the paradigm are those of Anne Rice and her lush world of soft porn blood drinkers.
Anne Rice's vamps are creatures bathed in vanity and lust. Their every breath is a heave of alabaster breast. Movements made at a normal human speed are languid and sexual. They strive to find compassion for one another and sometimes for humans, but they usually fail. Their ego is huge and enveloping and creates a kind of secondary solipsistic barrier to comprehending things outside themselves. Rice paints an idea that to become a vampire is to descend into the heart of sensuality, though there is no sex amongst vamps in her books. It's all tease and blue-balls. They lack completely the militaristic overlay of Underworld. (see what I did there?)
Not until you just mentioned it. I had to google it. The Wisdom of Crocodiles.... interesting. ETA: And true to form, there's a bunch of Youtube compilation videos of the film set to emo tracks that will be soul-crushingly embarrassing to their aficionados in a decade's time.
My niece used to spell 'bread' 'bred', because in her mind it was 'bur-ru-eh-dur'. To me at about the time they leave first school, year 5, they should be taught to visualize the word instead of spelling it out phonetically, and do this at least once a week. That's how I'd do it anyway. Well, the way we were taught Shakespeare in uni was to go away and read the plays themselves. Which was so much better than sitting everyone in a classroom and going line by line with the frankly awful question of 'how does this make you feel!' which I got a lot in high school. In school I was thinking it didn't make me feel anything, I was 14! I was more interested in stealing cheeky glimpses at the bra-strap of the cute girl two rows in front of me! What does Shakespeare tell me when I'm not really paying attention? I had to teach Macbeth at A-level and my pitch was something like 'Right, guys, this is a story of madness, murder, regicide and war. The punchline is it's Macbeth ...' and then got them to read an important scene and then have a chat about it, asking them to note stuff down. It's what university seminars do a lot, and I like it too. It's relaxing, the focus isn't on what I know - I'm just guiding the conversation, and because they are talking to each other and everyone has the ability to say something they feel important. I can't imagine I'd be able to do that at GCSE level. But at A-level it's sort of wonderful to see these young guys become more confident in their own reading abilities and also speaking abilities too. I find it works best if they haven't just done PE though, but then they can't be arsed to do anything. Haha! It is! I've never noticed that before. Haha, your ex sounds like a man after my own heart. And yeah, that's the Classical pronunciation. I like the more social side of the job too. I struggle to teach linguistics because I find it endlessly boring - it's just something I have to do. I know I shouldn't be like that, but I can't help it. Teaching literature, though, that I am all over. Haha, I want to be a professional millionaire. Or the next Seamus Heaney. Oh, a boy can dream. I've actually often thought that if nothing else works, I could do tours, reading poetry to people. Sort of bringing back the lost art of the Anglo-Saxon Scoop, or the Ancient Greek Rhapsode. I know the actor Julian Glover does a one-man show of Beowulf, so obviously there is a chance something like that could be done. Well, ever notice that it seems very retrospective? It breaks down the War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, but why? Why bother doing that in something called the Theory of Oligarchical Collectivism? The focus should be on that 'theory' right? Something fishy was up with it right, and that turned out to be true as Spoiler it turns out O'Brian wrote it. So it's not a har-har joke, but a subtle hint at the ending really. It was a joke.
I know it's off topic but I must weigh in on the spelling. They had this stupid idea of "best guess spelling" when my son was in kindergarten. Supposedly it was to not inhibit their writing. Yeah, well show me the research because there's a big problem. If you learn something incorrectly like the spelling of a word, in order to learn the right way to spell you have to unlearn the wrong way first, an extra step which is an inhibitory step in learning.
For exactly the same reason 'Queue' is not at least 3 letters shorter, and you spell 'phone' with a ph instead of an f. The masters of the English language are taking the piss.
