Mąąšce achipe!

[muckefuck]

My original plan for yesterday included a walk through the park, but I let myself get spooked by the giant blue clouds to the south and the memory of Saturday's toad-strangler and commuted that to a trip to the roof to watch the storm roll in. Which they didn't. The sky over the lake was completely dark, but the clouds were in tatters towards the west and southwest and that's where the wind was from, so I figured the thunderheads would all miss us. They did (as confirmed by Doppler radar at monshu's). I tried to salvage things by finding a quiet spot on meditation point to do work on my languages, but it was sticky hot and still. Plus, gnats. So I turned white-bread wimp boy and gave up.

It was cool and breezy when I woke up this morning, over a half-hour before my alarm is set to go off. I decided to make up for yesterday with a stroll through the park (and past my bank--I'm ringed in by BankOne branches on three sides, the nearest still six blocks away)--FREAKIN' GORGEOUS! I saw my first peonies (Pfingstrosen or "pentecost roses" in German--due to an early Easter Pentecost was over three weeks ago) by the field house: deep magenta. There were a few small white and red ones in an overgrown yard further down, but I'm really waiting for the humongous pinks.

When did the lindens and basswoods stop blooming? I remember noticing the blossoms before Mem Day, today I noticed the tiny green fruits, but I missed the transition. Perhaps because the flowers weren't as oppressively fragrant this year? Normally, walking down the leafy corridor from the El to work, there's no mistaking lindens in flower. But the real sign of summer is cotton: At Gethsemane on Saturday, I saw my first bits of cottonwood fluff. We never glimpsed the source, but the down pursued us for a couple blocks. I remember sitting in the restaurant and watching one perfect puff float gently down from above the windows almost to the floor before I lost sight of it.

Quiz for Owlet: How would you say Pfingstrose? What gender do you think it is?

Comments

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't call the post-vocalic r's "silent" per se because of the effect they have on the quality of the preceding vowel. Fahrt and fad do not sound the same in any dialect of German I'm familiar with. The latter has a pure vowel, whereas I would describe the nucleus of the former as having a centralising offglide.

Mostly, I was just covering my ass, but there are a lot of silent e's, for instance--including most cases of ie.[#] Viel "much" would be pronounced in exactly the same way if it were spelled *vil (cf. Profil). There are even cases of oe where the e is merely a lengthener, though the only ones I know are proper names, e.g. Soest (/"zo:st/, not */"zo:.@st/ or */z9st/). The same can be said of many double vowels: Boot and bot are pronounced exactly the same.

[#] Historically, this digraph represented a diphthong that is maintained in Southern dialects. But in viel (OHG filu) and other places, the spelling is non-etymological and merely indicates lengthening.