Iowa City

Iowa city is a small place. I never thought that I would live in a place called Iowa City. I could say that I have a love-hate relationship with Iowa City but, if I think thoroughly, Iowa City is a small and special place to live in. I like that I can walk to the university everyday, even if it’s cold, because Iowa City has surprisingly sidewalks. I’ve been in cities in the U.S. where you can’t find any sidewalks! This is a positive point and that there is a downtown is a positive point too. I like the small shops in downtown. For example, and this is not publicity, I went to “La’James College of Beauty” last Friday and I really enjoyed it. It was cheap and the people there were tremendously friendly. People are very friendly here. Let me think..., I love the Art Building. The Art Library is amazing! I like the architectural contrasts. I like the most that I’m learning a lot in Iowa City and that the time here is being very enriching. In Iowa City I also have discovered my passion for cats. I have a cat. His name is Life and he has helped me a lot through everything what has been going on in this time. He’s a good boy. I had a grudge against this city but now I’m learning how to like it. I’m giving it an opportunity.

I am from a small town near Valencia, Spain, named Algemesí. With a population of about 27,000, its economy is basically rural. The town is located in a natural park, L’Albufera, which is a big swamp surrounded by rice fields and which has numerous species of birds and fishes.
If I had to define my hometown with a word I would say oranges. Yes, Algemesí is one of the most important production centers of oranges and you can find our fruit all around the world.
The climate is mild with scarce rainfall, except for October, and hot summers. The sea, mountains, and vegetation are pretty much like in California.
The origin of the town is Islamic. The town was part of the Islamic kingdom of Al-Andalus, was conquered by the Catalonians, and converted to Christianity in the thirteenth century. That is why we speak both Catalan and Spanish, the language of the kingdom that dominated the Iberian Peninsula from the sixteenth century.
Algemesí has a couple of things to offer in spite of its rural predominance: churches and religious festivities. Algemesí’s nickname is “The little Vatican”! The feast of the Virgin of Health (Mare de Déu de la Salut) is the event of the year. During three days the entire town is devoted to its patron saint and celebrates her with dances and masses. Yeah, I know, it doesn’t sound fun, but it is. Even if you don’t believe, the folklore and the whole paraphernalia are beautiful. We also have bullfighting after that.
To sum up, Algemesí isn’t the most popular travel destination, but it is worth a detour. If you happen to be close by, stop there and eat one of the delicious pastries that we have to offer or eat some of our oranges. I swear they are good!!

Appositives

According to The Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus, apposition is a relationship between two or more words or phrases in which the two units are grammatically parallel and have the same referent. I think is pretty clear, isn’t it?
Well, lets look at a couple of examples:

Restrictive appositives specify the noun. The sentence wouldn’t have quite the same meaning without it.

-Former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld dismissed Al Jazeera as a “mouthpiece of Al Qaeda.”

- Teacher Niki Smith is going to a conference in Kansas City, MO.

Non-restrictive sentences give additional information that we can omit without changing the meaning of the sentence. Commas and parenthesis help us identify them.

-José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spain’s prime minister, was born in Valladolid in 1960.

The Truth Is Out Of There

It is Sunday. Fortunately, we got an extra hour sleep thanks to the Daylight Saving Time. That’s great!
Today, I am feeling like a MI5 agent. My mission is: going to a public space and eavesdrop conversations. I am a grammar chaser. That’s my report:

12:03, Java House: two young women are chatting. They are talking about a couple, maybe friends of them. One says: “Katrina’s been obsessing about him ever...” They keep talking, after a while, the other replies: “I think he has some ‘splaining to do.”

Comment: First, I like the tense that she uses: It must be a very long time. It is also interesting the use of “ever” as “always.” Second, it’s funny how we can play with the language. In the second sentence she could have said: “he has to explain something” but, instead of this, she makes use of a periphrasis and adds an adjective, sounding more subjective.


13:54, Pedestrian Mall: I am sitting on a bench, close to the playground. Children are playing and mothers are talking. You know, recent and future mothers always talk about two things: their children or pregnant women.
I hear: “She looks to god for be having a girl... must be boy...”

Comment: It’s an amazing sentence. Women have this special feeling for some things. Grammatically interesting are the ellipsis and how have and be can describe almost everything.

14:07, End of the mission. I’m starving.

Weddings

On July 2, 2005 the Spanish congress passed the same-sex marriage law.
It was one of the major points of Zapatero’s campaign. Once he was elected, the state machinery began to work on it. It was passed only a year after his election and it brought joy to many. Some were not happy.
But, actually, this law means the work that LGBT associations have been doing for many years. Even within the homosexual community there are some who think that same-sex marriage only try to make homosexual couples look like heterosexual couples. We could also talk about “heteronormativity” but this is a too big issue for us now.
Well, I have to talk about weddings. Gay weddings are, obviously, a little bit different. The most important thing is that two people love each other. It doesn’t matter which sexuality one has. In America, unfortunately, for the government and even for a lot of people, two men or two women living together are not more than roommates. This legal neglect is worse for international couples who don’t have, who don’t even dream of the rights that heterosexual couples have. But they have to fight and that make them stronger. No more hypocrisy. Religion, conventionalism, and human rights are not synonyms.
Sorry, I haven’t said anything about weddings. Perhaps in two years, if we may.

Today I am going to kill two birds with one stone. I know I am late and that this blog should have been posted on Sunday but like we say in Spanish, más vale tarde que nuca. Also: better late than never.

First bird: to post.

I think this verb is monotransitive. In the sentence: Niki posted the exam results this morning on the office door, we have a direct object and two adverbials but we shouldn’t think that it could be a complex transitive because we can’t find an object predicative for it.
Actually, the verb can be intransitive too. Yes, surprised? It has an historical meaning: travel with relays of horses: we posted in an open carriage, and one more, archaic as well: travel with haste; hurry. This works with one adverbial of direction: he comes posting up the street. Thank you again The Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus for the great moments we spend together every day.

Second bird: the most obvious distinction between English and my native language.

Thank you Niki, you used mine. But, actually, my native language is Catalan.
Well, Catalan is similar to Spanish in many ways: the conjugation of verbs, etc. But something quite different and distinctive is that that we call pronoms febles, something like weak-pronouns. What does that mean?
They are monosyllabic pronouns that are situated in front of the verb or attached behind. This strange combination is pronounced together, when behind, like one word.

Let’s look at a couple of examples:

Give me that - dóna-m’ho
we will give it to him tomorrow - li’l donarem demà

We can write them in 34 different ways. That is one of the most difficult things for people who want to learn Catalan. If you speak French, you are lucky, they have something similar.
See you soon.

P.s. this picture represents an ancestral habit of catalan people. This is in my hometown, where it was conceived like 800 years ago :)

Languages

Languages are our vehicle for communication.
Furthermore language expresses the spirit of their speakers, how they think, and their world view. If you are learning a language, you have to understand not only these new nouns, adjectives, verbs, ..but also how you use them. I like to see that words that in spanish are used in a certain context would sound odd in english. Words have many different meanings and we use, generally, mostly one of them and it depends on the language which one it is. We see that especially in latin words. For example, the latin verb molestare has different meanings in spanish and in english. In spanish it means bother but in english means actually abuse someone.
Idioms are interesting as well. Let us analyze maybe one of the most common one of them. In english you say “kill two birds with one stone” but in spanish you say “ matar dos pájaros de un tiro”, aslo you kill two birds with a shot and in german one says “zwei fliegen mit einer klappe schlagen“, here you are killing flies. Isn´t that funny? Why is this this way? Who knows. Languages are strange. However, it is significant that these three use a similar idiom to express the same idea. Nevertheless, there are some that are extremly different and express customs and habits of their speakers. It is important to learn these small things in order to be good speakers. Grammar is crucial but usage is the key to being an excellent speaker. With interest and time you can become a near-native speaker.

I like my rainbow piano!!!

I have to write about something that I do well but I don’t like to write about myself. Hmm... Let’s see, I’m pretty bad in every sport that requires a ball. I’m also bad at gymnastics, oh yeah. I can remember my school days and how I hated them. Well, I can run, that’s true. It isn’t that I could run a marathon tomorrow, but I can run for a couple minutes. What else can I do... Oh, you said something about cooking. I like to cook and I do it well. A slight problem is that I always cook rice, so, if you’re ever invited to dinner you already know what you’ll eat.
When I was a child I used to be a little bit strange and that’s why I always felt like a misfit. I tell you, it’s not easy being a misfit. But, because of this - a kind of marginalization- I discovered a small thing that brought me big hope: Music.
If you can imagine, a seven-year-old kid told his mother that he’d like to play an instrument. My mother, surprised, said: “Every kid hates that! Why do you want to do that?” -- “Well, I am not sure. I’m not every kid!”
I remember my first piano lesson like it was yesterday. I was good, and didn’t fail like most children, I kept playing and it became my passion and I do it pretty good. Now, I’m in the United States, trying to try that my passion becomes, in addition, my profession. Wow, and I said I don’t like to talk about me, my goodness!

The nature of the universe

Today I have been encouraged to write about a tricky issue. But unfortunately I am neither a physicist nor a philosopher. I always thought that the universe began in a cosmic bellybutton. This is a naive idea, I know. Well, once someone told me that a really hefty rocket exploded and disseminated millions or trillions of particles all around the universe. It is great to envisage this beautiful fireworks spectacle of the very beginning. So I can imagine that we only are one spark of this explosion and that anywhere and anytime we are part of the universe’s ball, like confetti falling down.

Sentence-in-context

Sentence-in-context: