Word and Numbers

Think of a number, write down its name, and add up the values of the letters (A=1, B=2, etc.). For example:

4 -> FOUR -> F(6) + O(15) + U(21) + R(18) -> 60

80 is the smallest number that is diminished by this procedure:

80 -> EIGHTY -> E(5) + I(9) + G(7) + H(8) + T(20) + Y(25) -> 74

Curiously, it’s also the smallest such number in Spanish:

80 -> OCHENTA -> O(16) + C(3) + H(8) + E(5) + N(14) + T(21) + A(1) = 68

(Remember that Spanish uses 27 letters, with ñ in the 15th position.)

(Thanks, Claudio.)

| Language

Nothing Doing

http://faculty.upj.pitt.edu/jalexander/Research%20archive/Dodgson_gallery_of_images.htm

In 1873, Lewis Carroll borrowed the travel diary of his child-friend Ella Monier-Williams, with the understanding that he would show it to no one. He returned it with this letter:

My dear Ella,

I return your book with many thanks; you will be wondering why I kept it so long. I understand, from what you said about it, that you have no idea of publishing any of it yourself, and hope you will not be annoyed at my sending three short chapters of extracts from it, to be published in The Monthly Packet. I have not given any names in full, nor put any more definite title to it than simply ‘Ella’s Diary, or The Experiences of an Oxford Professor’s Daughter, during a Month of Foreign Travel.’

I will faithfully hand over to you any money I may receive on account of it, from Miss Yonge, the editor of The Monthly Packet.

Your affect. friend,

C.L. Dodgson

Ella thought he was joking, and wrote to tell him so, but he replied:

I grieve to tell you that every word of my letter was strictly true. I will now tell you more — that Miss Yonge has not declined the MS., but she will not give more than a guinea a chapter. Will that be enough?

“This second letter succeeded in taking me in, and with childish pleasure I wrote and said I did not quite understand how it was my journal could be worth printing, but expressed my pleasure. I then received this letter:–”

My dear Ella,

I’m afraid I have hoaxed you too much. But it really was true. I ‘hoped you wouldn’t be annoyed at my etc.’ for the very good reason that I hadn’t done it. And I gave no other title than ‘Ella’s Diary,’ nor did I give that title. Miss Yonge hasn’t declined it — because she hasn’t seen it. And I need hardly explain that she hasn’t given more than three guineas!

Not for three hundred guineas would I have shown it to any one — after I had promised you I wouldn’t.

In haste,

Yours affectionately,

C.L.D.

| Hoaxes · Language · Literature

“Inscription at Persepolis”

From Robert Conger Pell’s Milledulcia (1857) — “It is said that the following puzzling inscription was found by Captain Barth, graven on marble, among the ruins of Persepolis, and by him translated from the Arabic into Latin and English”:

http://books.google.com/books?id=yFACAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Read the words of the top row alternately with those of any of the lower rows. Thus the first sentence is “Never tell all you may know, for he who tells everything he knows often tells more than he knows.” (In the last line, sees means sees into or comprehends.)

| Language

QWERTYUIOP

PEPPERROOT, PEPPERWORT, PERPETUITY, PROPRIETOR, REPERTOIRE, and, pleasingly, TYPEWRITER are all typed on the top row of a standard keyboard.

ALFALFAS and FLAGFALLS are typed on the middle row.

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Ill Fame

A lady who was flattered to have a rose named after her changed her mind when she saw the description of the rose in a gardener’s catalogue. Against her name it said: ‘shy in a bed but very vigorous against a wall.’

— Leslie Dunkling, The Guinness Book of Names, 1993

| Humor · Language

The Lip-Reader’s Bane

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Silkworm-moth-bombyx-cynthia.jpg

I can’t vouch for this — from I.J. Reeve, The Wild Garland (1865), “a Welsh englyn which in its four lines does not contain a single consonant”:

“On the Silkworm”

O’i wiw wy i weu ê â a’i weau
O’i wyau e weua;
E’ weua ei we aia’.
Ai weau yw ieuau iâ.

Translation:

“I perish by my art; dig my own grave;
I spin my thread of life; my death I weave.”

| Language

Table Talk

At a tavern one night,
Messrs. Moore, Strange, and Wright
Met to drink and their good thoughts exchange;
Says Moore, “Of us three,
Everyone will agree,
There’s only one knave, and that’s Strange.”

Says Strange, rather sore,
“I’m sure there’s one Moore,
A most terrible knave, and a fright,
Who cheated his mother,
His sister and brother–”
“Oh, yes,” replied Moore, “that is Wright.”

— Anonymous

| Language · Poems

The Right Words

After earning a Ph.D. in linguistics, Suzette Haden Elgin invented the language Láadan for a science fiction novel. What makes the language unique is that it’s designed particularly to express the perceptions of women:

  • widazhad: to be pregnant late in term and eager for the end
  • radiídin: a non-holiday, a holiday more work that it’s worth, a time allegedly a holiday but actually so much a burden because of work and preparations that it is a dreaded occasion; especially when there are too many guests and none of them help
  • rathom: a “non-pillow,” one who lures another to trust and rely on them but has no intention of following through, a “lean on me so I can step aside and let you fall” person
  • rathóo: a non-guest, someone who comes to visit knowing perfectly well that they are intruding and causing difficulty
  • ramimelh: to refrain from asking, with evil intent; especially when it is clear that someone badly wants the other to ask
  • bala: anger with reason, with someone to blame, which is not futile
  • bina: anger with no reason, with no one to blame, which is not futile
  • ab: love for one liked but not respected
  • doóledosh: pain or loss which comes as a relief by virtue of ending the anticipation of its coming

One word that has no English equivalent is doroledim, which means “sublimation with food accompanied by guilt about that sublimation”: “Say you have an average woman. She has no control over her life. She has little or nothing in the way of a resource for being good to herself, even when it is necessary. She has family and animals and friends and associates that depend on her for sustenance of all kinds. She rarely has adequate sleep or rest; she has no time for herself, no space of her own, little or no money to buy things for herself, no opportunity to consider her own emotional needs. She is at the beck and call of others, because she has these responsibilities and obligations and does not choose to (or cannot) abandon them. For such a woman, the one and only thing she is likely to have a little control over for indulging her own self is FOOD. When such a woman overeats, the verb for that is ‘doroledim.’ (And then she feels guilty, because there are women whose children are starving and who do not have even THAT option for self-indulgence …)”

A full dictionary is here.

| Language