Day: May 26, 2023

English Ain’t Easy, So Let’s Simplify It.

Fandango16 Comments

I just read this amusing post from Marilyn Armstrong in which she pointed out that the English language is hard and it doesn’t always make sense. Her post reminded me of something I read on the internet years ago and I thought I’d share it with you in case you hadn’t seen it before.

In 1998, the German automobile company Daimler-Benz announces a $36 billion merger with the United States-based Chrysler Corporation. Shortly after the merger, directors at Daimler Benz and Chrysler announced an agreement to adopt English as the preferred language for communications, rather than German, which was another possibility.

As part of the negotiations, directors at Chrysler conceded that English spelling has some room for improvement and have accepted a five-year phase-in plan. In the first year, the letter s will be used instead of the soft c. Also, the hard c will be replased with k. Not only will this klear up konfusion, but komputers would have one less letter.

There will be growing kompany enthusiasm in the sekond year when the troublesome ph will be replased by f. This will make words like “fotograf” 20 persent shorter.

In the third year, DaimlerKrysler akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expekted to reash the stage where more komplikated shanges are possible.

DaimlerKrysler will enkourage the removal of double letters, whish have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of the silent e in the languag is disgrasful, and they would go.

By the fourth year, peopl wil be reseptiv to steps sush as replasing th with z and w by v.

During ze fifz year, ze unesesary u kan be droped from vords kontaining ou, and similar shanges vud of kors be aplid to ozer kombinations of leters.

After zis fifz yer, ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl. Zer vil be no mor trubls or difikultis, and employes vil find it ezi to kommunikat viz eash ozer.

Ov kors al supliers vil be expekted to yus zis for al busines komunikashun via DaimlerKrysler.

Und efter ze fifz yer, ve vil al be speking German, lik zey vunted in ze first plas.

Ze drem vil finali kum tru.

MLMM Friday Faithfuls — May 26th

Fandango7 Comments

For Jim Adams’ Mindlovemisery’s Friday Faithfuls, Jim has asked us to respond to his prompt by writing anything about about May 26th.

To me, other than today being the last Friday in May and for some, a day to take off from work in order to have a four-day Memorial Day weekend (if you live in the U.S.), there’s nothing special or noteworthy about May 26th.

I went back in my archives and discovered a prompt post from last year on May 26th that Jim introduced called “Wednesday Thoughts.” So, I thought that for today’s Friday Faithfuls I’d repost what I posted one year ago today for Jim’s Wednesday Thoughts prompt.

Wednesday Thoughts — Keep the Mother Rolling

Jim Adams has a new prompt he’s calling Wednesday Thoughts. (Yes, I know it’s Thursday and I’m a day late. Sue me.)

In this prompt, Jim is giving us a title to his post and then is asking us to share what we think about the title, which this week is “Keep the Mother Rolling.”

Here’s what I came up with:

Jack and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water
Their mother went with them
Because she felt she oughta

She didn’t trust her kids
To ever do anything right
So she followed them
Never letting them out of her sight

Jack and Jill grew very resentful
Of being under the watchful eye
Of their overbearing mother
They decided that they had to try

To stop being oppressed by that woman
And being punished for all of their toiling
So at the top of the hill they did her in
And down the hill they had to
Keep their mother rolling

Fibbing Friday — Daffynitions

Fandango8 Comments

Di (aka Pensitivity101) hosts Fibbing Friday, a silly little exercise where we are to write a post with our answers to the ten questions below. But as the title suggests, truth is not an option. The idea is to fib a little, a lot, tell whoppers, be inventive, silly, or even outrageous, in our responses. For this week’s Fibbing Friday, Di has given us a list of words and asked for their definitions.

1. Novalunosis — Moon blindness.
2. Wundervei — A deer caught in the headlights look on a person’s face.
3. Eramnesia — A photographic memory (i.e., the opposite of amnesia).
4. Witnessoja — A witness to a crime who refuses to testify for fear of retaliation.
5. Sundreesorro — A person who is obsessed with sundresses.
6. Livilence — A lively line dance that involves a hops, a skip, and a jump.
7. Seatherny — A boat in need of major repairs to make it seaworthy.
8. Drizzlosis — A need to drizzle salad dressing, ketchup, or other condiments on food before eating it.
9. Zirgwè — A medication used to treat restless leg syndrome.
10. Teresaurum — A person who likes to eat earthworms.

Four Line Fiction — Was It You?

Fandango9 Comments

“Pee-ew, Nigel, did you just break wind, old chap?”

“Nah, mate, t’weren’t me, t’was the guy in front of you whose shoulder you got yer arm on.”

“Hey, bugger off, back there. It’s Beardsley on me right is the one who ‘ad beans and lentils for breakfast and he’s been fouling the air all afternoon.”

Written for Greg’s Four Line Fiction prompt.

Fandango’s Flashback Friday — May 26th

Fandango13 Comments

Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Flashback Friday post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on this day (26th) of any month within the past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on May 26, 2017. I published my first post on this blog on May 14, 2017 and this was the fifth of seven posts I published that month. It seems remarkably relavent six years later.

Facts Versus Truth

When I first read Faulkner’s quote (above), I was perplexed. I had always considered “facts” and “truth” to be synonyms. Even the definitions of the two words cross-reference one another:

  • Fact: something that actually exists; reality; truth.
  • Truth: conformity with fact or reality; a verified or indisputable fact.

Facts are used as proof of what is undeniably “the truth,” but are these words truly interchangeable or do they actually have different meanings and usage?

I was curious enough about the similarities and differences between these two words to do some Google research. And I learned that not everyone believes that they are synonymous. Some folks actually differentiate between the them using diametrically opposed logic.

One site argued that facts can be fleeting, enduring for but a moment. For example, the “fact” of someone’s location on a fast-moving train changes every instant. Truth, on the other hand is a more enduring type of fact, this source claimed.

Another site argued that if it’s a fact now, it will be a fact in the future, whereas truth is more temporal. Facts indicate a universal truth, while truth depends upon temporal circumstances. For example, that the sun appears to always rise in the east and set in the west is a fact. It will never change.

I found an interesting site, differencebetween.net, which provided four facts (or truths?) about facts and truths:

  • Facts are more objective when compared to the more subjective truths.
  • Facts are more permanent when compared to the more temporary truths.
  • Facts exist in reality, whereas truths are usually the things that one believes to be true, or the things that are true in the current situation.
  • Facts can also answer the ‘where,’ ‘when,’ and ‘how’ questions, whereas truths answer the ‘why’ question.

Truthiness

And then there is “truthiness,” a word first coined by Stephen Colbert a dozen years ago. Like when Bill Maher says, “I don’t know it for a fact…I just know it’s true,” truthiness is the quality of seeming to be true based upon one’s intuition, opinion, or perception without regard to logic or factual evidence. It’s when someone feels, believes, or wishes that something is true even when it is not supported by the facts.

So with both facts and truth under siege by Donald Trump and his surrogates, and with “alternative facts” and “false truths” being promulgated, I  have to wonder if Faulkner’s statement was extremely prescient and sadly reflective of where we are in the second decade of the 21st century.

So what do you think? Are the words “fact” and “truth” synonyms? Do you use them interchangeably in your oral and written communications? Or do these two words, as Faulkner believes, have little to do with each another?

And in today’s world, where truthiness means more to a lot of people than either facts or truth, does it even matter anymore?