Vocabulary Trivia

The word “wiener” is just a butchered pronunciation of “Wiener” as in “sausage from Wien”. If you’ve ever had Viennese sausage, you’ll note that it very closely resembles American hot dogs, only better.

Also, “Austria” is just the latinization of “Österreich”, which just means “western kingdom”. Fascinating.

Finally, thanks to , I’ve become a big fan of the term “clue bat”, as in “someone needs to hit them with a clue bat”. I just saw a post on /. that used the term “clue by four”, which I find just as if not more amusing. :oD

Speaking of linguistics geekery… I’m done with Historical Comparative Linguistics! The final was this afternoon. The class was definitely an up-and-down experience: some stuff was really easy and/or interesting, and some of it was really difficult and/or boring. I found the grading to be somewhat inconsistent, in that I usually felt like I had at least decent answers, but I got 0s on some questions on quizzes and the midterm. I felt very good about the final, but I’m worried that that might be largely illusory.

You may recall me whinging about my linguistics term paper. As it turns out, I got a B+ overall on the paper and the presentation. To be honest, this strikes me as very, very generous. I’m half tempted to tell Sean that I don’t deserve this grade, because I really don’t feel like I did a very good job on the paper. At least, I definitely wasn’t motivated to do the paper, and I really had to force myself to finish it. Bleah. At least it’s all done now. :o)


Comments

2 responses to “Vocabulary Trivia”

  1. The joke is that people in Frankfurt call them “wieners”, while people in Wien (Vienna) call them “frankfurters”. Casting the blame around, and all.

  2. Osterreich means Eastern Kingdom.

    Remember, in German geography you must play everything close to your West or else you’re totally Ost. Nord can you just Sud around and hope you’re in the Reich place.

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