Thursday, September 22, 2022

A date with N

 I don't go on many dates these days. I don't know whether women find me unattractive, always found me unattractive, don't like my photos, wouldn't like any photos I took or what it is. I accept their judgement. No one thinks less of me than I do so I don't feel hurt.

The problem is, I'm lonely, and I am willing to put up with, well, what I don't want. I know it's what I don't want and I think, in the short term, I will put up with it for some company. So I go on a date with N. She moans for two hours about her ex. She's entirely forgotten that she told me all about it on our previous date. And on the phone. And in a video chat. She has a staged process for becoming her boyfriend, which I find tedious. Although I am genuinely respectful of women, I don't appreciate the idea that they are gatekeeping the pussy. If you want sex, have sex. If the person you have it with is the wrong person, so what? It's just sex. How do you become socialised to think it's a magical gift you bestow on men? Most women past 40, ime, do not think like that at all. Thank god.

Don't get me wrong. I didn't think, oh, I'm going to put up with this boring woman just so I can bang her. It's a part of a relationship. It's not the only kind of relationship you can have, of course. I do have relationships with women that do not include sex for obvious reasons. But the kind of relationship we were supposedly embarking on involves sex or it's not that kind of relationship.

If I was honest, if you asked me, would you have her as a friend? I'd say no. She'd be a shit friend. She didn't remember anything about me. She wasn't curious. And she said she liked banter but had none to offer. She reminded me of Becky, except later Becky. She was actually fun when I first met her. Perhaps that sounds like an indictment of me but I've thought a lot about it and I wasn't responsible for how she was. I mean, yeah, you would say that but actually, if I was responsible, I'd accept it.

N told me she didn't wish to take it further. It's exactly what people say when they're not going to give you a job. Which was eerie and unpleasant. But to be honest it wouldn't be the first job I've applied for, had an interview with and been relieved that they didn't give me a tougher choice. And the job of having to put up with a wet blanket for the pay of an occasional root is not a thrilling prospect.

Monday, September 05, 2022

Simple sample sumple somple

The question I'm pondering today is why do languages seem to become simpler. Or are they? Are grammars equally complex but simply less formal? Often people ask me why you write a sentence a particular way and it's really hard to answer. "You just do." But there could be a deeper rule involved that isn't articulated in formal grammars.

The reason I'm thinking about it is Indo-European ablaut. Indo-European in some respects had a consonant-first approach to morphology (which leads you to ask whether IE and Semitic derived from a proto-whatever). Vowel grade is not entirely dissimilar from the vowel melody of Semitic languages.

English still has some fossil ablaut btw and if I give you an example, you'll see straight away what I'm talking about:

sing sang sung song

is an almost undisturbed descendant of the IE verb *sengwh.

Which is itself interesting. That root meant "sing" in a restricted sense (ritual singing). The usual root was "kan-", which we see descended into Latin as "canere" (more usually used as its frequentative "cantare", which became the common word), and thence to French as "chanter". Note that French has *no* ablaut. The verb quality of "chan-" does not change in any related word. This is typically true fo French.