What do you do?
That used to be an easy question: a simple icebreaker when meeting new people. Now though, it’s more complicated.
First of all, since the economic crisis, people are understandably wary about asking the question, as we’re more aware of the fact that the answer might be nothing.
Second, for a lot of people who do have something that they do, it can be a hard to specify exactly what it is.
I want to take a little break from looking at language for this evening. Actually, I had tried to write something about language. I tried to write the post I’d mentioned yesterday: I wanted to start with the word English, and then let my phone choose which words would follow. I was hoping for some mad Dadaist poem, but was somewhat disappointed it was just recreating whole sentences from my blog or from emails. But then, having a look at my blog dashboard, and looking at other blogs, I decided to write about what I like about blogging. And when I started thinking about it, I realised I could write a lot, so I decided to focus on one aspect of the blogging experience: the statistics.
Well, I know I said I’d write something about grammar or etymology, but then, how can one turn down the Sunshine Blogger Award? And there are plenty of more days ahead in which to indulge myself in the riches of English, so why not have a little break, eh, to enjoy a little sunshine? I probably won’t have to use so many italics on this one, and formatting all of those can be tiring.
So, I have to say a big thank you to Parvathy Sarat for her nomination. It’s an honour, and I strongly recommend you check out her blog, Trust Me, You’re Alive. How could you resist such a fascinating variety of topics as written by a scribbler, dancer, dog-lover, and an overthinker? Certainly three of those four describe me (I’ll let you decide which), so obviously her posts are great reading.
Let’s do this then.
Read on to find out some of the most amazing facts about the English language! Facts such as…
My god, what a number. Objectively, you might think it only somewhat interesting, largely, if not solely, due to those three consecutive nines. But it has a special, infuriating significance for me. Arriving home yesterday evening and going to my laptop, one of my primary thoughts was of my blog activity while I was away, a daily thought for me.
And as I was opening the laptop, a more specific thought occurred to me: having started the blog in May, I realised that the yearly section of the stats page was now slightly more interesting. Even though I’d only been blogging for six and a bit months, I was still curious to see what my final total views was. So I had as look and it was… Continue reading
English-Language Thoughts 