ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing ktravula – a travelogue! blog archives for January, 2012.

The Lovejoy Connection (2)

Elijah Lovejoy (after whom the Library at the Southern Illinois University was named) became the first (white) victim of the American Civil War when he was killed by a mob in Alton in 1837.

He was thirty-five years old, a Presbyterian minister, publisher and activist.

These are pictures from a visit to the Elijah Lovejoy monument (and city cemetery), about twenty minutes away from here.

The cemetery had some of the most peculiar European names we had ever seen, some long, some short. Many of them are most likely no longer used. It also boasts of a certain serenity guarded by a few commemorative plinths overlooking the cemetery and the Mississippi river down below.

The Lovejoy Connection (2) was published on January 21st, 2012, with the tags , , , , , under the adventures, Observations, Travelling category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Kano, Nigeria.

News from the BBC, and Reuters, at the moment says that there have been about 20 bomb blasts in the northern Nigerian city of Kano. A phone call to a friend in Kaduna confirmed the story of smokes and gun fires in police stations. The culprit is Boko Haram, the shadowy terrorist group mortally opposed to everything western, except guns and explosives.

Just a week ago, the federal government had sent soldiers to the streets in many cities to prevent the peaceful “Occupy Nigeria” protesters from becoming a nuisance to government business. This news of renewed violence by the real threat to the nation’s progress only highlights the negligence that everyone have long decried. It shows the out-of-touchedness of those that sleep in the government house in Abuja.

Whatever happens as that country goes through this violent wringer of a reform, here is hoping that what remains is still recognizable to those of us who still call it home.

 

Kano, Nigeria. was published on January 20th, 2012, with the tags , , , , under the Soliloquy category. There are currently 1 comment on this article so far.

Shit ________ People Say

These series of youtube videos highlighting cultural/linguistic eccentricities have been all around the internet. These three made my day.

Jamaica

 

and New York

 

And No one

There are a lot more online, some funnier than others. It’s fun wondering what expressions would be in “What Linguists Say?” video.

Shit ________ People Say was published on January 19th, 2012, with the tags , under the Fun category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

Monolingualism Worries

This article in the New York times examines the oft-repeated claim that Americans are mostly monolingual, monolingual by choice, and fare worse in the world precisely because of it.

The claim, it seems, is the same as (or similar to) an old argument between whether literacy equals sophistication, or whether someone without (Western) education in a developing country is smart enough to correctly adjust to the complexity of the (21st century) world. There is no substantial evidence to support the “for” argument, of course, as those with brilliant, sophisticated yet uneducated grandparents will attest, but the discussion is one that underlies much of today’s governmental and social intervention in local, traditional ways of life.

I am a linguist, however, and thus will remain on the side of multilingualism – and multiculturalism – as an important, yet fascinating, catalyst of social change.

Monolingualism Worries was published on January 17th, 2012, with the tags , , , under the Observations, Soliloquy category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.

The Whole Picture

The last couple of days has brought a record number of new visitors to this blog. That brings with it a certain kind of delight. (Welcome people!) I may yet resume a regular dump of my thoughts on you once again as I have been doing for the past two years. Sitting here for the past few hours has brought me into a few ideas none of which have furthered the work into my thesis beyond a few sentences. On one screen is my twitter feed that shows me diverse opinions of trending topics, from the Golden Globes to the Fuel Subsidy fights in Nigeria (in which my heart absolutely resides), and the Republican Primary fight in which another video has shown up with frontrunner Mitt Romney offering an unbelievably cold response to a sick man who had asked for his opinion on medical marijuana.

As I have discovered many times over, coming back to the empty page of a new blogpost always brought words back to my fingertips, bringing me back to a required level head to continue my work. In any case, here is what I thought: a solution to an old puzzle. All the (about three thousand) pictures that I have taken since this travelogue began need to go somewhere. As from today, I will be putting one (or two) of them per week out on the blog’s Facebook page with a little back story. If I never eventually make it to writing/completing that travel book of all those experiences, pictures and short back stories would have to do. Of course, you would be missing out on this if you are not already following the page.

Alright, that is out. Back to wondering how to successfully measure the progress of second language tonal acquisition, and communicate same to a thesis committee.

The Whole Picture was published on January 15th, 2012, with the tags , , , under the Fun, Observations, Soliloquy category. There are currently no comments on this article so far.