Fun with Numbers and Language
How lovely to see you! Can I offer you a beverage? Maybe some crackers and…well, no, it appears someone has eaten all the cheese. Not sure who would have done such a thing, but it’s gone. Let’s all just move past it.
I gathered you all here today to give you a quick update on how The Writing is going, in case you were wondering (if you weren’t, feel free to skip this part and proceed to the list below). After several months of straight rejections, THREE AGENTS have asked to read the full manuscript. However, my optimism remains t e m p e r e d. It’ll be a while yet before I find out whether any of these agents wants to represent my book for realskies, and even longer to hear if a publishing house will deign to accept it. That’s not to mention the very lengthy publishing process itself. But still—it’s something.
Meanwhile, I’m working on something new and a bit more ambitious. (For me, anyway. For other people it’d just be like…a book.) Which is exciting, in a terrifying kind of way. It feels as if someone has left me in charge of a particularly unruly circus, and I’m not quite sure what to do with it. Do people still like clowns? Do I have to wear a top hat? Should I climb inside the lion? But there is no one to ask because it turns out this is a Bavarian circus and all I really know how to say in German is, “Do you have a granddaughter?” and it would appear that no one does.
Anyway. Enough about that. Let’s turn to more important issues. The other night when I couldn’t sleep I started thinking, and I wanted to share those thoughts here, in hopes that you might weigh in on these urgent matters:
Did you know that if you start counting at one, you get to eight before you repeat a vowel sound?
Whoa. You don’t hit a short A sound until one thousand. Unless you start adding “and” once you hit triple digits. Which for some reason is only acceptable when you’re talking about dalmatians.
We should go back to saying the ones digit first, like “four and twenty.” It’s so much more dignified.
No—we should count like the French! There’s something deliciously nonsensical and decadent in expressing the number ninety as four-twenty-ten.
HOLD UP. YOU DON’T HIT A SHORT O SOUND UNTIL ONE NONILLION.
That can’t be right. Can it?
*three hours of counting pass*
IT IS! NUMBERS ARE NUTS!
“Now I lay me down to sleep” is also interesting, because they add that object in there for the sake of the meter, but if you took it out, you’d have to change the verb to “lie.”
Maybe it’s just English that’s crazy.
Or maybe it’s me who’s crazy.
Ahem. Excuse me. Maybe it is I who am crazy.
Maybe she who is crazy am I.
MAYBE IT IS I, BEING CRAZY, WHO AM.
When do you use whom again?
MAYBE ONE MIGHT CALL CRAZY WHOMSOEVER I FIND MYSELF TO BE.
Nope, it’s English.
Oh, hey! There goes my alarm! Another productive night.