A New French Verb

To Google.

This is a regular verb, and hence takes the form googler.

The conjugation is as follows:

Je google
Tu googles
Il google
Nous googlons
Vous googlez
Ils googlent

Babelfish doesn't appear to recognise this. But I suppose that's not surprising.

After all, it's owned by Yahoo.

Parlay Voo Too

Saturday morning French lessons are great.

It's the highlight of my week at the moment, which either says something wonderful about the place I'm learning it, or it says something a little sad about my life.

No, screw that. Learning another language is terrific.

The amazing thing is how much it's teaching me about English. I've learnt more about English grammar by studying French than I ever learnt by studying English at school.

But it's even more than that.

Going from one language to another is not a simple word-substitution exercise. The meanings subtly change. Statements become loaded. The culture that underpins the language, and the assumptions that go along with it, come out.

Learning another language teaches you that the way you express yourself, and ultimately the way you think and feel, can be controlled by the words you have available.

Orwell knew this, and wove the fact into 1984 with devastating effect.

In learning a language, you learn so much more than words. You learn about a people, you learn about a culture, and you learn about yourself.

Parlay Voo

This morning my lovely wife and I began French language classes.

For the next five weeks, four hours every Saturday morning (and part of the afternoon) will be spent conjugating verbs, trying to remember the right preposition, and desperately trying to pronounce the letter 'R' without spitting all over the desk.

This is all part of our ill-defined (at the moment) but nevertheless strong intention to move to Paris.

Someday. Hopefully soon.

The next part will be working out how to transport two cats, one terminally grumpy and the other morbidly obese, halfway across the world.

Compared to that, getting the language down will be the easy part.

Au-Shi Au-Shi Au-Shi

Some information for Australian travellers heading to Beijing for the 2008 Olympics:

The word "Oi" sounds remarkably like "Oy", the Cantonese word for "love".

The word "Aussie" sounds remarkably like "Au-Shi", the Cantonese word for "shitting".

So if you're getting some strange sideways looks when chanting "Aussie! Aussie! Aussie! Oi! Oi! Oi!", now you know why.

Fun With Anagrams

One of my favourite websites is the Internet Anagram Server.

Here you can put in any word or phrase, and it will work out for you some amusing, and sometimes revealing, anagrams.

They have an anagram hall of fame, including such classics as

"Eleven plus two" =
"Twelve plus one"

and

"President Clinton of the USA" =
"To copulate he finds interns".

But this is all about me, so putting in the title of the blog I get

"I Like Portello" =
"Lo, Killer Poet I"

which is nice, or

"Musings of a Beta Nerd" =
"Bad Refs In A Smug Tone",

which is probably a little more accurate.

But the best comes when we put it all together, and find that

"I Like Portello Musings of a Beta Nerd" =
"I Am Foreseeing A Troubled Poll Stink".

Spooky.

News For Nerds

Here's some of the things making your world a little nerdier this week:

(1) A new word has entered the lexicon: Geekgasm.
There are a number of definitions out there, but here's mine:

geekgasm (n) [geek-gazzem]

An intense feeling of excitement caused by the sudden appreciation of a complex idea or nerdy piece of art, often scientific in nature.

A geekgasm is generally accompanied by a violent ejaculation of sound (such as "Gee whiz!") and followed by an intense feeling of fatigue.

Usage example: "Gee whiz! Did you see that new Transformers movie? I had a total geekgasm."
See also: Geekstacy; Multiple geekgasm (x-ref: Star Wars trilogy.

(2) When looking for the correct spelling of the word mensiversary (meaning "monthly anniversary"), I found that it does not appear in the online Dictionary.com.

As potential alternatives, it offers Mena Suvari and Monster Zero.

Which is helpful.

(3) A design has been selected for the new Virgin Galactic spaceport.

I can't help thinking that New Mexico was chosen as the location because Richard Branson wants to break through the fabric of space time and be the the Roswell alien.

He'd love that.

Also, is it just me or does the design look a bit, um, rude?

(4) While we're on the topic of space, man's first envoy to the distant stars, Voyager I, was launched 30 years ago yesterday. With all the whiz-bangery in the world at their disposal (well, more or less) NASA is still using the original computer bank to keep track of it.

And finally,

(5) Surprising precisely no-one, Apple has released a touch-screen iPod. While it's basically an iPhone without the phone, it's hella sexy.

Not quite geekgasm material, but close.