[Week 7] Reading Diary - Japanese Fairy Tales (Ozaki)

Japanese Fairy Tales (Ozaki)

My Lord Bag of Rice
-Hidesato is asked by the dragon king to kill an enemy centipede.

-He agrees and is taken to the bottom of lake Biwa for entertainment when the palace is attacked by the centipede.
-The centipede is invulnerable to their weapons.
-Hidesato remembers that centipedes are weak against human saliva so he uses his last arrow, coats it in his saliva, and then shoots the centipede with it. It works and the centipede leaves the mountain and dies.

-The dragon king and his family thank Hidesato and throw another celebration.
-The family gave Hidesato "small" presents: a bronze bell, a bag of rice, a roll of silk, a cooking pot, and a bell. The servants left the presents at his house.
-It turns out all the presents except the bell were magical.
-The rice and silk never ran out. The cooking pot always instantly made whatever food was wanted.
-Because he had these things forever, he became My Lord Bag of Rice.


The Adventures of Kintaro, the Golden Boy
-Kintaro grew up to be very strong and was considered a wonder child.
-He learned to speak to animals and used them as servants.
-Kintaro and the animals play a game (wrestling) in a field.
-The hare and the monkey wrestle and the hare wins the first round. The monkey throws a fit and Kintaro lets them go another round. The monkey wins unfairly.
-After the games, they headed back home but came to a river that they couldn't figure out how to cross. Kintaro makes a bridge out of a tree that he pulled out of the ground.
-A woodcutter had been watching and wanted to figure out whose son he was so he followed him.
-Kintaro gets home and greets his mother. He tells her about the game they played.
-The old man who had followed Kintaro asked to be taken to play next time.
-Kintaro and the old man wrestle and the game is declared a draw, as the old man is very strong as well.
-The man suggests taking Kintaro to the city to have him trained as a samurai. The mother wants to do that, but she has no influential friend to help.
-The man reveals that he is a general who is recruiting soldiers for Lord Raiko's army.
-Kintaro sets out to the capital and says goodbye to his mother and his animal friends.
-Lord Raiko was happy to have Kintaro in his army. When he grew up, he became a chief.
-Kintaro became the greatest hero of the country.


The Man Who Did Not Wish to Die
-One day, Sentaro realizes that he never wants to die. He decides to try to live simply and frugally to see if he would live longer.
-He thought about the Chinese emperor who had his men search for the elixir of life for him. Mt. Fuji is said to be the home of the elixir.

-Sentaro heads off to become a hermit on Mt. Fuji, but he doesn't find any hermits. He asks a hunter where they might be, but is instead told of a thief with 200 followers who lives in the mountain
-Sentaro goes to a shrine to pray.
-Jofuku appears and tells Sentaro that he's being selfish and that it's hard to be a hermit. He says he's not suited for the lifestyle. Instead of helping him become a hermit, Jofuku tells Sentaro that he will send him to a place where people never die.
-Sentaro becomes a resident in the Country of Perpetual Life.
-People tell stories of the paradise they'll go to after death. Everyone in the Country of Perpetual Life wants to die so they can go there and be happy. When poisons are brought to the island, people desperately try to drink them but they don't die. Sentaro realizes he's in a land that has the opposite idea as his.
-Sentaro thinks it's silly and says he'll never wish to die.
-Eventually, he grows tired of living forever.
-Sentaro prays to Jofuku again and was flown over an ocean on the way back to japan when a storm hits. He almost drowns and is nearly eaten by a shark.
-Sentaro wakes up and realizes it was all a dream.
-A messenger gives Sentaro a book and tells him that Jofuku allowed him to see what life would be like if he never died. He sends Sentaro back to his home. He is taught that his selfish desires lead to no good. Sentaro goes back and lives a prosperous life.

The Goblin of Adachigahara

-A buddhist  monk gets lost in Adachigahara.

-He asks if he can stay the night at an old woman's house, and she eventually allows him to sleep on the kitchen floor.

-The woman tells the monk not to look in a certain room. Then she leaves.

-When the old lady doesn't return for a long time, the monk decides to look in the room. He finds a gory mess in the room. Human remains, blood, etc.

-The woman catches up to him while he runs from the house.

-When dawn breaks, the goblin woman disappears and the monk is able to escape. 

The Ogre of Rashomon-A town is terrorized by rumors of a man eating ogre.

-A warrior, Watanabe, investigates the rumor.

-He ends up fighting the ogre. The ogre runs away and Watanabe tries to catch it but is outrun.

-Watanabe finds the ogre's arm that he cut off and takes it back with him to show people. He becomes popular because people want to see the arm.

-Eventually, he seals up the arm because he knows that the ogre will some day come back to get it.

-Watanabe's nurse visits him and asks him if it's true that he killed the ogre. She says her wish before she dies is to see the ogre's arm, but he refuses to show her at first. After more begging he ends up giving in to her.

-The old woman snatches up the arm and turns into the ogre.

-The ogre escapes with its arm but because it was afraid of Watanabe, it never visit Kyoto again.

The Story of Princess Hase

-A prince and princess are happily married but also sad because they hadn't been able to have a baby.

-They decide to go to a temple to pray to Kwannon in Hase.

-Their prayer was answered and a daughter was born. They decided to call her Hasehime. 

-The mother dies five years later and before tells Hasehime to always be submissive to her superiors and kind to those under her.

-The prince remarries. The new wife was cruel and was mean to Hasehime. 

-Hasehime plays the koto beautifully and is invited to play for the emperor. The step-mother is asked to accompany her playing.

-Hasehime plays well but the stepmother can't play and asks someone else to take her place. She is ashamed that she failed but her step-daughter did so well.

-The step-mother poisons some wine in attempt to kill Hasehime. She takes two bottles of wine (one poisoned, one not) and gives them to the daughter and the son. The bottles were mixed up and the stepmother accidentally gave the poisoned wine to her son. He ends up dying.

-The step-mother hates Hasehime more.

-When rainy season arrives, Hasehime is asked to write a poem in order to make the rain stop. 

-She becomes the lieutenant general princess.

-The step-mother asks one of her servants to take Hasehime to the mountains to kill her, but her servant just takes her into the wild and protects her. 

-Her father searches for her and calls men together to help find her by searching in the mountains. 

-He ends up stumbling upon the house that she was staying in and they are both overcome with joy at being reunited.

-The servant told the father what happened.

-The father is angry and the step-mother is scared off.

-Hasehime ends up married to one of the court nobles and gives birth to a son.

-She is remembered in buddhist temples. 

[Week 6] Essay - The Friendly Sarcasm Punctuation Mark

(Sarcasm shirt from Acid Pix on Flickr)

                If I were an all-powerful grammar god, I would want to create punctuation marks specifically for used with text messages or social media. I have a few in mind, but I’ll just write about one of them today. I consider this one to be the most potentially useful for my emotions and I, as I’m a fairly sensitive person who tends to take people literally.

                Maybe it’s just me, but the limited amount of emotions that can be portrayed through text message make me feel like I can’t quite pick up on little signs and nuances that I rely on when talking face-to-face or even over the phone. If someone were to tease me in person, I generally know not to take what they’re taking too seriously because I can see their mischievous smile and hear the laughter in their voice. Through text message, I find myself not being able to distinguish a joking “I hate you!” from a serious one. My idea would be to have a little symbol to use to show when someone wants to reassure the person they’re talking to that they’re being sarcastic.

                This isn’t something that I would want to see in all cases. This would be more like the method of using an asterisk (*) to correct a typo online. It’s not something that would be used in literature or official documents, only between friends in a casual setting and when the user feels it’s necessary. For example, if two people are always sarcastic with each other then they might not feel the need to use a sarcasm punctuation mark. I imagine people would use it to be friendly but still polite with people they don’t really know, or to reassure their friend who may be feeling down that they’re only teasing. 

               As far as the symbol goes, something easy to access on any keyboard would work best. For that reason, I think the ~ symbol would be nice. It’s used online today to add a bit of whimsy to a statement (at least that’s how I see it, for example “hello~~~!” is more playful than “hello!”), but other than that its use seems to be fairly limited in text messaging and social media.

                The idea for this sarcasm marker was born out of my own experiences and oversensitivity. I don’t think it’s something that is truly needed, nor do I think it would be a good thing to overuse. Imagine if people started using the sarcasm symbol sarcastically! It could also be perceived as a put-down if the person being spoken to thinks they’re being treated like they’re unintelligent. But for things like text messaging, I think it would be a nice option.

Example usage:

"~I just really hate you sometimes~."

"I'm not sure realizes how ~incredible~ his eyebrows are."

"~GREAT JOB~, friend."

"You don't understand calculus because you're ~stupid~."

[Week 6] Storytelling - The Sparrow's Revenge

Author's Note: This is the story of the Sparrow with the Split Tongue as told from the point of view of the sparrow. The original story is basically the same, except it focuses on the old man. I thought it was a really sweet story (although the ending is pretty grim) so I wanted to see what I could do with it. 

(Drawing of a sparrow by StevenWorthey on Deviantart)

I soared through a thick canopy of trees, just barely grazing my feathers on the branches. I hoped I could throw off the raven who flew close behind, as I know he wasn’t after me for a friendly conversation. And he looked like he would take great pleasure in tearing me apart. Either I wasn’t quite as agile in my sparrow form as I thought, or the raven was incredibly fast and graceful. Probably the former. I hadn’t taken to flight in such a long time and now I was remembering why. Humans are easier to reason with than hungry ravens!

I was beginning to lose hope when I caught sight of an old man in front of his cottage. Forgetting I couldn’t speak as a sparrow, I tried to cry out for help while I approached him but all that came out of my beak was a screech. But it was enough and the man offered to shelter me within his hands. I was happy for the chance at refuge and glided myself into them. The man may have been old, but he was certainly not lacking in compassion or energy. He stomped and yelled at the crow until it gave up on its chase and then he took me into his house and put me in a little cage.

Having never been kept as a pet before, I found the confines of the cage to be stifling. If someone had told me before that I would be taken away from my complete freedom to live in a small enclosure, I would have scoffed at them. But it was hard to not feel like a princess with the treatment I received from the old man. Sure, I had a limited amount of space to move around in, but being in a cage inside of a house meant no nasty ravens would be eating me! And the food the man gave me tasted better than anything I could have ever found for myself in a market or the forest. I was let out every day to spread my wings and get some fresh air, and immediately allowed back inside when I was done or being chased. The old man and I formed an odd friendship, one without language or much of anything that usually goes into friendships, really. But he found peace in helping me and I enjoyed my worry-free life, and we enjoyed each other’s presence very much.

The man’s wife, however, was a different story. When she tore into my cage the moment the man left to run errands, I wasn’t surprised. I knew that she was an irrational enough woman to become jealous of a pet, and I assumed I would be fast enough to fly away from her if she tried to harm me. I was able to dodge her hands and get myself out of the cage before she could grab me, but the old woman was smarter than she looked and managed to trap me into a corner. At that moment, I was sure she would kill me. For whatever reason she instead chose to pry open my beak and slit my tongue. The pain was blinding. Before I knew it, I was fleeing to my old home in the bamboo thicket cowering in my bed in my human form. I needed my friend’s comfort but I didn’t dare return to his home to face his wife.

A few days passed and I got over the trauma enough to leave my house. Pushing my door open, I was shocked to find the old man standing in front of my house looking around puzzled. I excitedly explained to him that I was his friend the sparrow and made him come inside to visit. Hours later he stood up reluctantly, saying he needed to take his leave. Probably because he didn’t want his wife to split his tongue too. Before he left, I gave him the choice between two chests: a smaller, modest chest and a larger, fancier chest. Being a selfless man, I wasn’t surprised when my friend took the smaller chest. He would find it filled with expensive jewels and small treasures when he opened it, and I hoped it would serve as a good thank you present.

I thought that was the end of my troubles with the man’s wife, but one day she showed up at my door fuming and boastful. I was caught off guard when she pushed past me and marched into my house, demanding to be entertained. I was scared and confused, but then I remembered the trick I always had prepared for visitors such as this one. After a bit of pretend-entertaining, I told the woman she needed to leave. As I expected, she demanded a present. I didn’t hesitate when I offered her the same boxes I offered her husband. I knew she would take the larger chest, as those who are greedy and ill-of-heart tend to do. I laughed to myself as she hauled the heavy box out of my house and into the forest. She would not find treasures inside the box, but poisonous snakes that would attack her the moment she opened it. No man would regret her loss, and my friend and I could once again live our happy lives.

The Pink Fairy Book by Andrew Lang and illustrated by H. J. Ford (1897).

[Week 6] Reading Diary - Japanese Fairy Tales (Lang)

Japanese Fairy Tales (Lang)

The Two Frogs

- An adorable story about two frogs who happen to meet each other while on their way to each other's city. They become friends and talk on top of a mountain. Then they get the idea to stand on their hind legs using each other to balance so they can see the cities they were headed to. That way, they can tell if it looks worthwhile to continue on their journeys. They don't realize that their eyes are in the back of their heads and when they stand up, they both see where they had just come from and decide to turn back and go home.

The Stonecutter

- A mountain spirit grants a stone-cutter several wishes. He goes becomes rich, then a prince, the sun, a cloud, a rock, and then a human again. In all the forms except his normal poor human self, he found that he was unsatisfied with something. So in the end when he is human again, he realizes that he's had it good all along.

The Maiden with the Wooden Helmet

- A dying mother worries that her beautiful daughter will be harassed when she is fending for herself, so while on her deathbed she has the daughter get a wooden helmet. She tells her to wear the helmet at all times so nobody can see her face. Later, the girl ends up being seen while working by the son of the house master. He is determined to marry her and eventually, after her mother comes to her and tells her it's a good idea, she consents. She is married in her helmet but afterwards in bursts and turns into diamonds and everyone is amazed by her beauty.

The Envious Neighbour

- So sad. But justice is served! An elderly couple have a dog that they treat like a child. The dog finds treasure in their garden and the couple become rich. A neighbor gets jealous and asks to borrow the dog. The couple eventually gives in and allows it, but when the dog finds nothing but bones in the neighbor's yard, he kills it. The elderly couple is sad but the dog comes to the husband at night and gives him instructions. They end up being even more rich and the neighbor grows more envious but every time he tries to repeat what they did, something bad happens. In the end, he's locked up in jail and shunned by the community. 

The Sparrow with the Slit Tongue

- A nice old man saves a little sparrow one day and keeps it as his pet. It's happy and safe in its cage and it likes the old man. But the man's wife is basically evil and becomes jealous of the bird so she cuts its tongue. The bird flies away and the man is sad. He spends days looking for it and is just about to give up when he comes upon a little house in a bamboo thicket. A woman comes out of the house and says she is the sparrow he saved. She lets him choose between a big chest and a little chest as a present. He takes the little one and at home discovers it's full of jewels. The wife is enraged that he didn't pick the bigger one and visits the sparrow's house. She demands a gift and picks the big chest. Inside there are snakes that poison her and she dies.

The Cat's Elopement

- Two cats fall in love but because of their owners, they can't be together. They meet every night instead. One night, a dog/ogre attacks and the male, Gon, cat tries to fight it. The female cat, Koma, cries loudly from a tree until a princess comes out and saves Gon. He becomes a helpful pet to her. A while later, while wishing to see Koma, Gon sees a little kitten being bullied by a bigger cat. He rescues it and realizes it's Koma. They are happy to be together and tell their story to the princess, who happily keeps them both.

Schippeitaro

- For some reason this one really confused me. It's about a man who goes out looking for adventure and he comes across cats singing and shrieking. He learns of a dog named Schippeitaro who I think stops the (king of the) cats from eating young women. The boy helps the dog kill the cats. 

The Crab and the Monkey
- A nice crab finds some rice and trades a monkey half of it for his kaki seed. She uses it to grow a kaki tree full of fruit. The monkey stops by and gets the crab's permission to have some fruit but ends up stealing it all for himself. The crab tries to trick the monkey so she can get some of the fruit back, but he beats her up. Her friends help her set up a trap to punish the monkey and he dies.

The Magic Kettle

- A man is happy that he found a nice kettle but when he tries to use it it turns into a tanuki. Not wanting to deal with it, he sells it to a man named Jimmu. Jimmu ends up using the tanuki to make a lot of money by setting up a booth and having it dance for crowds. He wants to repay the man he bought it from so he gives him the kettle and lots of gold.

How the Wicked Tanuki was Punished

-A fox and a tanuki need money so the tanuki pretends to be dead and the fox changes into a man and goes to sell the "dead" tanuki in a village. She does so and uses the money to buy food and the tanuki manages to escape, glad that he can climb trees. Eventually they run out of money and the fox decides it's her turn to act dead. The tanuki decides he wants more food for himself and his son so he tells the buyer the fox isn't really dead and he kills her. The son ends up realizing that his father had his mother killed and tricks the tanuki into getting killed himself.

The Slaying of the Tanuki

- An old man leaves food out for his friend the hare every day but it always gets stolen or destroyed by a tanuki. The old man captures the tanuki but it manages to sweet talk his wife and kills her. It even feeds his wife to him without him knowing. When he finds out he is grief stricken and the hare decides to help him. He plays a prank on the tanuki by burning his back and then covering it in a painful salve, but the old man says it isn't enough. Together they build two boats and use them in a plan to kill the tanuki. The old man is happy that his wife is avenged.

Uraschimataro and the Turtle

- Uraschimataro saves a young turtle who in turn later saves him when he is thrown from his boat during a storm. The turtle wants to take him under the water to show him how nice it is. They traveled for three days until they arrived at a palace. The princess of the palace, Otohime, immediately falls in love with Uraschimataro and asks him to stay with her. She does stay with her, but after a while he ends up missing his parents. Otohime begs him to stay but he decides to go. He promises to do something so that he can go back to her. He had been underwater for 300 years and found out his parents had died. He opens the box that Otohime had given him and turns very old. He dies while waiting for the turtle to show up to take him back.

[Week 5] Essay - Ease of Reading

My notes for the Ease of Reading exercise:

1. 2/10 (no punctuation and improper capitalization)    7. 1/10 (caps, proper punctuation)

2. 2/10 (no punctuation, no capitalization, run-on)        8. 1/10 (no caps, proper punctuation)

3. 6/10 (no spaces)                                                          9. 7/10 (like #6 but with periods)

4. 2/10 (caps, no punctuation)                                        10. 4/10 (no spaces, every word is capitalized)

5. 4/10 (no spaces, caps each sentence)                         11. 3/10 (all words capitalized, no punctuation)

6. 8/10 (caps, no spaces, words continue to next line)     12. 4/10 (no spaces, punctuation)

(Japanese text from Wikimedia Commons)

                Number 6 was by far the hardest joke for me to read. The combination of all capitalized words, no spaces, and text that wraps around to the next line without any indication (like a dash) was brutal to my eyes. As someone who tends to skim too much, not having a visible word boundary almost makes it impossible for me to read. I don’t really mind the capitalization, though. With numbers 4, 7, and 11, I had little trouble reading because of the caps, regardless of whether or not punctuation was used. By far, the easiest texts for me to handle were the ones that had either spaces or punctuation (or both).

                I find it interesting that I have so much trouble reading text in English that doesn’t have spaces. As I’ve said in my blog several times, my second language is Japanese. It’s a language that is written in two different syllabaries (similar to an alphabet) with Chinese characters thrown in, and spaces aren’t used in writing. Sometimes I have trouble figuring out where Japanese words end and begin, but in general I can read quickly without trouble. I think this has something to do with the differences in writing systems. In Japanese, the first syllabary, Hiragana, is primarily used for grammar. The second, Katakana, is used for loan words and onomatopoeia. Chinese characters are used for nouns, adjectives, verbs, and basically anything that isn’t a conjunction, part of morphology, etc.

                English, on the other hand, has one alphabet for everything. When things run together they just look like a jumbled up mess of consonants and vowels instead of actual text. Although it’s difficult at times, maybe having three ways of writing in Japanese helps the brain quickly distinguish between parts of speech which makes reading without spaces easier. I’m taking a Chinese class right now and I can’t wait to become more advanced so that I can see if reading in Chinese is difficult despite having one writing system and no spaces. 

[Week 5] Storytelling - What Happened in the Well

Author's Note: I had trouble getting inspiration from the Turkish Tales unit, so I decided to try to rewrite a bit of The Imp of the Well from the wife's perspective. For those of you who haven't read it, the story begins with a man being followed by his wife after he tries to hide some money from her to buy himself a rope. The wife is unhappy and follows after and ends up falling into a well. The man tries to save her by dropping a rope down but he ends up pulling up the imp instead. 

(Illustration by Willy Pogany)

                A rope? A rope?! All of this happened because he wanted to buy a stupid rope?! I’m sitting at the bottom of a well, arguing with an imp, because my good-for-nothing husband was hiding money from me to buy a rope. Thankfully the imp keeps this place stocked like a normal home. There’s a kitchen of sorts with enough produce and salt to make a decent meal. A little bed made out of straw, and a shelf full of junk displayed like knick-knacks. How he got these things, I don’t know. Seeing as how I managed to trip into this well, I wouldn’t be surprised if people’s possessions fall in here all the time.

                You may be wondering why I’m arguing with an imp. Well, I did happen to land on him when I fell into the well. He’s fine, though, I barely hit him. Just crushed him a little bit. With my entire body. So he’s a little bit upset about that. But that wasn’t even my fault, it was my idiot husband’s fault. I also told him I’d cook up the veggies he’s been collecting down here for a nice dinner. He seemed appeased until he actually ate my delicious masterpiece of a soup. Complained that it’s too salty. Rude little shriveled up creature. We’ll see if I use any salt next time. He’s just like that husband of mine. Who, by the way, has yet to show that he even cares that his lovely wife is stuck at the bottom of a well with a terrible, hideous beast.

                Oh! A rope fell right before my very eyes from the opening of the well. I could faintly hear my husband shouting for me to grab hold of the rope. He didn’t forget me! He’s not entirely useless, I suppose! I try reaching for the dangling life-saver, but the imp slaps my hand away.

                “You crushed me, you used all of my food to make a disgusting, salty soup, and you think you deserve this chance at freedom?! I don’t think so. You’re just a miserable old hag, anyway.” The imp screamed at me as he got his grubby little fingers around the rope.

                I grabbed his entire body and threw him to the floor. “That’s my husband up there calling for me, not you! I’m a young, beautiful, talented maiden who doesn’t deserve to be trapped in a dark, dank, hellhole like this!”

                I must say my one and only flaw is my fiery temper. That’s what drew my husband to me in the first place, I think. Nobody can resist such a rebellious, independent woman. I would never even have thought of it as a flaw before, had this very interaction with the imp not taken place. I squeezed my eyes shut and stomped my feet while I ranted and raved at the little thing. When I finally open my eyes and took in my surroundings, all I saw was the faint figure of the imp being pulled up by the rope to freedom. Oops.

Forty-four Turkish Fairy Tales by Ignacz Kunos, with illustrations by Willy Pogany (1913).

[Week 5] Reading Diary - Turkish

Notes from the Turkish Tales unit

Fear

-A boy searches for fear. Along the way, he runs into terrifying situations but he doesn't feel fear. Maidens drink to his health for his courage.

Fear (cont.)

-The boy is rewarded and declared shah but he still wants to search for fear. The people thought that he would be dead by morning, but found him in good health. During the morning celebration, a bird flies out of his soup bowl. He is startled and is told that that is fear.

The Wizard-Dervish

-A wizard gives a troubled king an apple to help him have a child. He says the child will belong to him (the wizard) after his 20th birthday. On the prince's wedding day, the wizard comes and takes him away. He follows the instructions of a girl who takes the form of a dove and is then married to her.

The Wizard-Dervish (cont.)

-The boy and the maiden keep putting on disguises to dodge the boy's mother. They get to an inn and the boy somehow returns to the palace and is reminded not to forget the maiden so he gets a cart and takes her back to the palace and they are wed.

The Fish-Peri

-A young man catches a fish that he deems to beautiful to eat or sell so he puts it in a well at his house. He discovers that it can come out of its skin and become a beautiful woman, so he burns the skin and marries the woman. A king falls in love with the wife at first sight and tells the man that unless he can build an impossible palace for him, he will take his wife and make her his own. The wife isn't worried and tells the man what to do.

The Fish-Peri (cont.)

-A palace, bridge, and a feast are made for the king. Now, he wanted to see an infant who was a day old but could speak and talk. A speaking baby is brought to the king and it hits him. The king gives up and lets the man have his wife.

The Crow-Peri

-With the help of a crow, a boy catches a beautiful bird and sells it to the king. The king's lala suggests putting it in an ivory kiosk but the king doesn't have ivory, so he demands that the boy get it for him within 40 days. The crow helps again by having the boy kill elephants for their ivory. 

The Crow-Peri (cont.)

-The boy is tasked with finding the bird's original owner. The crow helps the boy by telling him to get a ship to bring the fairy queen who owned the bird to the king. The king and queen meet and fall in love and are married, but the lala is mad. The queen falls sick and the king tasks the boy with getting her medicine, which he gets from the fairies. The crow turns out to be the fairy queen's former servant and is married to the boy.

Patience-Stone and Patience-Knife

-A bird comes to a woman three times while she's home alone and tells her that her kismet is with a dead person. She and her mom are disturbed, but one day the girl goes out with friends who promise not to take their eyes off of her. The girl gets trapped in a wall in which a door appears. There is a man who says if she fans him for forty days and prays, she will find her kismet.

Patience-Stone and Patience-Knife (cont.)

-The girl fans the man and sees an Arab girl. She asks her to take over for a while and in that time the man wakes up and declares the Arab girl his wife. The trapped woman is used as a cook. She asks for a patience stone and patience knife and the man goes on a journey to find them. She uses the knife and stone to retell her story. The Arab girl dies and the bird returns and tells the other girl that she has found her kismet.

The Imp of the Well

-While following her husband, a woman falls down a well. The man goes to the well intending to rescue his wife with a rope but instead ends up pulling up an imp. The imp is angry because it was disturbed when the man's wife fell onto him, and now he's thankful that the man pulled him out. The imp says he'll get the sultan's daughter sick and gives the man the cure to give the padishah in exchange for money.

The Imp of the Well (cont.)

-The man forgets his wife. He gives the padishah the cure for this daughter. The sultan's daughter is married to the man. While on his way to help another princess, the man runs into the imp who threatens to take his new wife away from him if he helps this other princess. The man lies and says the woman from the well is his wife and she got out and is following them. Then imp runs away and the princess is cured.

The Soothsayer

-After seeing how the wives of soothsayers are treated, a woman tells her husband that he must become a soothsayer. He pretends to be a hodja and tells the chief soothsayer's wife where her missing ring is (it was planted for him). She loses her ring again when a slave steals it and tells the man to find it. The slave is afraid and tells him she has it. The man tells the slave what to do with the ring and has it planted in a goose, which he tells the king to kill to find the ring inside. He becomes a famous hodja.

The Wizard and his Pupil

-A boy becomes apprentice to a magician. The magician changes himself into animals and tells the boy to sell him but to keep the rope he has tied to him. The boy does so but ends up running away and turning himself into a bath house. The magician buys the key to the "bath house" from the mother. The boy changes into a bird and the magician chases him to a king's palace, where the boy eventually kills the magician. The boy is appointed grand vezir and is married to the king's daughter.

The Liver

-A girl is sent to the market to buy liver but a stork steals it. It tells her that it needs barley to give her the liver but the farmer needs her to pray for rain to get the barley. Next, she needs incense to pray. It continues on like this with the girl having to do different tasks. She ends up getting the liver back. 

Madjun

-A boy asks his mother to go to the padishah to try to get the princess for him. The padishah says he will let the boy marry his daughter if he can gather all the birds in the world together in one spot. He meets a dervish who tells him how to gather all the birds. Next, the padishah tells him to grow hair. In the meantime, the princess is betrothed to someone else. The boy freezes the princess and her would-be husband. He also freezes her slave who went to check on them. He ends up freezing a lot of people. A hodja tells the padishah that he has to marry his daughter to the boy. They are married and the people are unfrozen. 

Kunterbunt

-The strange story of three brothers who keep running into three things (two being the same and one being different just like them). In the end, it turns out to be a dream.

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[Week 4] Essay - I Literally Can't Even

(comic by Hilary Price)

                This comic reminds me of a misconception a lot of people seem to hold about linguistics students. My friends and I are always asked things like, “how many languages do you speak?” It’s even become a bit of an inside joke among linguists and students because it’s asked so often. Linguists generally don’t learn how to speak hundreds of languages, they study how languages work. Because of that, many find questions about how many languages they speak irritating. But I would rather talk about that all day before I even begin to approach the question: “Don’t you just HATE it when people say things incorrectly?!”

                One of the first things we were taught in our general linguistics class was that small grammatical or orthographical errors are generally irrelevant when it comes to communication. In other words, we care more about getting the message across than we do getting the grammar or spelling right. On a larger scale, there are varieties of English that are seen as “bad” when really they’re just a different dialect. For example, African American Vernacular English is seen by many as ungrammatical. In reality, AAVE has its own grammar rules and patterns that are just a little bit different from Standard English. So while an AAVE sentence may be ungrammatical according to Standard English rules, it can be very much grammatical for other speakers of the dialect.

                On a more personal note, I think I’m especially sensitive to people calling me a “grammar Nazi” because lately my English has been in a state of decline. I assume it’s just because I’ve been focusing so much on foreign languages that I’m just not used to English anymore. It’s not all that severe, but where writing something like this short essay would have been a breeze to me in the past, it’s a lot more challenging now. Despite this new problem of mine, I’m still functioning just fine as a linguistics student. My peers would be more offended if I called English a Romance language than they would if I spelled something incorrectly. I certainly don’t think people shouldn’t care about grammar (I have my pet peeves too!), but I can’t help but feel for that guy who gets attacked on Facebook for spelling “definitely” incorrectly.

                To tie this all back to the comic, it doesn’t even occur to me to say “fewer” in many situations. I don’t think that makes me uneducated. I do know when to use “fewer” and when to use “less,” but it seems that “less” has started to take on the role of “fewer” these days. Just as “awesome” is less about “awe” and more about really great things.  Maybe it’s my background as a linguistics student, or maybe I’m just a little more flexible than some people when it comes to these things, but language change is evolution that we can observe in real time! Even if I don’t want to hear about how “ratchet” someone’s clothes are or how that girl “literally can’t even,” I think it’s really fascinating and (in casual contexts) should be embraced.

[Week 4] Storytelling - The Long-Lost Sister

Author's Note: This story is based on The Wolf Aunt from the Persian Tales unit. Basically, it's about a poor man who meets a woman claiming to be his sister. His wife and her daughter find out the woman is actually a man-eating wolf, but he doesn't believe them. They leave without him and he's eventually eaten. I've modernized it and written it out as diary entries from the wife that are left for the husband to find. If he's alive, that is.

(diary image from anyvanille on flickr)

June 19^th, 2014

                My husband thinks he may have found his long-lost sister. She’s been missing for twenty years… Why would she just appear out of nowhere? We’ve been searching for so long, and yet she’s been in this town the whole time? We just moved here last year. This doesn’t make sense. I can’t trust a woman who just approaches James on the street like that. She probably knows he’s vulnerable and is just taking advantage of him. He’s asleep now so I’ll talk to him about how worried I am tomorrow.

June 20^th, 2014

                I woke up to an empty bed. James had left early this morning. He left a note on the fridge door saying he was off to meet with that so-called sister of his. I made the kids ramen noodles for breakfast (again…) and then did my usual job hunting until noon. Little Marie asked me why daddy has been acting so funny lately. I explained to her that daddy may have gotten some good news. I didn’t mention what kind, though. She seemed satisfied enough. She is only 6, after all.

                It’s nearly 1am and James still isn’t back. I don’t think I can stay awake much longer so I’ll just have to talk to him tomorrow.

June 21^st, 2014

                James woke me up excitedly this morning. I didn’t even have time to ask him where he was all night because he dragged me out of bed to help him prepare for tomorrow evening. He said his sister would be over and he wanted to treat her to something nice. We don’t have much money, but I took a couple of the girls shopping with me and we got ingredients for steak. I also picked up a little gift for my dear sister-in-law. I hope she likes magnets with sarcastic sayings on them. They were on clearance.

                So, we spent the whole night cleaning and I once again didn’t get to talk to James. I swear it’s like the universe is trying to keep me away from him right now. But seriously, he’s acting crazy. I need to talk to him soon.

June 22^nd, 2014

                Well, today sucked. I’m not sure “sucked” is really the right word, though. Today was miserable, surreal, terrifying… lots of things. The “sister” got here at 2pm. Much earlier than I expected. The girls and I were still in the kitchen cooking so it was kind of awkward having her wait in the living room. And James couldn’t entertain her because he had decided to go out and buy flowers at the last minute. So as some kind of sign of peace I gave Marie the magnets and told her to go give them to the lady in the living room and to comeback immediately after.

                I’m not sure how to explain this next part. Even in my head everything is so jumbled up. Basically… Marie headed toward the door to the living room with the magnets. I got kind of paranoid and stopped cooking long enough just to follow her and make sure that creepy chick didn’t try anything. Marie opened the door just a little bit (she’s pretty shy) and we could see the “sister.” She was sitting there on the couch polishing a gun. I guess she had been keeping it in her bag. I yanked Marie back inside and sent all the girls into the backyard. Just for a little while. To play, I told them. Marie wouldn’t leave my side, though. She was scared. We sat in the kitchen and talked until James got back.

Now, I know very little about guns but I do know a real gun when I see one. But James says it was probably just a toy. He’s lost his mind. He didn’t even care! I had the girls eat their dinner upstairs. James and I sat with the woman at the table. It was weird. I don’t like her. I don’t know what I’m going to do.

June 23^rd, 2014

                Couldn’t sleep last night. “Sister” is coming over again today. I can’t do this anymore. I’m taking the kids and leaving. I told James and he seems to think he’ll eventually prove to me that she’s fine. But I have such a bad feeling about this. I’ll leave my diary here. James, I know you like puzzles. 57 65 27 72 65 20 77 69 74 68 20 6d 79 20 6d 6f 6d 2e 20 4c 6f 76 65 20 79 6f 75 2e 


Persian Tales, translated by D.L.R. Lorimer and E.O. Lorimer and illustrated by Hilda Roberts (1919).

[Week 4] Reading Diary - Persian Tales

These are my notes for the Persian Tales unit.

(Wedding ceremony painting from Wikimedia Commons)

1. Wolf and the Goat

A goat warns her children not to open the door for the wolf, but the wolf tricks them and kidnaps three of them. The fourth one stays hidden and tells the mother goat what happened. She goes to the wolf's house and challenges him to a fight. In the end, the wolf is killed and she gets her children back.

2. The City of Nothing-In-The-World

A girl goes to the bazar with eggs her aunt gave her to try to trade them for cooling ointment for an injury. On the way, she loses the eggs. She goes back and tells her aunt a crazy story that defies logic and physics, but is so much fun!

3. Susku and Mushu

A cute, then sad, then kind of freaky story. Starts out with two mice who decide to get married. One day, the husband mouse is cooking ash and the wife mouse gets blown into the pot and drowns. This leads to the husband mouse, a crow, and other animals/nature hurting themselves.

4. The Boy who Became a Bulbul

A boy's stepmother tells him and his father that they should have a competition to see who can collect the most wood. The winner chops offthe head of the loser. The father cheats and ends up winning. He chops off his son's head and gives it to his wife to put in a soup. The sister comes home and sees her brother's head in her soup and is distressed. The mulla gives her instructions that end up making her dead brother become a bulbul. As a bird, the brother gets revenge on the step-mother.

5. The Wolf-Aunt

A poor man is trying to get money to take care of his wife and seven daughters when an elderly woman claiming to be his sister tells him she'll take care of them. One of the daughters discovers that the woman is actually a wolf. The wife tells her husband but he thinks she just doesn't like his "sister." The wife takes her daughters and leaves, and the man is eaten.

6. Nim-Tanak, or Half-Boy

A boy is born to a king who only has half of a body. Becuase of his deformity, he is shunned. But he ends up saving his sister from a Div, which was a task that his other brothers (that were doted upon) could not do. The king then makes him his heir.

7. Muhammad Tirandaz, the Archer

Muhammad kills two mice while he is working and his co-workers tell him she should become an archer instead of wasting his talent. He gets a bow and arrows and makes a motto for himself about killing two lions with one blow. While he's out hunting, a king's guard finds him and recruits him. By mistake, Muhammad ends up leading his team to victory in a battle and he is rewarded.

8. The Praying Baker

A king sees a baker praying in the bazar and wants to test him. He gives him his ring as a promise that he'll come back and pay for bread later, but has one of his men take it the next day. The king comes back and asks for his ring. The baker explains that it's gone missing but that he'll try to find it, and if he doesn't have it by the time 10 days have passed then the king can chop his head off. The king agrees and throws the ring into water. On the 10th day, the baker finds the ring in a fish he and his wife were about to eat.

9. The Sad Tale of the Mouse's Tail

A mouse has her tail torn off and asks for it to be sewn back on, but the cobbler wants something in return. In order to get what she wants, the next person wants something else. This continues in a chain with the mouse adding on to the explanation at every place she goes.

10. Fayiz and the Peri Wife

Fayiz gets married to a woman even though he is already married. He realizes his new wife is a peri (fairy). He has sons with her and a good life, but he misses his home. The peri wife says she will leave him and take their sons if he tells anyone what she is. Unfortunately, Fayiz can't help but tell his human wife and the peri wife leaves him.

11. The Hemp-Smoker's Dream

A man smoked hemp and then fell asleep. He had a dream that a barber and two other men went on a journey to get the princess of china for him to marry. In the end, the men won her over but then fought over who would have her. The ending confuses me a bit, but I think the dreaming man accidentally hit the barber in real life and was awoken.

12. The Story of the Wolf-Bride

A man has a son and takes him to an akhund for his horoscope. The akhund says he will be torn apart by a wolf, so the father keeps his son underground away from everyone. Eventually, the son needs to take a wife and is married to his cousin. Once they're alone together, she turns into a wolf and kills him, and then turns back into her normal self.

13. The Man Who Went to Wake His Luck
A man meets his brother's (personification of) Luck and asks where his is. He tells him where to find him and the man goes on a journey to wake up his Luck who is sleeping in a cave. On the way, several people have questions for him that they want him to have answered by the Luck. One of them is a wolf. He agrees and when he comes back with answers people try to reward him but he refuses. The Luck's advice for the wolf is to eat the first foolish man he sees, so the man is eaten.

14. Tortoise Bowl-On-The-Back and the Fox

A fox and a tortoise get into a fight and decide to have a race. The tortoise gets his brother to help him cheat and pretends he won the race 28 seconds before the fox. The fox leaves the tortoise alone and is ashamed.

15. The Shepherd Who Found a Treasure

Two shepherds are working when one falls asleep. A green fly comes out of his nose and the one who is awake recognizes this as the sleeping man's soul. He wakes the man up and asks him what he dreamt. He is told of a dream in which the man finds treasure. The man who was told the dream gives the other his wages for the day and finds the treasure
that had been dreamt of.

16. The Merchant and the Saffron

A wealthy merchant buys saffron off of a man and pays in loads of jewels. Later, his luck goes back and he ends up with nothing. He wanders and finds the home of the merchant he bought the saffron off of. The other merchant supports him until his Luck wakes back up and then sends him off with money. The man uses the money to buy goods and sells them for 10x more and is wealthy again.

17. Shah Abbas and the Poor Mother

A king dresses as a derwish and finds a poor mother and her hungry children. He helps them by giving the mother a ring that she can take to the baker in exchange for bread. The baker accuses the mother of stealing the ring and takes her to the police. She has her ears cut off and goes home hungry again. The king manages to prove that she didn't steal the ring and gets onto the police chief.

18. The Apparition of the Prophet Khizr

A man who is poor and in debt goes to the king and makes him an offer that he can't fulfill. He tells the king that he will show him the prophet Khizr if he is given money. When he doesn't go through with it, the king asks his wazirs what he should do with the man. Three of them detail gory deaths, but a fourth says to give him a village and money because he has shown him Khizr. Then the man disappears.

19. The Story of the Baker and the Grateful Fish

A baker feeds the fish remnants of bread he can't sell. One day, amerchant comes to him and says he'll give him 100 tumens to work for him. He ends up tricking him and leaving him on a mountain to either get eaten by vultures or jump into the water and drown. He decides drowning would be better and jumps into the water, but the fish remember him and build a raft for him. He ends up using the same trick on the merchant to get revenge.

[Week 3] Essay - Writing about Writing

(image from Nic McPhee on Flickr)

               As most students, I’ve been assigned writing work since elementary school. When I was little, everyone would praise me for how good I was at creative writing. I had a crazy imagination and, although my technical skills weren’t good, my teachers all seemed to enjoy what I wrote. Until high school, I had only been praised for my writing and had never received any actual constructive criticism. I think because of this, I started to think that writing was easy for me and I didn’t need to try harder or improve more. So when I got to high school, I was down about how I had gone from being a good writer to a bad one.
                I took mainly advanced/AP English classes in high school. We mainly wrote critical essays on books, or analyzed poetry and wrote about the meaning of them. I was never very good at figuring out the deeper meaning behind things, so I was already bad at doing this. On top of that, I had never had to write so formally before. My papers were always pretty miserable. Because of the assignments we had to do, the amount of books we had to read, and the papers that I was always bad at, I started to dislike books and especially poetry.
                I managed to skip English Composition 1 in college by passing the AP test. My composition two class was laughable. The professor had us write small papers throughout the semester, but no matter how good our technical skill was, if we presented an argument that he rejected we would automatically get a bad grade. I was the only one in the class who managed to get an A because I realized this early on and stopped writing my opinions and wrote his instead. I have to do a lot of writing for my linguistics classes, and those kinds of formal linguistics research papers have a certain academic tone and conciseness to them that I have gotten used to writing in. More casually writings (like this one) have become a challenge to me.
                After studying abroad in Japan and generally putting more and more foreign words into my head, I can honestly say that I’ve become more forgetful when it comes to English words and grammar. It’s not that I’ve forgotten the language, I’ll just forget simple words. This has been frustrating me lately because there are a lot of times that I want to use a certain word in my storytelling posts, but I just can’t remember what it is. Hopefully as the semester goes on, I’ll become more comfortable with writing casually and creatively while regaining my English speaking abilities!

[Week 3] Storytelling - Sara and Mahaffey

Author’s Note: This story is based off of Arachne and Minerva from the Ovid II. As I’ve been doing all along, I wanted to make the story lightly more realistic. In the original, Arachne refuses to praise Minerva unless she can beat her in a weaving competition. Tragically, Arachne ends up hanging herself and turning into a spider. So instead, there is a competition in my story but the girl who is based off of Arachne (Sara), leaves in a less dark, metaphorical sense. That is, she leaves her class instead of killing herself.

I was inspired to write this about a teacher and a student because I feel like one of the most unfortunate things that can happen to young people is for them to have to deal with a bad teacher. And of course, I picked Japanese because it's my second language! I do want to say, though, that I generally love my teachers! Truly terrible teachers are rather rare in my experience. But I think that in such situations, it’s important to fight for your education.

---

(Photo of Japanese writing system by mkhail on Flickr)

                It was Sara’s first day of college, and of all her classes she looked forward to Japanese the most.  She had studied the language by herself for four years and was excited for the chance to be properly taught and tested. Unfortunately, it was only fifteen minutes into the class and Sara knew she wouldn’t be able to tolerate her teacher.

                Because she studied so hard, Sara managed to test out of the first year of Japanese classes at the university. The second year classes seemed a bit easy, but she wanted to make sure she didn’t miss any important content. The teacher for this second year Japanese class was a woman named Angela Mahaffey, and she was also new to the school. While many of the students were disappointed that they would be learning from a non-Native speaker, Sara was excited to be taught by someone who would be more empathetic to the students since she would know about the difficulties of the language.  This optimism was quickly snuffed when Mahaffey sensei’s(teacher) true nature was revealed.

                “First of all, I expect all of you two obey me one hundred percent.” said the teacher. “There will be times when you have questions. You’ll wonder why some aspect of the language works the way I told you. Well, the key for this class is not to question me. Just know that everything I say is right. If you do question me, I’ll annoyed. And if you annoy me then I’ll kick you out. Simple as that.”

                Sara, who had picked a seat at the front of the class, scoffed loudly. This teacher had to be joking, right? Nobody could possibly be like this, much less a teacher.

                Mahaffey’s head immediately snapped to Sara. “Find something funny, girl?” she asked with a sneer.

                “Before you demand that the class obey you unconditionally, you should prove that you’re really so good at Japanese. If you are, then I promise to do as you’ve said. If not, you should probably rethink your attitude.” Sara replied with unwavering confidence. “As the word suggests, a teacher’s job is to teach. Not to intimidate students into submissiveness. So, go ahead. Let’s see if you speak better Japanese than I do.”

                Mahaffey was not amused. “Really? You think you speak better Japanese than your sensei?” She then began to insult and berate Sara in Japanese. Her accent, while not terrible, was not good enough to set an example for the students. But compared to her use of vocabulary and grammatical structures, her accent was heavenly. Mahaffey stumbled her way through her curses, awkwardly combining the wrong forms until she said something equivalent to, “a cow the mother of you student are being,” rather than the intended insult.

                Sara was appalled but slightly amused. How did this woman get a job teaching Japanese?

                “Well, good. Thank you for telling me not to trust anything you say.” She said with a smile as she packed her bag to leave. “I think people in power need to take more responsibility than they sometimes realize. And you are definitely one of those people.” And with that, Sara left the classroom.

                 It was later discovered on Angela Mahaffey’s Rate My Professor page that she was a notoriously bad teacher. She had jumped around from school to school, filling in positions where Japanese teachers were desperately needed and somehow lying about her skill level. Sara and other students complained to the head of the Japanese department, and Mahaffey was eventually relieved of her position. 

Ovid's Metamorphoses, translated by Tony Kline (2000)

[Week 3] Reading Diary - Ovid II

The Ovid II

Part 1:

(Rape of Prosperina: Wikimedia Commons)

Cupid and Dis: -Venus wants Cupid to shoot Dis with an arrow to help expand her kingdom
Dis and Proserpine:
-Dis rapes Proserpine while she's collecting flowers
-Her mother Ceres searches for her and is enraged when she realizes she was raped
Ceres and Jupiter:
-Ceres goes to Jupiter and asks to have Proserpine and Dis separated. Jupiter says the only way would be for Proserpine to never eat again.
Persephone's Fate:
-She broke her fast
-Jupiter divides year into halves so Persephone spends half time with her mother and half with her husband.
Arachne and Minerva:
-Minevera wants praise
-Arachne won't praise her unless she wins in a competition of spinning
-They compete
Minerva Weaves a Web:
-Minerva and Arachne both weave images of gods
-Arachne commits suicide and is turned into a spider
Niobe Rejects Latona:
-Niobe will not worship Latona because she things
The Death of Niobe's Children:
-Latona is angry and has Niobe's sons killed
-Niobe is sad but still claims to be better than Latona
-Her daughters are killed as well
Latona and the Lycians:
-Latona is thirsty but not allowed to drink from a pond 
-She curses the men who refused her and makes them live in the swamp/pond forever as frogs
Marysas:
-Marsyas' death is retold
Tereus Marries Procne
 -Pandion allows Tereus to marry his daughter Pronce
-Tereus falls in love with Pronce's sister Philomela

Tereus Rapes Philomela
-Pandion trusts Tereus with his daughter (Philomela)
-Tereus rapes her
-Philomela is mad and tells Tereus how evil he is
-Tereus is angry and mutilates her

Procne's Revenge
-Philomela has a servant take a woven message to Pronce
-Pronce goest to the palace to rescue her sister
-Itys is killed and eaten
-Tereus is mad and he, Pronce, and Philomela turn into birds and fly away

Medea and Jason
-Medea is desperately in love with Jason
-Cupid is unable to help her

Jason and the Golden Fleece
-Medea runs into Jason and he asks her for help with his task
-Jason promises to marry Medea if she helps him, so Medea agrees.
-Jason manages to fight his way to the golden fleece. 

Medea's Spell
-Jason's father is near death so Medea is asked to make him youthful again
-She leaves on a chariot pulled by dragons to get herbs for him

Aeson Rejuvenated
-Medea collects herbs and other ingredients to help Aeson
-She replaces his blood with it and he is rejuvenated

Medea and Pelias
-Medea helps Pelias' daughters kill him
- She ends up at Corinth where Jason's wife Glauce was killed and then kills their sons
-Medea then ran from Jason and Aegeus gives her shelter and marries her