Well hello again. It’s me again. I know I’ve been writing a lot recently but I’m really enjoying it, so I’m going to carry on if that’s okay with you (I’ll carry on regardless so it’s best if it is okay with you).

Today’s blog was inspired by a conversation I had with Maisie (hi Maisie) on the bus this afternoon. In this conversation I said the common phrase ‘all’s fair in love and war’. This got me thinking (as many things do), firstly, that the above phrase is stupid, and secondly, that loads of common phrases are stupid.

“Why is this stupid Liam?” I hear you all vigorously exclaim. Well, the first issue I have with this phrase is that it claims all is fair in both love and war. No it’s not. Killing innocent people in a war is not fair, they have families, friends, and even enemies that’ll miss them if you (excuse the saying) ‘pop a cap in they a**’. If you pop a cap in someone’s a** because they have coveted your boy/girlfriend that is also unfair and frankly rather silly on your behalf. They also have families, friends and enemies that’ll probably miss them.

So, we have decided that you shouldn’t pop a cap in the a**es of anyone innocent in a war, or for the purposes of love (I don’t want to get into war politics at the moment). But (yes but) I have another issue with this phrase, and this is it – how can you compare the fairness of things in a war with the fairness of things in a situation influenced by love? Well, you can’t (or shouldn’t, some modals here to keep Jelena interested (first years you’ll understand and be scarred next year)). As I’ve said, I don’t want to get into war politics, but if you, as a country, are being invaded by some people who want to take over and introduce some bad things to the country like a heavy metal national anthem and cold meats for breakfast you may be entitled to protect yourselves and pop a cap in the invaders’ collective a**. I would use the invading imagery to refer to something bad in a love situation but that would be crude so I won’t. But if someone where to *ehem* y’know, with your girl/boyfriend, it isn’t as acceptable for you to pop a cap in their a**.

Blimey, that was a long explanation.

I’ve got a few more sayings/phrases that I don’t like, and I can see by the gleeful look on your face that you would like to hear more, so here goes:

The first was one that Maisie said (remember her from earlier? She was on the bus). ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but what you say won’t hurt me’. Rubbish, absolute rubbish. Small sticks and small stones won’t break my bones, but what you say might hurt me very much. What if you say my hair is bad? Or my hands are too small? You think those things don’t hurt me? Well they do! They do I tell you!

Another one is ‘everything happens for a reason’. You may find comfort in thinking this, if so carry on, but everything doesn’t happen for a reason. Well it might happen for a reason, but that would be a cause and effect type thing, where the ‘something’ that happens is the effect, and something caused it. In that case, it did happen for a reason. That’s not what the saying means though, the saying means if something bad happens there is something good coming in the future. It’s a bit like karma (a load of rubbish). Just because something bad happens doesn’t mean something good is going to happen, why would that be the case? Why does the universe owe you anything? If you wan’t something good to happen, go and make it happen, don’t just wait for it to happen because something bad did in the past, that’s not how life works.

Sorry about that rant, I got carried away.

The final one I’ll say today is ‘it’s always in the last place you look’. Nooooooooooooooooooooo, it’s not is it? WOW, that really is profound. It’s always in the fourth to last place I look because I like to look for things I’ve already found. Obviously it’s going to be in the last place you look.

Thanks for putting up with me again, I hope you have been thoroughly entertained, any funny sayings or daft phrases you can think of are welcome in the comments section below or on Facebook.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend, peace out.

Wagwan mandem.

Woah, sorry, I mean hi. How are you all doing. I’m going to assume you’re good like I normally do.

Anyway, the topic of this blog, which has nothing to do with me speaking like a h (I’m so g I’m h, y’know?) but to do with how we ‘speak’ with more than words.

I was inspired to write this blog when I was listening to a song by Boyzone called Words. In the song, Ronan Keating sings ‘It’s only words, and words are all I have, to take your heart away’. This isn’t necessarily true in a number of ways. One is gruesome, and one is potentially linguistically interesting.

I won’t go into detail about the gruesome thing, but rather unsurprisingly I will go into the linguistically interesting thing. Is Ronan telling the truth?

Well, first of all, as I have explained in a previous blog, words do mean lots, so he has a point. However, I don’t think words are that great on their own.

Let’s take the word hello. In itself, hello means, well, hello, you know what it means.

However, if I sing hello with a smile on my face, you will probably assume that I’m happy, either to see you or just in general. If I mumble hello with a frown on my face you’ll probably assume I’m sad in general (I’d never be sad to see you I promise).

Clearly, the fact that I said hello didn’t make you think these things, the way I said hello made you think these things.

Now, back to what Mr Keating had to say. Is it only words I have, to take your heart away?

I don’t like to criticise Ronan too often because he has a wonderful voice and some wonderful songs, but here I feel like I have to (sorry Ronan). I would say to Ronan that quite frankly if he only said words to his lady (or gentleman) love in a monotone voice he would struggle to take her (or his) heart away. What he does have to take her heart away is a combination of things, obviously including words, but also including intonation and facial expressions among other things.

To finish, as I said in a previous blog words do mean lots, but not on their own. On their own they’re pretty rubbish (sorry if you disagree don’t hate me pls), it’s when we combine them with other things that they become truly wonderful. I propose Boyzone’s lyrics be changed to ‘It’s only words and intonation and facial expressions amongst other things, and words and intonation and facial expressions amongst other things are all I have, to take your heart away’.

Peace out homeslices.

Sorry, I mean thank you and goodnight. I really need to stop doing that.

Language is beautiful. It is a tool to express the deepest of emotions. It is a platform for creativity. It is used for sonnets, life-changing speeches and elegantly powerful declarations of love, wrath and passion. It has the ability to corrupt lives and empower voices. It is a continuously developing phenomenon which has managed to fascinate mankind for centuries.

It’s also pretty hilarious when things go a bit wrong.

We’ve all seen badly translated instructions and grammatically awkward shops signs, but when you get a firsthand experience of these ‘funny errors’, it’s especially amusing.

While studying Japanese for two years at college, I came across rather a few spelling mistakes and quirky pronunciations. My Japanese teacher, Chieko Sensei, was a fabulous little woman; she was a great teacher and great laugh. However, where our languages differed, sometimes situations arose where it was hard not to giggle uncontrollably.

Every week we were given vocabulary sheets. One week focused on technology lexicon, and we came across the odd word ‘Crick’. It was only when we saw ‘Double Crick’ that we realised it was, in fact, a hilarious mistake.

As Japanese doesn’t contain the [r] or [l] sounds that English does, but more of a mixture of the two to our British ears, this R-L muddle was quite a common occurrence in our lessons, but always managed to brighten our days with Chieko.

Other chuckle-worthy moments included alternative vowel sounds such ‘tooth brash’ and our ‘homework trucking sheet’ (rather than tracking).

But, as another example of the R-L muddle, the moment our childish laughter took over was the time Chieko decided to bring up politics, and have a discussion about David Cameron and the ‘erections’.

But while we can all have a little giggle at these ‘funny errors’, it’s also possible to see them in a different light.

Perhaps another view is to see them as indicators of how diverse separate languages are. The world contains a wonderfully assorted array of languages, scripts and sounds, and when there’s an overlap of two separate languages, they sometimes collide in the most awkward and humorous of ways.

It’s only when these varied languages come together, that we get a little burst of charming hilarity.

Hello again, how are we all? I hope the answer to that question is “good”, otherwise I’ll feel major awks.

Anyway, today I started a module called Writing for Stage, Radio and Screen. As you may have guessed, this isn’t a linguistics module, but a media one. I chose it as one of my options, and judging by the first lecture and seminar, it’s going to be great. The point is, I’m with a group of people consisting largely of individuals I’ve never had the good/bad fortune of speaking to.

These days, I’m fine with situations like this, I’m comfortable talking to new people and I’m fairly confident that I won’t say something ridiculously embarrassing and give off an undesirable first impression. Back in the day though, I wasn’t confident talking to new people, particularly if these people were of the female variety.

Back when I wasn’t a very confident guy and quite frankly looked like, and came across as, a bit of a numpty, I really hated any situations which weren’t completely familiar to me. I wouldn’t like working with a new group at school, I wouldn’t like doing anything on my own in case people thought I was a ‘loser’, and most ridiculously I wouldn’t like any situation, as explained above, where I had to talk to that most alien of species, the ‘female’. I would wonder why I couldn’t say what was actually in my head and why what came out of my mouth was usually along the lines of “hi, ulgifgcbllauidfvm”

If you know me now you’ll probably not believe that I was like that (at least I would hope you wouldn’t), but I was. Of course, it was silly, I blew most situations way out of proportion. I made it even harder than it already was to be at ease in these situations, and I somehow managed to build up a fear of almost EVERY situation where I had to speak. Again, most severely, with the ladies.

All of this meant that I never really tried new things at school, I never really branched out and did things that I wanted to. Some would say I just drifted along for a large part of my life. All of this, because I was scared of saying what I wanted to do, and I was scared of talking to new people and embarrassing myself. Obviously, eventually I got frustrated with this and decided, y’know what, I really ought to get better at speaking to people.

So I did, I went out and got a job, I took the A-Levels I wanted to do, and not what my friends were doing, and gradually became more confident, and blossomed into the beautiful social butterfly I am today. I even love making a fool of myself now.

I like to think that now, I’m not a shy, reserved guy, but much more confident (not arrogant, that would be bad) and at ease with myself, I’ll go out on my own without giving a poo what people think, and I don’t have this weird idea in my head that girls are somehow a completely different species (although sometimes it seems that way) and I can talk to them without my irrational fear.

To give you an idea of how long it took for these fears to completely disappear, I had my first ever date two months after my 19th birthday, and I think that proves the saying ‘you have to love yourself before someone else can’ (although I am currently available, hi).

Sorry if I’ve gone off on a bit of a tangent and completely off topic, but I hope the long story has explained the title and explained my thoughts. It’s strange how we can become so afraid of doing something completely natural (using language/talking) because of how we feel in ourselves, and it’s strange how the reservations resulting from this can have such a large impact on our lives (and stop us having dates til the age of 19). I guess (finally, you may think) the point is that language use and self-confidence are very closely related, and have a large impact on one another, and when I realised this, I managed to become much better at using language, and at self-confidence.

Cheers again for reading, have a wonderful afternoon! (PS This was me)

I have issues with how technology is changing the way we communicate. Self- service machines at supermarkets are time efficient, but they’re stopping the customer to cashier chat. TfL want to close manned ticket stations as a way of “modernisation” which is just taking away another opportunity to talk to someone. Telephone customer services are a series of pre-recorded messages navigated by pressing various numbers on the keypad where you end up getting fed up and hanging up, being directed to the website or waiting until you’ve exhausted all of the possible pre-recorded messages to eventually get to a real person! (Because the company are trying their best to keep you away from talking to a person so they don’t have to employ them and pay them).

All of these, and more, really bug me! For someone like my grandma, sometimes getting on the tube or going to the supermarket could be her only chance of talking to another person. How can she do that if everything is run by touch-screen machines? (Something she doesn’t even know how to use.) Firstly, where are the people to help her use them? Secondly, why have someone help her use them when there could just be people to TALK to in the first place to top up her Oyster card or pay for her shopping.

I would say that “modernisation” is normally considered a good thing; it’s synonymous with “advancing”. But it seems as though, according to TfL, “modernisation” means “not talking to people”. So how can taking away manned ticket machines be a good thing if it’s stopping people from communicating with each other? Are they saying that the future is not talking to each other face to face? (Mostly as a way of saving money). This doesn’t appear to be advancement at all.

Sometimes the chat with the cashier at the supermarket can be awkward, but sometimes you can have a really good chat for a few minutes and you’ll leave with a smile on your face. How am I supposed to tell the pre-recorded messages at Southern Electric that I want to DISCUSS payment options or TALK ABOUT how the bills work? How is a confused tourist who has never been on the tube before supposed to navigate their way without being able to TALK to someone? A computer can only do so much. They can’t predict every possible query or problem someone might have. And, God forbid, someone wanted to say “good morning” or have a little chat with the tube worker or cashier as they go about their business and daily life.

I think we’re setting a very bad example to children and people from other countries. Technology is not encouraging children to communicate and build relationships. Technology is not advertising a friendly culture to people from other countries. Technology is no longer being used to make life easier for us, but to make us cheap and uncommunicative.

Comments and alternate opinions welcome!

The future is a strange and exciting place to be living. As a boy I devoured every bit of science fiction libraries and bookshops had to offer and from a young age had my eyes firmly set on the horizon of human possibility. Whilst I dreamed of growing up into a world of flying cars, interplanetary travel and talking computers, I hadn’t really expected things to turn out like that for me – to my mind they were things our distant descendants would develop. So, it’s come as a bit of a surprise to me, and many I think, that we’ve managed to gatecrash our way into bits of that future well ahead of schedule. More bemusingly we’ve managed to skip a lot of what seemed the obvious, useful stuff and developed technologies at a huge tangent to our apparent, pragmatic needs. We’re still living in crumbling Victorian housing stock and still getting about in clunky, fume-belching vehicles that run by exploding rotted corpses. However, we now all have hand held computers that allow us to effortlessly communicate with anyone on any part of the planet.

To put this into context, back in the 1960’s & 1970’s, Gene Rodenberry’s Star Trek had predicted leggings, onesies, tablets, mobile phones, and spaceships all having developed at the same time.  Which is to say, the expectation was that it would take humans as long to invent a one cm thick, touch screen computer that could respond to voice commands as it would figure out how to build an engine that’d allow you to travel faster than light. Back then rocketry was moving on in leaps and bounds: We’d gone from launching projectiles blindly across Europe to travelling to the moon in a couple of decades, whereas in comparison a 1 kilobyte computer (4 billion times LESS memory than the most basic iPod) was essentially a building full of valves manned by a team of engineers and technicians. Everyone was expecting high tech houses and flying vehicles to be littering our streets, but computers to maybe have shrunk down to a wardrobe size box of LEDs you could put in your front room, perhaps capable of greeting you by your name when you walked in the door and offering you a cup of tea.  I’ve still no idea about the leggings and the onesies, though – I guess the asumption was that people would have stopped caring about personal aesthetics in the far future.

Although it may seem trite to compare the predictions of science fiction writers to the course of human history, what was written as entertainment very often influenced or predicted what then actually happened. From Issac Asimov to William Gibson there is a long and established line of forward-thinking entertainers shaping what our progress became. Yet despite this, many of our ideas on ‘how it would all be’ seemed to wildy miss the mark. The ‘shiny, functional and mechanical’ option went somewhat awry and instead of opting for a heavy-engineering future, we opted for one of thought and communication. Out went the jet cars and the space elevators, and in came the computers.

Perhaps this is unsurprising. We are, after all, primarily very thinky, talkey monkeys, and many of the industrial developments in the latter half of the 20th century were borne of the awful carnage of the 2nd World War. Since then we’ve had more opportunity to explore out of philanthropic interest rather than fear-based necessity. With this has come a greater interest in exploring ourselves – how we think, how we communicate, how we grow. When we’re not ruthlessly exterminating each other we really seem fascinated with communicating. From cracking the human genome to creating the internet, our main interests have become more rooted in ourselves, and hungry as we are to understand the universe in which we live, our attempts at science are coming to realise understanding how we work is central to that: We are the mirror in which we see the universe, and without understanding that we can’t hope to fathom the reflection it casts upon our surface.

So, we live in world where sharing, recording and analysing our thoughts is now possible on a global level. I can write in Germany, be published in England, critiqued in Australia, and then laughed at in America. The boiler doesn’t work in my flat, but this document can translated into Russian and read in Moscow at the click of a button. Whilst this is a trivial example of an amazing process, when applied to genuinely innovative ideas it’s usefulness is near-impossible to quantify. Instead of building flying cars and biodome houses we’ve become very good at communicating. At some point the interest in moving our thoughts around exceeded the interest in moving our bodies around, and so has become our primary science: Machines that aid thought and facilitate communication. And perhaps this is our route to space elevators and talking houses; Perhaps it’s improving our ability to think and communicate that’ll lead us safely into the future, and maybe that’s why we should start with thought and communication, as the future now happens in our lifetime.