Gavagai

Not terribly long ago, I read something disturbing on Twitter, and couldn't believe it was right.

"Hey," I called out to TH, "if I said, 'I'm quite happy,' does that mean I'm somewhat happy, or I'm really especially happy?"

"Somewhat happy," he called back, without hesitation.

It was the quite unhappy end of certainty, for me. As at least half of my two regular readers don't appear to be American, let me explain: in American, it means really, especially happy.

For those of us using English 2.0, "quite" is a simple intensifier: it always means "very much so." Someone who is quite pretty is prettier than someone who is merely pretty. If I'm quite full, I'm stuffed.

In English 1.0? It's complicated. Apparently, a man who is pretty gets more dates than one who is quite pretty, and if you're quite full, there's room for ice cream. But, wait! Something that's already "at max" ("like what?" "Um, I don't know; 'gorgeous'?") behaves more like English 2.0 -- quite gorgeous is more luminescent than gorgeous. It's quite tricky.

What makes me lose sleep is the thought: I never would have known. I mean, we're mutually intelligible enough, that a nuance like this might have permanently eluded us, while yet keeping us at slightly cross-purposes. Insomniac thought #1: Review all past mental tapes of relationship conversations. Was he "quite" happy? Insomniac thought #2: What other unexploded linguistic mines are out there?

My old undergraduate friend Willard Van O. postulated that translation was fundamentally undetermined. If you were an anthropologist among a remote tribe, and your interlocutor pointed to a rabbit and said "Gavagai," would that mean rabbit? Maybe. It also might mean "rabbithood," or "the name of Lucy's pet," or "eww, don't eat that." Reference is inscrutable, lacking an omniscient external dictionary. We can take our best guess, but we'll never really, truly know.

This sort of thing actually comes up more often than you'd expect in our relationship. English 1.0 and 2.0, often presumed to be coextensive, are probably not in fact more than about 85% overlapping, in my experience. Ambiguity is common enough that I often just try to get it from context rather than tiresomely ask for clarification and definitions (though I now do random spot checks far more often than I used to, post-"quite": "So, when you say 'x,' you mean...'"). We talk often enough, and at enough length, that I'm generally pretty certain that I'm able to fill in any gaps with gleaned background. How certain? Quite confident, let's say.

One expression TH is fond of using in speech is "painting the fourth bridge." I didn't know it, but, yeah, got it. Rather cute. Sure, let's say you have three bridges, Each one needs to be painted in turn, so that by the time you finish painting the third, the first needs painting again. It's the fourth bridge. So, you paint the first, but now the second of the three has its turn to be re-painted -- in essence, it's become the fourth. Try as you might, you can never, ever paint the fourth bridge. Quaint, but wise.

I'm listening to a good audiobook at the moment, a series of lectures on Victorian England. They're not deeply scholarly, but brimming with interesting connections and little facts I didn't know. The one on architecture, for example, talks about the River Forth, in Scotland. Bridges over it kept falling down, until the Victorians put up a really over-built one. It's hugely big, apparently. Hard to paint.

Three Weeks

Until we move into our new home in Clevedon! (Oh, was that context missing in previous posts? It's not like I re-read any of them.)

Time is currently both glacial (threeeee whooooole weeeeks) and insignificant (must pack up whole house! Reserve van! Execute nimble maneuvers with utility companies who act like no one has ever moved before in the history of England!). It's also a highly anxious time: it's unusual for the timing of a purchase to slip once contracts have been exchanged, but it was also unusual for our last purchase to fall through (which I would explain here, but I'm still not certain I understand it myself). 

Also, our landlord is being a dick and is unwilling to wait two weeks to show the house until we're out of there. This would be aggravating during normal times, but the idea of seeding our tiny space with dozens of potentially infectious individuals during a time of uncontrolled delta variant spread in this city, when both our vaccinations are old enough to be waning (and mine was the fairly feckless AstraZeneca to start with), and I've been carefully avoiding indoor venues for over a year...well, it's not something I'm taking lightly. And, while it's cortisol-raising, there's part of me that's delighting in being the worst nightmare of the patronizing and arrogant little boy running the estate agency the landlord uses. I have no particular animus against realtors in the US, but it's amazing the difference it makes not to license a field or require any knowledge or qualifications. Two years of UK house-hunting have led to the inescapable conclusion that estate agents here range from unhelpfully mendacious scum to slightly less than utterly appalling. (Your mileage may vary, but probably won't.)

I have keen memories of crying for a week after I bought my last house in Virginia (what have I done?), and I'm just fervently hoping that might have been more a function of, ahem, other factors that are not part of the current decision framework (who have I bought this house with?**)

We're both trying to manage expectations: yes, the new house is ringed with public footpaths, meaning that we'll hear people walking by at all hours. Yes, the freeway is disconcertingly close, and, while the noise isn't too bad during the day (masked, no doubt, by the screaming children from the primary school next door; sigh), it remains to be seen what that sounds like at 3 AM. (Probably not very different than my apartment above the Long Island Expressway in NYC, and that was not a fun time.) And, yes, this was the very best thing we could find in our price range after two years of active house-hunting. I mean, other than the place we saw on our very first day of looking and quite reasonably discounted because it was our very first day of looking.

It's been a long, strange journey, and it's hard to trust that it might be wrapping up soon.

**I jest. The funding for the Virginia house was 100% mine; there was no "with"in any meaningful sense other than physical presence. And yes, that was a very large part of the problem, as things turned out.

Tap, Tap, Tappity Tap

 Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.

Retiring? Is hard. Moving to a foreign country? Is hard. Weathering a pandemic? Is hard. Retiring, moving to a foreign country during -- well, you get the idea.

Also, writing? Nearly impossible.

Not to mention, the blog just doesn't know what it wants to be when it grows up: collection of funny language mishaps? A deeper diary of re-enculturation? Brysonesque musings? Shower thoughts? Political screeds? And do I need to change the name, now that I'm moving out of Bristol? I have questions.

But I'm unexpectedly tickled by the blog analytics, deliberately crude as they are (because I'm supposed to be writing this for me, not you). Hej and bonjour, sudden influx from Sweden and France! Who are you, and why are here? (But, welcome.) None of you seem to be coming back, mind, but that's probably on me.

So, I promise: I'll do better, or, at least, differently. Probably with elements of all of the above, at least until things settle into a rhythm. And I'm likely not going to change the name.