So the answers to yesterday’s riddles are: 1) What word in English changes pronunciation (and meaning) just by capitalizing it? (Lushbaugh got it:) Polish and polish; and 2) What word in English changes not only pronunciation and stress but also number and gender just by adding a letter? princes (stress on first syllable, masculine, and plural) becomes princess (stress on second syllable, feminine, and singular) just by adding the letter s on the end. Neat, huh?

And Katie hit it on the head in her comment when she pointed out that this is one reason why people who speak English as a second language have accents or don’t sound “quite right,” as a lot of people would say. A French person would run through an entire sentence on basically one tone whereas a German person would seem to speak very slowly because they wouldn’t vary speed according to when the beat occurs. My German teacher here at ISU said she learned to speak English using a metronome and had to try and shorten/lengthen syllables according to where the beat was, and she pointed out that they used all sorts of tricks to try and remember where stresses were in given words. Just like memorzing spelling or verb conjugations, memorizing stress patterns is necessary in English otherwise it doesn’t sound right to native speakers. Great point, Katie!

On an unrelated note, my crocheting is going very well. I’ve made myself a green scarf using all double crochets (I wanted to practice it and this was a good enough reason to) and have been wearing it around. I need to remember to take a picture of it to post on-line. Also, I’ve been playing Animal Crossing a lot. It’s just so cute! I also picked up a game called Cooking Mama where you have to add things to the pot at the right time, cut stuff up and mix things together in a bowl. It’s a cute little game with all sorts of random Japanese foods to make. Simon beat it in the time he was up at our place, so it’s not a long game (nor is it hard, but I’m sure if it were hard, Simon still would have beat it in two days). I’ve made about four things (I keep remaking it until I get it perfect, then move on) and will probably reserve it for a quickie “I don’t have time for Animal Crossing but want to play something” game. So cute!

Also, I need to start thinking about Thanksgiving and what the husband and I are going to do. Push come to shove, we’ll go to his parents’ house and depending on what my parents do, we’ll visit them too. I guess I need to start thinking about Christmas too, though it’s not really of major concern. After all, I haven’t had my birthday yet. 🙂 I figure I’ll be so busy with my four classes that I won’t have a whole lot of time (or brain cells) to spend worrying about it right now. It’ll get done eventually. Right now, I need to grade something and get ready for tests next week as well as the presentation I’m giving for the French Film Festival coming up soon. More on that later. TTFN!