![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
burntcopperflat hunting? don't talk to me about flat hunting. Gah. I've booked/emailed a couple more people, but the one I really want isn't having flatmate review til next week.
Need to get tickets for Regents' Park open air before the 16th - either Macbeth (HJ's utter weakness) or Midsummer Night's Dream, which is... it's entirely appropriate for this time of year, okay? Amused by the bit stuck on the new 39 Steps posters - 'Now with Full Air Conditioning as Bonus!' ... Do they know something about this August's weather that we don't?
not to self to do the WIP meme when get home.
Also, pondering the weirdness of the English - well, not language, but spoken. English is the original mash-up language. It's composed of one base language with another laid over the top, meshed and changed vowel sounds a few times down the centuries and has hordes of words stolen from other languages, fitted in seamlessly. So why the hell do we have such problems with long names or names with loads of consonants in? The amount of times you see us (and yes, I'm including me) attempt the first couple of syllables and then give up is untrue. I'm thinking it has to be a mental block when it comes to the long names, since the majority of English names (sur, first or place) don't tend to contain more than three syllables, and it's well known that we're very, very fond of shortening anything more than that into a nickname or shortened version. Not to mention the several names that *look* long in the language that're actually *said* as something quite different. Featherstonehugh (Fanshaw) and Gloucestershire (Glos-ter-shur), I'm looking at you. (anything with on-the-wold tacked on the end doesn't count, since that's a clarifier, not the main name) So the amount of Indian sub-continent names that get short shrift, I'm really sorry.
And then you have the ones with lumps of unfamiliar consonants - nearly all dutch or east european. Which is slightly more understandable when it comes to language; if you're not used to pronouncing/processing from written to spoken that combination of sounds, you nearly always stumble. Even though that really shouldn't be an excuse in English, considering our penchant for nicking any words we fancy from probably every single language on earth. (especially considering the most recent immigration flood of Poles) I do find it vaguely amusing that the English language - the way the vowel and consonant combos go - has less trouble processing Far East Asian, African, Pacific island and South American vowel/consonant combos than it does ones that are on the closest land mass.
Watched Midsummer Night's Dream last night. ...Why do I always forget Christian Bale's playing Demetrius? I remember every single other person (it is a cast of immense pretty and acting skill, with the *only* piece of miscasting/not quite up to the job of handling Shakespeare being Michelle Pfeiffer as Titania - and that's bloody amazing for any Shakespeare, let alone filmed). He's a brilliant Demetrius, and one of his scenes with Calista Flockhart tends to make me fall over with guh every time (let's just say it involves the line 'the rich worth of your virginity' said in a very low tone of voice and leave it at that -![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
the_oscar_cat, the area for drowning in puddles of drool is over there.). Maybe the Rupert Everett/Stanley Tucci/Kevin Kline/Anna Friel/Dominic West combo just makes my brain explode too much. And as ever, it's very clear that Kevin Kline was utterly robbed by the period of film he was born into. He needs swashbuckling, athletic works that require him to be 27 Pirate Kings swinging on ropes all at once every second. Every non-flamboyant role I've ever seen him in, the director is clearly having to sit on him heavily and not always succeeding.
Need to get tickets for Regents' Park open air before the 16th - either Macbeth (HJ's utter weakness) or Midsummer Night's Dream, which is... it's entirely appropriate for this time of year, okay? Amused by the bit stuck on the new 39 Steps posters - 'Now with Full Air Conditioning as Bonus!' ... Do they know something about this August's weather that we don't?
not to self to do the WIP meme when get home.
Also, pondering the weirdness of the English - well, not language, but spoken. English is the original mash-up language. It's composed of one base language with another laid over the top, meshed and changed vowel sounds a few times down the centuries and has hordes of words stolen from other languages, fitted in seamlessly. So why the hell do we have such problems with long names or names with loads of consonants in? The amount of times you see us (and yes, I'm including me) attempt the first couple of syllables and then give up is untrue. I'm thinking it has to be a mental block when it comes to the long names, since the majority of English names (sur, first or place) don't tend to contain more than three syllables, and it's well known that we're very, very fond of shortening anything more than that into a nickname or shortened version. Not to mention the several names that *look* long in the language that're actually *said* as something quite different. Featherstonehugh (Fanshaw) and Gloucestershire (Glos-ter-shur), I'm looking at you. (anything with on-the-wold tacked on the end doesn't count, since that's a clarifier, not the main name) So the amount of Indian sub-continent names that get short shrift, I'm really sorry.
And then you have the ones with lumps of unfamiliar consonants - nearly all dutch or east european. Which is slightly more understandable when it comes to language; if you're not used to pronouncing/processing from written to spoken that combination of sounds, you nearly always stumble. Even though that really shouldn't be an excuse in English, considering our penchant for nicking any words we fancy from probably every single language on earth. (especially considering the most recent immigration flood of Poles) I do find it vaguely amusing that the English language - the way the vowel and consonant combos go - has less trouble processing Far East Asian, African, Pacific island and South American vowel/consonant combos than it does ones that are on the closest land mass.
Watched Midsummer Night's Dream last night. ...Why do I always forget Christian Bale's playing Demetrius? I remember every single other person (it is a cast of immense pretty and acting skill, with the *only* piece of miscasting/not quite up to the job of handling Shakespeare being Michelle Pfeiffer as Titania - and that's bloody amazing for any Shakespeare, let alone filmed). He's a brilliant Demetrius, and one of his scenes with Calista Flockhart tends to make me fall over with guh every time (let's just say it involves the line 'the rich worth of your virginity' said in a very low tone of voice and leave it at that -
the_oscar_cat, the area for drowning in puddles of drool is over there.). Maybe the Rupert Everett/Stanley Tucci/Kevin Kline/Anna Friel/Dominic West combo just makes my brain explode too much. And as ever, it's very clear that Kevin Kline was utterly robbed by the period of film he was born into. He needs swashbuckling, athletic works that require him to be 27 Pirate Kings swinging on ropes all at once every second. Every non-flamboyant role I've ever seen him in, the director is clearly having to sit on him heavily and not always succeeding.
