(no subject)

[the_rck]

I spent a bit more than three hours on the beta read yesterday. That got me through a little more than a page. Doing this is making me think a lot about why certain things sound right to me in English when other wordings that could give the same information sound wrong. I'm trying to pass along explanations for the weirdnesses of connotations and implications. There's also a good bit that I'm highlighting as normal English usage in certain situations but not for the situations in the story.

I stayed up much later last night than I should have. Part of that was knowing that I was making progress on the beta read. Part of that was just being kind of wound up more generally.

Cordelia has Jumanji 2 from Netflix. She's finished watching it. Scott saw part of the second half. I want to see it from the beginning. I'm on the waitlist at the library, but it will be a few weeks. I should put the DVD in now because Cordelia can't send it back until tomorrow (and will send it back then because she wants the next thing from her queue).

Cordelia will be having some of her friends over on Tuesday. I asked her for a relatively firm list because I wanted to know if the snacks need to be okay for Passover. Of the two girls I was wondering about, one will be out of the country. The other doesn't care about Passover. There's a third girl who might be Jewish or might not, but she almost never comes to anything because she's a year younger/a grade behind. I'm pretty sure that this isn't her primary friends group the way it is for the others.

We haven't gotten an Easter dinner invitation from Scott's sister MIL yet, and I'm now thinking that we won't. Scott's sister and her family are in Florida for spring break, visiting Scott's parents at whatever place they're staying. Our BIL has some plan about buying a used car there and driving it home, so they probably aren't assuming they'll be home in time to make Easter dinner with the extended family make sense.

Scott's sister's MIL doesn't invite us over if Scott's sister's family won't be there. Usually, she and her husband and their daughter end up going to visit other family for those Easters. I think it's a niece and her extended family, but I'm not 100% sure.

Easter is one of those family obligation things. None of the three of us particularly want to go out for it, but none of us don't want to go strongly enough to be unhappy about it. Scott generally gets a chance to play a board game or two.

Scott showed me a photograph the other day of the one of his grandmothers who I never met, his father's mother. We took her first name for Cordelia's middle name, and I'd never seen a picture of her before. Scott showed it to Cordelia who wasn't particularly impressed.

Scott's currently working on our taxes and being annoyed with himself for not getting our prescription records from the pharmacy. He can get his and Cordelia's, but I either have to fill out some forms to authorize him to get mine or go in personally. Which isn't hard but does take time and does mean not being able to finish today. Sadly, I can't find the forms on the Kroger website. Everything's aimed at forcing me to create an online account in order to get anything of the sort.

Comments

[hamsterwoman]

Doing this is making me think a lot about why certain things sound right to me in English when other wordings that could give the same information sound wrong. I'm trying to pass along explanations for the weirdnesses of connotations and implications.

I've betaed for a non-native-English writer before, and found myself going down those rabbitholes as well (I mean, I'm a non-native-English writer myself, but was young enough when I learned English that I learned it mostly by osmosis, like a native speaker, just later). I also find it one of those things where, the longer I think about why something sounds right to me and something else doesn't, the more I start doubting whether my distinctions make any sense at all... :P

because I wanted to know if the snacks need to be okay for Passover

This coming Tuesday? Passover doesn't start until Friday evening (3/30), so you're safe either way, unless you're thinking about the first Tuesday of April :)

The rodents and I watched Jumanji 2 last night. It was pretty dumb but quite enjoyable and funny!

[evalerie]

Hamsterwoman, if it's not too nosy a question, I am curious what your first language was.

[hamsterwoman]

Not nosy at all :) -- it was Russian. I was 10 during my first exposure to English (in school) and 11 when I started living in an English-speaking country and picking it up naturally.

[evalerie]

Wow! I cannot tell at all.

[hamsterwoman]

:) At this point I've been in a predominantly English environment for ~3/4 of my life (high school and college in English, working in English, and my husband and I speak English to each other, though we both speak something else to the kids, who are consequently trilingual), so it's not too surprising. I know several people whose written English is pretty much indistinguishable from a native speaker's who have never lived in an English-speaking country at all -- now THAT'S impressive!

[evalerie]

Back in 2006-2007, we had an exchange student like that. She was from Germany and spoke near-native English. I think she had perfected her English by watching Gilmore Girls on television. She was very easy to understand -- but she seemed very disappointed that our lifestyle is not like what she'd seen on Gilmore Girls. It was, unfortunately, not an easy year, and I have never been able to convince my family to try another exchange student again, after that went so badly. Sigh.

Meanwhile our former exchange student is 29 now, and seems to have grown up into a nice person. So that part, at least, turned out to have a happy ending.