A spell of slightly cooler weather compelled me to throw open my windows last night and sleep with the windows open. I slept much better, as I always do, when I do that.
My motivational deficit persists – I'm not doing any of the various projects I set for myself upon my return from the US, although I'm keeping up with work, if only just barely.
I guess this is a pretty pointless blog entry. I'm feeling very discouraged by life, lately.
The mathematical phrase '22, 2e, E2, Ee' forms a sort of tongue-twister in the Korean language, because the English letter 'e' (used in e.g. natural log functions, etc.) and the number/digit '2' are pronounced the same way: /i/ (IPA).
So the phrase as a whole would be read '이의이승, 이의이승, 이의이승, 이의이승,' [i-ui-i-seung, i-ui-i-seung, i-ui-i-seung, i-ui-i-seung = two to the second power, two to the e power, E to the second power, E to the e power]. But there are added complications, too. First, the genitive '의' [ui] is normally reduced to '이' [i] in rapid speech. The second problem has to do with the evolution of modern standarrd Korean versus regional dialect: middle Korean (i.e. around 1400 AD) was a tonal language, while modern Seoul dialect is devoid of tones. But some regional dialects retain the tones, and in those dialects, the number '2' and the English letter 'e' are assigned different tones. This makes the phrase less of a nightmare of pure homophones, but it ends up sounding quite odd and singsongy, and is difficult to sort out, if you try to get the tones right – not to mention sounding like a country bumpkin.
The real miracle of all this is that one of my students explained this to me. Pretty well, too.
Unrelatedly, this very smart student said to me today: "Teacher! I am very, very, very, very, very humble."
I laughed, and suggested she was maybe unclear on the concept of humility.
