In high school I took French; since I've been working at UMC I can almost understand slow Spanish just by inundation of it, and lately I randomly started listening to teach-yourself-Italian CDs (thanks Carolyn!). The point I'm getting to is that it's been interesting to compare the three Latinate languages as I review or go over them, and then doubly compare them to Semitic or Asian languages (my mom's Arabic or my roommates' Chinese or Japanese from the dojo). For example, I wonder how the different regions each of them developed in contributed to the differences between them - say, Italian being more close to Latin because of Rome, or the French 'r' as opposed to rolled 'r's in the other languages. Because they're each very similar to the others, but different in specific ways, so I wonder if maybe languages that already existed in those areas influenced how the Latin changed over time? And I wonder what made each of the languages' structures develop as they did, like why are the meanings of Arabic words organized by the consonants in them and why are the short vowels relegated to the role they have, or why does doubling a word or name in Chinese or Japanse have the effect it does? I dunno, I think it's interesting. Thoughts, opinions?

-The Five Types of Blogs - I guess mine is somewhere between a zine and and linking blog, and I would say that I think most WBC bloggers probably think they're writing personal blogs

-natalie dee: drawings to huff by

-when I was really little, I always wanted to climb inside the geodes at the agate shop