the solitary review

Chalk it up to my limited knowledge of linguistics (that Modern Languages degree was several years ago), but I suspect that English is developing a plural indefinite article.

You know what a definite article is, right? In English it’s ‘the’.

The cat

The bus

The orange

etc. because it refers to a definite thing. It can also refer to a concept or uncountable noun. ‘Love’ vs. ‘the love’ if you like.

And an indefinite article, meaning ‘one’ – and in many languages it’s the same word. In English it started out as ‘an’, related to ‘one’ and the ‘n’ was dropped before a consonant (yes it is that way round. Bite me).

A cat

A bus

An orange (very good example – it was originally ‘a norange’, compare the Spanish ‘naranja’.).

For a plural indefinite article, i.e. more than one cat or bus or orange but not any specific ones, we need to either use the noun bare (‘cats’, ‘buses’ etc) or ‘some’ – some cats are white vis-a-vis the clearly not-true cats are white.

In some languages there is a proper indefinite plural. Spanish and Catalan for example.

un gat – a cat

uns gats – some cats.

una dona – a woman

unes dones – some women. (French doesn’t do this btw despite being related).

But not “a women.”

But, you say, I have seen this. This precise case – “a women.” Also “a grandchildren,” which phrase I saw this morning – something along the lines of “I’m waiting for my son to give me a grandchildren that I can take to children’s shows.” You could just say ‘grandchildren’ or ‘some grandchildren,’ but while non-existent for now the offspring in question are somehow more precise than ‘grandchildren’ – they’re specific.

The indefinite plural is a strange beast, somewhere between singular and plural. “Would you talk like that to a women?” suggests that more than one woman may be involved, as is likely. And it isn’t really the same as ‘some.’ (or ‘not all’); it’s specific in its lack of specificity.

I suspect that instead of being upset when someone apparently spells ‘a woman’ as ‘a women’ (and it isn’t just men who do this, I’ve seen women do it) we should hail it as the possible upsurgence of a plural indefinite article.

Now I’m going to fire up Spotify (other streaming services are available) and listen to a podcasts.

Pacifist, founder of Save the Children, Baha’i, and daughter-in-law of Bishop Charles Blomfield (and therefore some kind of distant relative of mine as AFAICT one of the Bishop’s uncles was an ancestor). Early Irish Bahá'ís – Sara Louisa Ryan (Lady Blomfield) – YouTube

A video about Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire, England

https://youtu.be/YNtjXyQRfmI

This chump…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giTW5BgYsp0

Car was apparently stolen and he gives real ‘I’m on drugs’ vibes.

We’re seeing people fleeing Musk’s Twitter for Mastodon. Which, by being decentralised and slowly building a base of left-leaning / alternative viewpoints, has gained ground quietly to the point where it is a viable alternative to Twitter.

But in this year 2022 can we still not have an alternative to YouTube? I for one am tired of its incessant adverts – those for one company in particular that I seem to get all the time – and of the comments, which if they’re not literally made by 14-year-old boys, are made with the mindset of a 14-year-old boy.

But there is no real rival. Viewer stats for Online Video Platforms from the start of this year show that YT hosts over 8.5 billion (yes 8,500 million) videos. The next largest is Dailymotion, which hosts 65 million. Vimeo (often publicised as an alternative, and pitched more at the creator than the consumer) has 18.2 million with Odysee, frequently touted as a promising newcomer, at a mere 10 million.

There’s also Nebula, but it’s more a streaming service than a free-to-access video host.

I used to mirror my videos to Dailymotion, but haven’t done so recently. It is a good site if its ‘next up’ algorithm is a bit strange (or is it that with so many fewer videos to choose from than YT, the links may be more tenuous).

My strategy recently has been to go over to podcasts, listening to Spotify (other platforms are available. Yes, they are. Go figure) instead of watching YouTube videos; but this still leaves the issue of where do you get your video content? And where do you host it?

When will we see a decentralised video-sharing community platform that can bypass the YT? We need one. We need one a lot.

I apologise for linking to the Daily Fail but today’s Ahoohoo is Albert Butler who while in his car (of course) refused to let an emergency vehicle get past and is by all accounts a massive ahoohoo. In Albert’s case, the existence of something other than the private car using the road, functioned as a reverse catnip, invoking anger and obstructive behaviour.

EXCLUSIVE Pictured: 'Senseless and irresponsible' driver who avoided jail for blocking ambulance | Daily Mail Online

‘Ahoohoo’ refers to the sobbing rage with which such people respond when faced with anything challenging their car-centred worldview. They almost certainly (in the UK) voted Leave, as such social-democratic concepts as public transport and cycling are hateful to them. Ahoohoos are not necessarily to be found behind the wheel of a car, but they usually will be.

My latest video is now up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHFhJA2frKs

And so the first video for a month, a commentary-less tour around a historic place – the Old City of Dubrovnik, Croatia

Towers of Dubrovnik – YouTube

So I think what we're really doing is visiting my 'imaginary' countries – only the two main ones. The earlier was Koura, which is a republic with an Atlantic coast, population around 10 million, 94000 km2, a monarchy until the 19th century, upheaval during the 1970s ... remind you of anywhere? Portugal perhaps? It’s also about the same shape if you turned Portugal on its end and flipped it side to side. (P’gal remained a monarchy until slightly into the 20th but never mind. The language situation is also different). I think given the timescale, me having invented it during the mid-70s, when Portugal would have been in the news due to the Carnation Revolution, basing it on that fine country makes sense.

The other one ... now this is more complex. In the 1990s I wrote a story called “Loving the Alien,” set in a wartorn and mountainous country and specifically in the city of Serimban. My friend and fellow-writer Gus Smith pointed out that it was clearly referring to the Yugoslav Wars.

Later on this little state found its way into somewhere called Kazlar, supposedly a former Soviet state in the Caucasus, a small country remarkable for its open border policy, mountainous and riverine, full of strange legends. Except that its being in the Caucasus doesn't really make sense. There's nowhere for it to be.

But if you put it in the Balkans, i.e. the former Yugoslavia, and you look for a small country full of mountains, a new state opening itself to the world -

well, you have Montenegro.

The Kazlari flag is white over black over green, the black and green symbolising mountains and forests. The name 'Montenegro' refers to the forested mountains being so dark green they look black. (the white in the flag either references snow or completes a rebus: “Peace over mountain and forest.”). Closer and closer.

There's a third which is ill-defined, a sort of attempt to move Koura eastwards so it's a kind of enlarged and more urban Kazlar, but it doesn't really work. It was also supposed to be Catalan-speaking. If you had a Catalan takeover c. 14th century of an area of Northern Serbia or Southern Romania – possibly the Banat Republic around Timisoara – then that would be it. Definitely post-Austro-Hungarian Empire, everybody's favourite entity who likes olde worlde Europe. I can't see where that country would be, possibly the Czech Republic; like I say, it's ill-defined.

… we’re all going to go down the pub and get ratted. That’s what you do at a wake, isn’t it?

Actually tbh I barely drink alcohol these days. Nothing terrible, I just got fed up with feeling like shit in the mornings. But what I mean is that the last ten days have been, to once more quote Andrew Lloyd Webber, ‘mourning all day and mourning all night.’ Yes, Queen Elizabeth II was like the nation’s granny, and a lot of the shock is that now we have a King who is quite clearly not an elevated being of any kind, people are going to be hard put to see why we should give him any deference just because of who his mother was. And be asking why can’t his son – who does seem to be genuinely popular by default, i.e. he hasn’t actually done anything crass or terrible – be King instead, assuming we have to have one. Charles III or William V, or better still, William V and Catherine the First?

As a Green Party member I should be a republican, and basically am. You don’t even need a functioning monarchy to enjoy its history – Portugal has been a republic for a hundred years and still does well out of its monarchical history, plenty of sites to explore and so on. Meanwhile we have a prime minister who should really be called the sub-prime minister and appears to be some kind of robot Margaret Thatcher. (did Joe Biden really describe her as “Drunk version of Thatcher”? Probably not, a lot of things come from comedy sketches etc. and that may have done). She is also not only uncaring of the natural environment, she actually seems to think destroying it is a good idea. In that, and only in that, would I stand with King Charles, whose views on environmentalism have got him largely pilloried and mocked by the right-wing press. Which would you choose?