Since I'm one of the few native English influences in my life now, I've been paying more attention to my own English. I've noticed some things are changing since moving over here, and I'm not exactly sure why; although I assume some part of it is attempting to provide a clearer signal for those who do not speak English as a first language.

Consonants

My consonants are mostly in line with the region I grew up in, in the U.S., however I've had some peculiarities that have stuck with me, and one or two that I've gained elsewhere.

• Rounded R. When /r/ occurs at the beginning of a syllable, it is often rounded: writer [ˈɹʷəɪɾɚ].
• Palatal release on /k/. When /k/ occurs at the end of a syllable, and even before low vowels, its release is palatal: lock [lɔkʲ]. This is due to Norwegian influence, and hearing Norwegian accents in English.
• Wine-whine merger. 90% of the time I do not produce the latter sound (/ʍ/), but I have caught myself doing it when speaking particularly carefully.
• Affricate devoicing. /dʒ/ is more likely to be devoiced than it otherwise would be. I know I already have had light voicing on this sound; but it seems to be getting worse.
• Bolth. Some discussion on a friend's Facebook status update lead me to the possibility that this comes from areas in the U.S. that is heavily populated by Danish immigrants; as supposedly at one point, the word for 'both' in Danish had a similar liquidy sound in it. I don't know a lot of Minnesotans who say both as [bołθ], but I know they exist. I know I also get teased for this one.

Vowels

Before I left, I was already a sort of odd person. The number of influences on my English I've had at varying times seem to have been most obvious in my vowels. I've identified some influences, but some I'm still unsure of. Some of the features of my vowels are:

• Canadian raising

About 5-10 years ago, I think I only had [əɪ] raising in my English, but I now have [ɛʊ] as well. I'm fairly certain I picked this up from a Canadian from Ontario while living in Helsinki, as she and another Canadian were my primary fluent English influence.

In addition however, I seem to have [ɛʊ] in non-Canadian-raising environments. I say tone as [tʰɛʊn].

• Northern Cities Vowel Shift

I was explaining to someone that someone had just left the café the other day, and he heard me say 'laughed' instead. Although I'm fairly certain I don't have a lot of the NCVS currently (nor did I have much of it before I left), it appears to be around. Oddly, a similar vowel shift is occurring in Tromsø Norwegian now. Likely these things are not related, but it's worth pointing out.

I'm somewhat concerned if I'm only picking up some of the NCVS changes, because my low vowels are already somewhat messed up, and one non-low vowel sneaking into low territory could be somewhat disastrous.

Others have pointed out before that my [ɛ] often comes out as a [ə], such as redhead [ɹədhɛd].

One additional thing related to these vowels (but not necessarily a result of this shift) are: can/to be able /kɛn/; been /bɛn/ (worth note; some Canadians say /bin/).

• Caught-cot merger, I has it. Mostly. See below.

• Californian stuff

I seem to have a few characteristics in common with Californians, such as backing of /æ/, and fronting of /u/ to [ʉ] in some environments. It's possible that the lowering of [ɛ] that I mentioned above is related more to this, especially since my /æ/ isn't turning into a diphthong (ex., bad [bɛæd], cat [kʰiæt]) as it would if I had more of the NCVS.

Where would I be picking up this Californian stuff though? Radio?

• Norwegian innovations

Here in Norway, I've noticed that I'm beginning to gain an [ɔ] vowel again, unsure as to whether this will be undoing the caught-cot merger in my speech, since that's a historical process, or if I'm aware of what non-caught-cot-merged speech sounds like enough that I'm being 100% consistent with this, because as far as I can tell now, it isn't.

• New Zealand?

I've been attempting to tweak my English by listening to a lot of Radio New Zealand, but it hasn't been quite effective. I love their vowels, but it may be that my subconscious isn't thoroughly convinced that these Kiwis are valid stylistic icons in my life. Only more time will tell.

Syntactic oddities

I think my syntax is mostly midwestern; I'm completely comfortable with preposition stranding at the end of sentences (which even may just be a feature of General American English). In addition, I'm happy with 'with'. E.g., the following are all fine in my English:

• Do you wanna come with?
• I brought it with.
• I have it with.

I never say 'along' for this.

What gives?

Idiolects are not always so simple to describe. Certainly though, most people who live in one place for a long enough time may be easier to describe, as they often fit completely with what is expected for their region and social identities. Or, better worded: everyone's idiolect can be described just as easily, but figuring out the reasons for various atypical features of someone's idiolect may be a challenge.

Idiolects also present an interesting puzzle that can only be explained with historical migrations, such as with Sarah Palin (PDF): "Clear echoes of salient Upper Midwest features found their way to Alaska via immigration of speakers from Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin in 1935, such recent immigrations that their presence should still be felt today."

In my case, I haven't yet figured out who or what all of my stylistic influences are, although I have identified some. For someone who likes language and has an ear for phonetics, maybe it's possible that I can be allowed a little more flexibility. Or maybe, I'm crazy and will somehow come back from living abroad with a strong Geordie accent.

I'm participating in the Tromsø International Film Festival this year as a volunteer. It's an awesome opportunity to see a lot of free films that are hopefully interesting, as well as help out a cool local event... And also learn more Norwegian.

I'm feeling much more comfortable speaking it now than even 3 days ago. Apparently even just thinking about and being consciously aware that I need to use it is enough to help improve. I've noticed my processing and response time is drastically improved, and I think I've been able to improve with that because I'm no longer really worried about pronunciation. The rest is just minor touch-up work that will come with more speaking.

... Anyway, things I've liked so far:

• Hipsters Official site currently down...
• It Might Get Loud
• White Material
• Home from Home
• Pranzo di Ferragosto

• Disko ja tuumasõda - Disco and Atomic War

  Disko ja tuumasõda uses dramatized scenes to tell a true story of the effects of the authoritarian Soviet Union as it tries (and fails) to control what the Estonian people are able to watch on TV. A young girl living in southern Estonia relates the stories of the television drama Dallas to her village that she receives in letters from her cousin in the north, who is able to watch it from Finnish TV. Dallas and Finnish TV, as it turns out, were actually an integral part of the Cold War in the Baltic region, with the struggle culminating in a broadcasted sex scene sneaking into the country by ally-enhanced television transmissions.

• Helsinki, Forever

  A documentary about Helsinki, Finland, which uses primarily archive movies and photographs, old movie clips and literature to tell the story of the history of the municipality over the past two hundred years.

• Optical Illusion

  A quirky comedy about some people and their connections and relationships. It follows a man as he receives a demotion at work, and falls in love with his new boss who is getting breast enhancement surgery because the company gives free plastic surgery as a bonus. She feels the need to get plastic surgery, because she is afraid she is losing her boyfriend who is himself getting a new job as a security guard at a mall, where he find a woman with the security cameras and begins an affair with her while she contemplates divorcing her husband. There are a few more connections that the movie explores. Overall entertaining.

• Forbidden Fruit (Official site is down)

  Growing up is already a struggle for some, but a particularly pungent brand of northern Finnish Laestadianism has its say in Kielletty hedelmä. One girl escapes from her hometown to the freedom of the capitol city in the south, where she explores alcohol, sexuality and her own connection to her religion. Her friend is sent to keep an eye on her and to bring her home should she stray too far from the flock, but she too has her own struggle with her religion. The story is a powerful commentary on fundamentalist societies and how their constraints are too close for some.

• House of Branching Love

  A hilarious comedy of errors as a Finnish family struggles with marital troubles and their own possible divorce. In the end, the Finnish mafia saves the day...

• Vår mann i Kirkenes

  The story of a man working at the Finnmark newspaper (Finnmarken) and his search for another job, and experience with his current one. A quirky sort of humor that one might come from the pen of Garrison Keillor. Suitable for Minnesotans.

• The Woman with 5 Elephants

  The biography of a Ukrainian-born and Russian-speaking woman who moves to Germany during the second World War. The documentary picks up when she is concluding her work on translating Tolstoy's work, and we follow her first trip to her hometown in Ukraine since she left. The story is a beautifully put together story that may be of particular interest to translators and language geeks...

... Also, must remember to track down the soundtracks and add some links to this once the festival is over. More this evening and more tomorrow, so the list will be growing! :)

Sámi Week in Tromsø (February 1. - 7.) is an event celebrating Sámi culture. Part of the significance for such an event is that Tromsø is very much a Sámi city, in that the Sámi language and cultural events are a part of city life, and Tromsø is one of the larger cities in Sápmi. There are also many famous Sámi people who make the city their home, or one of their homes.

Although I've never been around to participate in this event before, I'm excited to see it this year. The official site for the event, which is in English only for the last years festivities, shows that last year was a week full of films, art exhibits, a cooking course, and a reindeer race, amongst the many other fun events.

The program for 2010 is up (and available in English), but digging around the internet before the program was available, I also found this:

• The Faculty of Law at the University of Tromsø is having a 2 day program (4. - 5. of February) on Traditional Sámi rules of reindeer herding in refraction with reindeer herding legislation.

Also occurring during the last week of January and first week of February is the Nordlys classical music festival.

Here's some followup from the previous story about the threats of a massacre at Kongsbakken videregående skole in Tromsø. The first is an article in Nordlys, posted Monday (translation following):

New threat against Kongsbakken encouraging people to keep up with the news

On Friday a threat against Kongsbakken was repeated on the forum 4chan.org, according to the newspaper iTromsø. In a discussion thread on the site, someone wrote: "Implying I was kidding when I made that treath. Keep watching the news. I may have been foiled the first time, but time will show my seriousness."

"This sounds very scary, and I'm shocked," said Kongsbakken's Student Council leader, Kristian Støback to iTromsø. He otherwise thought it was good to come back to school to speak with other students and instructors. He believes it is important that the threat does not affect life at school.

Rector Odd Ivar Størkesen was not informed about the new threat on Sunday evening.

"I do not know of any new threat. We have been in contact with the police throughout the weekend and received an update on their work no later than Sunday", he said to iTromsø.

He says that school days rain as normal on Monday.

And another from Nordlys, which was posted Sunday:

Police believe they will find out who was behind the threat to Kongsbakken

So far in the investigation the police have not been able to uncover who is behind the threat to Kongsbakken High School.

"We still have good possibilities to solve the case. Kripos has its own system for mapping who uses the internet illegally. It will take time, but we have good hope of finding the sender of the threats to carry out a massacre at the school, says Tromsø police chief Kurt Pettersen.

He said to Kripos that the police in Tromsø are also driving some of the tactical investigation of the case.

"It is a priority both here and in Kripos to identify all factors surrounding the threat. Kripos has the expertise to identify the technological side, while we here in Tromsø hope the tactical investigation will yield results.

"It could also be someone eventually will realize the seriousness of the matter will report to the police with information," said Pettersen.

As someone who spends a good amount of time reading the news on the internet, I well know what 4chan is. 4chan may be the birthplace of LOLcats and numerous memes that go around the internet, but it's also a cesspool of ridiculousness and shock. It's not too wild of an idea that the original threat may have actually been posted by someone in town, but this follow-up threat was something continued from a random user on 4chan.

As far as the internet intelligence that Kripos is undertaking, I wonder what legal powers they have. Norway is said to have some of the strictest data privacy laws in the world, but it is reasonable that in the interest of investigating crime, Norwegian intelligence agencies may have access to quite a lot of data. If the issue is completely local, there is a good chance they will find out who did it, especially if the perpetrator has no clue what they're doing or how to anonymize their identity on the internet... Norway isn't big, so if they have an IP address, they could much more reasonably find out whose it was than could one in a much bigger country like the U.S.

I wonder what the outcome will be of this, and particularly for 4chan should it manage to be a frequent source of irritation for the police here.

This was the big news today in Norway, and a few people I know around the world have messaged me today asking if I'd heard. So far, I haven't seen any English coverage of the story, so I translated NRK's article on the issue. Added some links for more context for people not familiar with Norway, the culture.

From NRK:

Today, all 650 students at Kongsbakken high school (nor. videregående skole) were evacuated due to a perceived threat of a school massacre posted on the internet. The threat to Kongsbakken high school was aimed at Sámi people. "Scary stuff", said one Sámi student at the school.

The threat was published on Thursday under the title "School massacre" on the American internet forum, 4chan. The principal (rector) at Kongsbakken high school, Ivar Odd Størkersen, was tipped off about the threat by a journalist working at Aftenposten. As such, he immediately contacted the police.

The threat was in the form of an illustration, including a picture of a gun, a sword, the school, and a map of Tromsø. The illustration further contained the text "Targets: Sami people". The threat was later removed from 4chan for unknown reasons.

"We take a connection between weapons and the school building as a serious and severe threat. It is sad that some have felt the need to connect the school with such a serious incident, " said Rector Størkersen to NRK.

"I have no idea why Sámi people are listed as a target. There are many Sámi people in Tromsø, and there are many students with Sámi background who are students at Kongsbakken. I will not speculate on what the purpose of this threat is," said Rector Ivar Odd Størkersen.

Frightening and scary

"It is frightening and scary. Such a threat must be taken seriously," said Mihka Solbakk (18), a Sámi student at Kongsbakken.

Students who arrived at the school this morning were met by police and locked doors. The school management had decided to evacuate all students.

"I believe there are many who are afraid now," said Solbakk.

Mihka Solbakk reports that he has spoken with many of his Sámi classmates today and many of them have expressed that it is frightening that such a threat was directed against Sámi students. He has otherwise not experienced that his ethnic background has been a problem, either at school or in town.

"Of course, you get to hear the occasional derogatory comment here and there."

"Some might joke that Sámi people are inferior, you never really know if anyone believes it. It may even be that this [threat] is meant as a joke," says Solbakk.

Solbakk made it clear otherwise that such threats should be taken seriously, and he thinks that the administration of Kongsbakken has handled the matter in a good way. "There have been a number of school shootings in the U.S. and in Finland in recent months, so it's no wonder that the administration takes these attacks seriously," he says.

Losing sleep

"I received a text message about the threat when I woke up this morning. Obviously I was a little scared," said Odd Ivar Solbakk, Mihka Solbakk's father.

His son was still sleeping when the message about the threat came, and so he would not be to school until after lunchtime. Odd Ivar Solbakk said to NRK Sámi Radio that news that the threat was directed against Sámi people was a special piece of news to hear at the crack of dawn.

"Tromsø is a city with many prolific Sámis and the Sámi people are very important here. It has never seemed as if there were a threat to the Sámi youth in the city," said Solbakk.

As a parent of a student at the school, Solbakk was proud of the way the school administration and the police have handled this matter. Having learned the full extent of the situation, he says he is impressed with the response and feels the school's forthrightness is something that characterizes a good school environment. He is also impressed.

"A threat so close to us as this is something that would interfere with sleep; it's unpleasant," says Odd Ivar Solbakk.

Investigating the matter

Police chief Truls Fyhn in the Troms Police Department said in a press release that an investigation has been initiated to get more information from the site that the threat was posted to, after the police were made aware of the case on Thursday night.

"The investigation is still continuing," he wrote.

Kripos is also involved in the investigation," said Tromsø police chief, Kurt Pettersen.

School administration at Kongsbakken expects that school will resume as normal beginning on Monday. Later today, the police will have a meeting with the principal and the others in the school administration to inform them of the investigation.

Listen to interviews

• in Norwegian: Interview with Mihka Solbakk
• in North Sámi: Jearahallan Mihka Solbakkain
• in North Sámi: Jearahallan Odd Ivar Solbakkain

Read more news on NRK

• Afraid and scared
• The schools shall be safe

My own thoughts

This is hugely surprising news. On one hand, 4Chan (see Wikipedia if you don't know what it is) is full of ridiculous things and so this may have been a joke, but on the other hand, with recent school and mall shootings in Finland and the U.S., one can never be sure. I have not observed much anti-Sámi discrimination or racism here in Tromsø, aside from errant comments people make that are mostly just stupid, but then I'm not Sámi, and I haven't lived here for more than 6 months, so I know basically nothing. The history of Sámi-Norwegian relations as I know it hasn't been pretty, but things are otherwise much much better now.

Some added context is that Kongsbakken (King's Hill) is a fairly prestigious, arts-oriented, and more liberal-minded school.

I'm hoping this was all just a joke, but it looks like it's gotten damn serious.

Updates

More English-language news is available here, from My Little Norway.

Some things I've come across in the past few days that are worth saving for future reference, or worth sharing.

Web

• Using nginx as a load balancer
• ProDjango also available in ebook format.
• Markdown Syntax reference, since I've started using it.

Lols

• NirGaga - Smells like Poker Face?
• How to handle your boss asking about a project

Linguistics

• Textbooks for Germanic languages should be written in Anglish
• Explitive infixation - Opti-fuckin-mality Theory

Norway

• Solution to killer superbug found in Norway - How Norway got rid of MRSA
• Telephone Storm after mysterious light phenomenon (lysfenomenen) in Northern Norway (translation). In the end it was a failed Russian rocket launched from a submarine (translation), and capable of being equipped with nuclear warheads.

Catching up on Hel Looks

People often ask me why I like Helsinki, and all the unique fashion is one of the reasons. I caught up on Hel-Looks, an awesome documentation of cool fashion in Helsinki and found some cool things. Summary. Jeans: tighter than skinny jeans ever were, high top shoes: in, and stuff your pants into them. Big scarves are very yes. Otherwise, all of this is really optional and anything goes.

Some finds: yy, kaa, koo, nee, vii, kuu, see, kasi, ysi, kymppi

Minnesota

• 3 new autonomous schools to open in Minneapolis district
• Cultures clash among classmates at SE Minn. schools - Troubles Somali youths face as 1st generation immigrants

• Judge rules against pawlenty's allotments

  tl;dr:

  Pawlenty: "We are disappointed in the judge’s decision. We are weighing all of our options including appeal, reestablishing unallotments under the current forecast, potential legislative action, and other options."

  From Judge Gearin's ruling: "The authority of the Governor to unallot is an authority intended to save the state in times of a previously unforeseen budget crisis, it is not meant to be used as a weapon by the executive branch to break a stalemate in budget negotiatons with the Legislature or to rewrite the appropriations bill."

  Galen Robinson of Mid Minnesota Legal Assistance: "We’re enormously pleased that the court agreed with our position and relieved that our clients will be able to afford the food they need to stay healthy. We recognize that both the Legislature and the governor have a difficult burden to find a resolution to the budget shortfall." ... "This shortfall was neither unknown nor unanticipated."

Non-straight

• Same-sex marriage map of the world

Gaming, nostalgia:

• RivenX, Riven for OS X Leopard and above

In almost every discussion of language variation in the world, Finnish comes up due to its wealth of case endings. There are languages that have even more, such as Hungarian, and most languages have less. Of the languages I've learned that mark cases with suffixes, I could say that on average they have somewhere around 6 cases (excluding of course, languages very closely related to Finnish which have a similar number). I've learned some with slightly more, and some with slightly less. This amount of cases is what usually gets Finnish labeled as "difficult", but, this difficulty doesn't make Finnish impossible to learn.

Here I've attempted to collect some of my own internal reasonings based on the various things I've read over the course of time I've learned Finnish. As such, a lot of the material I don't remember my source for... Except for this source, a brief grammatical reference, which I used to check the latinate case names which I often forget. I'll list some additional resources below, as I remember or come across them, for those interested. One of the great resources is Hakulinen's Suomen kielen rakenne ja kehitys 'Structure and Development of the Finnish Language', but sadly I don't have access to it right now to check some of my memories and theories.

Read more

The symposium was quite a success, I thought. It was the first I attended, and nice to see what's going on and what others are researching. Subject matter of the talks ranged, touching on graphic design, the successes and failures behind the development of writing systems, the varying web-presence between Inari Sámi and Skolt Sámi; and the syntax and semantics of reflexive pronouns, tone and intonation, and issues involving machine translation and lexical databases.

One of the things that I felt was an important theme was that when doing academic research, it is important to return something back to the communities you are working with. Otherwise, if you're working with endangered languages, how can you help them improve their situation? Some research produces results that is usable by these communities, and some research does not. Of course, it always means extra work to do so, but isn't it good to have an effect on things?

Anyway, brief update, but, here are some projects and resources to check out for those interested. I'll add some more things from time to time, as they come up.

• 2nd Annual Sámi Linguistics Symposium, which is a part of the Saami Documentation and Revitalization Network who, along with the Department of General and Comparative Linguistics at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel is putting on the Winter School in Saami Language Documentation and Revitalization
• Sámi proofing tools, currently available for Northern Sámi and Lule Sámi. The tools are produced by Sámi language technology group (also known as Giellatekno Northern Sámi for 'language-tech'), which has a few projects highly worth checking out, such as dictionaries, lexical resources, word parsers.
• CASTL - Center for Advanced Study in Theoretical Linguistics - A department working on a number of projects, a lot of which involve Sámi language stuff.

Brief note to anyone else who's looking (and me incase I forget). While learning to use nginx, either I misread somewhere or borrowed the wrong information, but I was attempting to set up static content directories within my server definition like so:

server {

    ...

    location /media {
        root /site/media/dir;
        access_log off;
    }

    ...

}

Unfortunately, it wasn't working out for me that way. I tried all manner of things to test that it wasn't something simple, such as making sure there were slashes on the end of the directory (nope), or a permissions issue for nginx's user not being able to access the directory (nope!). Finally, I stumbled upon an email list posting that lead me in the right direction: I needed to use an alias instead of directory root. Using root (according to the email thread) implies that the directory you specify (e.g., location /media) actually exists within your server's root directory. Oops!

location /media {
    alias /site/media/dir;
    access_log off;
}

Now with an alias instead, everything works fine, and nginx is running like a charm.

Since I'm a poor graduate student, I've added a basic CV, which is accessible either by that link, or if you're not reading this in an RSS feeder, to the upper right in the navigation bar. More detailed information is of course available at request.

Also, there were some outstanding things that needed doing with this blog, such as adding pagination, trackbacks, switching over to Mercurial/Hg instead of SVN (Hg seems to just have a better workflow for me). I disabled some entertaining, yet out of date things that I hadn't had time to do the upkeep on, or indeed finish up the starting content (moving country takes work!). Maybe I'll get back to that soon, and reenable it. Blogging about random Finnish words in detail is fun, anyway. :)

Of course, I always wonder why I don't just run some WordPress instance, or just direct my domain at a Blogger account, but it's always more fun to program things on your own when you've got the time, and you always learn a few new and useful things. On the to do list for the break from school is to try out nginx. I've heard it's great for high load things, so I'm curious to do some load-testing with some projects I've been working on that are more computationally intensive. More on one of those later... :)