Sometimes trivia can be useful. On the bus to Tallinn on Friday I read in one of my books that of all the world's languages, Estonian holds the record for having the word with the most consecutive appearances of a single vowel. The record-breaker is jäääär, which means "edge of ice".
Then, the next day, I emerged from a building with Chloe and as I was putting her in her stroller on the sidewalk I saw some handwritten signs taped to sticks. They were in Estonian, but I noticed two things. First, that they had exclamation marks at the end. And, second, that one of the words on them was "jää". I concluded, from the similarity of this word to "jäääär" that it must mean "ice", and hence that the signs were probably warning pedestrians about ice falling from the roof of the building.
Later that same day I was with Chloe in the University cafeteria and saw that one of the drink offerings was "jää tee". Iced tea, I presume ... .
arb
1 comment:
The men's shouting/screaming choir?
I remember back in the days when Yoko Ono and John Lennon made an album and Yoko just totally screamed on one song. I thought it was the weirdest concept, but now I understand where they were going with that.
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