Open Days

OK. Wow. I made it. Sheffield @ 10am - Manchester @2pm without being late or missing anything. We got lost everytime we turned a corner but...you know...we survived...

Overall, I was much more impressed with Sheffield than Manchester. The lady who gave us the talk at Manchester just went on about how amazing the university as a whole is and barely spoke about the courses at all, in fact, she only mentioned 'Single Honours', 'Dual Honours', another that I can't remember and one that doesn't exist at the moment. Hmm. Great. Good job I didn't want to go there anyway really.

Sheffield was a lot more impressive as I learnt that I could study three different languages, yay :) I'm thinking Spanish and Portuguese for sure and pondering about the third if I decided to apply for Sheffield. I have Leeds next Saturday, York on the 6th (I think) and I need another really, but none of the registration forms worked when I tried booking. Grrrr.

And now...

GRAMMAR ALERT!

This evening I've been reading 'The English Language' by David Crystal for English Language. Yes, it's dull. No, it probably won't be of any use in class. Yes, I have Jonathan for making our class read language books when none of the other classes have been forced to. Anyway, there were three bits that caught my attention, I considered photocopying them all but I couldn't be bothered so you're all going to get a quick grammar lesson 'cause I wanna document the bits from the book somewhere to later add to my languages file (because I'm strange like that).

From, the book, I gathered a bit about pidgin and creole languages. Apparently, a creole is evolved from a pidgin. Yeah, I didn't understand to begin with either. Google it or something... There was a little grammatical explanation of how Tok Pisin (pidgin language spoken in Papua New Guinea) use pronouns...
Tok Pisin                English Origin               Modern Meaning
mi                          me                               I, me
yu                          you                               you 
em                         him, 'em (them)            he, she, it, him, her
yumi                       you + me                      we, us (inclusive)
mipela                    me + fellow                  we, us (exclusive)
yupela                    you (plural)                    you
ol                           all                                they, them
mitupela                                                    the two of us (excluding you)
mitripela                                                   the three of us (excluding you)
yumitripela                                                the three of us (including you)
yutupela                                                    the two of you


See the similarities to English? I was surprised too.


And if you're interested in conjugating verbs in Latin, the book also featured this...
amo - I love
amas - you love
amat - he/she loves
amamus - we love
amatis - you love
amant - they love


There was also a section on English words with foreign origins that most people are probably unaware of (except things like sauna being Finnish, quite a lot of people I know seem to know that). However, I'll avoid posting all of those for you ;P
 
Besos ♥ 
Rachel

My Morning in 'Sweden'

So, today I visited Sweden IKEA - one of my absolute favourite shops. My favourite part of the entire store is the IKEA Food shop. Every time I go I always make sure to purchase these >>> They're just like gummy mushrooms like you find in a cinema pick & mix or something, except they're Swedish so they're obviously cooler ;) I was also intrigued by the Elderflower and Lingonberry Juice Drinks but in the carton form (see above for the bottle version). For the second time, I bought some KEX biscuits. I have a thing about dipping them in icing so they go a little soft, I really love them like that for some reason (I did have a picture and then it deleted it and wouldn't post so I can't be bothered going to find another...)


Tomorrow I have two uni open days (Sheffield and Manchester) to get to, ugh, can't wait... We're at Sheffield in the morning and Manchester for the afternoon. I'm going to need coffee and an interest in the talks we're attending to survive, though I imagine the interest won't be there when it gets to the boring bits/the talks are an hour in. Yayyyy...


Hope you all enjoyed the jewellery tutorial last night. Have any of you ever tried any IKEA food? Anything you recommend for a cheese-hating vegetarian?


Kyssar ♥ 
Rachel