I continue to watch Jeopardy! five nights a week, and there continue to be times when no contestant knows the answer but I do.
Here is a partial list of correct answers I have found myself yelling at my television set in recent weeks, to no avail:
What is Cape Cod? (the clue included the words 'Massachusetts' and 'peninsula')
What is Cambodia?
Who is Valerie Harper?
What are the Caucusus?
What is Plantagenet?
What is Chancellor?
What is Jamestown?
What is Desire Under the Elms?
What is Song Of Myself?
What is the Stone Age?
What is Hadrian's Wall?
What is smelt?
Who is Joshua? (successor of Moses)
What is Ireland?
What is Seven Days In May?
What is laying on of hands?
What are mustangs?
Who is Ralph Waldo Emerson? (wrote "Concord Hymn" and "Self-Reliance")
This evening there were two more:
What is Lake Superior? (lake in which the Edmund Fitzgerald sank)
What is the Andrea Doria? (ship that sank in 1956 that was named for this Italian admiral)
Well, that's more than enough of that.
Here's something either truly trivial or truly fascinating. I became aware of it back in 1969 when I spent an entire month, the month of February, in Sweden. It's true. I flew out of Fort Lauderdale on February 1st and I flew back on March 1st -- and as the old joke goes, boy, were my arms tired.
It has to do with grandparents. Every language has words for one's grandmother and one's grandfather, I'm sure, but since every person has two grandmothers and two grandfathers it is necessary in English to add the adjective 'maternal' or 'paternal' to indicate which ones you mean. Not so in Sweden.
In Swedish, mother is 'mor' and father is 'far' and there are special words for all four of a person's grandparents. Your mother's parents are 'mormor' and 'morfar'. Your father's parents are 'farmor' and 'farfar'. I am not kidding.
If you know of another language that does this, please tell me in the comments.
My family , German, always said Uncle and used the surname rather than the given name!
ReplyDeleteRed, how did your grandmother feel about being called Uncle? Seriously, though, you didn’t say grossmutter and grossvater?
DeleteGrandparents are usually called Oma (grandmother) & Opa (grandfather) in German, Dutch & Afrikaans (Dutch dialect, which is my first language).
DeleteMa Goose, thanks for the correction. Oma and Opa sound much more affectionate and casual than what I said. I think Google Translate had given me those.
DeleteYou're welcome. Yep, google does that. I speak all of the above languages and my husband used to google some of the things I'd write in Afrikaans. The translations were hilarious and many times way off. It probably gave you grossmutter when you typed in grandmother, compared to oma for grandma. All those languages, including Flemish (spoken in Belgium) sound similar though.
DeleteI love Jeopardy too. I completely understand your frustration when contestants don't know the answers that you do. I yell out the answers too...lol
DeleteYou should try signing up for the show. With all your knowledge you might just end up as a contestant.
Ms Goose, I do apologize for calling you Ma Goose in my reply to your first comment. It was purely unintentional. I was using my phone’s keyboard instead of my computer and apparently I have fat fingers! Your language info is fascinating.
DeleteBack in 2004 I qualified for Jeopardy at their Atlanta auditions. Their team were in town for two days and held several sessions each day at a major downtown hotel. In the session I attended, I was one of only 4 who were selected out of about 50 who tried out. I had answered 59 out of 60 questions correctly on their written test. I still remember that the one question I missed was Who is Renee Zellweiger? because we are not big moviegoers. The clue was something about Bridget Jones's Diary and I guessed Gwyneth Paltrow! The four of us then played actual games with actual buzzers, had our pictures taken individually, and filled out a form of personal information. We were told the info would be kept on file for 14 months but I was never called up to go to California. This was actually during the time Ken Jennings was winning day after day after day, so it's probably just as well.
Next month I will be 80 and a lot of trivia has gone over the dam or under the bridge since then. Nowadays watching the nightly programs I can answer only about half of the 61 questions on each program. Dexterity with the buzzer, speed of recall, and the luck of the draw on category subjects are also factors on the actual program that we sitting at home yelling answers at the television set don’t have to contend with!
Norwegian is the same but then many words are.
ReplyDeleteOff Topic, I heard that Florida doesn't have any Covid restrictions. Florida can't be an oasis of sanity in a world gone mad. I worked in both Ft. Lauderdale and Miami and they were all bat shit crazy. I felt completely at home.
Adrian, I wondered about Norwegian. Thank you for confirming my suspicions. South Florida has gone from sane to insane as it has turned from red to blue (except for families from Cuba). That may be an oversimplification.
DeleteP.S. - Google Translate says the Norwegian words are bestemor and bestefar, and gives only two words, not four.
DeleteYou are smarter than those contestants on Jeopardy!
ReplyDeleteInteresting about the special words for grandparents. Of course I had to google, and I think India has special words for grandparents. ;)
Dida Dadu India - Bengali* - maternal
Thakur-ma Thakur-da or Thakur-dada India - Bengali* - paternal
Nanni Naana India: Gujarati*, Hindi*, Urdu* - maternal
Daadi Daada India: Gujarati*, Hindi*, Urdu* - paternal
Of course, my kids called my Dad, PopPop and my Mom, Grandma. She didn't want to be called Granny.
What do your grandchildren call you?
Kathy, thank you for the info about India. I used to work with a young woman whose parents came from India and the language spoken in their home was Gujarati. My friend referred to her cousins and her nieces as her sisters, which I found a little strange.
DeleteMrs. RWP is Nana and I am Grandpa. Thank you for asking.
I am Grandma Emma. It just seems easier. Interesting post.
ReplyDeleteGrandma Emma, pardon the heck out of me for failing to respond to your comment in a timely manner (it has been 12 days now). As they say when you're waiting in a telephone queue, "Your comments are important to us and an agent will be with you shortly"....sorry again that I dropped the ball.
DeleteNoticing you mention calling cousins sisters in your response to Kathy, I also find this strange but it goes on around here too in some families. It can be very confusing.
ReplyDeleteBy the way I deleted your comment last night because I did not want the blogger you referred to anywhere near my blog let alone named in it.
Rachel, I guess you and I like a 'black and white' world with specific names for specific things. Nieces and cousins as sisters gets into a decidedly grey area, n'est-ce pas?
DeleteNow problem about deleting you-know-who's name from your blog's comment section. I like him (at times) as a person but his take on things (British, views) often leave one frustrated. He is Labour, liberal, atheist -- everything I'm not. He admits to having been a choirboy in the CofE as a boy. I have enough trouble keeping myself on track without stewing over him.
'Now problem' should have been 'No problem'....
Delete