1. How old were you when you discovered British TV?: I was fairly young, maybe 7?  I wanted to watch _Flying Circus_ on PBS, but my father caught me and turned off the TV.  (It was a little too adult, I suppose, for a child.)  The next show I discoverd was _Fawlty Towers_; PBS really lauded that show.

2. Would you ever want to go back to Iceland?: Definitely.  But only if I don't have to live with a roommate.  I don't handle rooming with people I don't know very well, and the roommate I had in Iceland was the complete opposite of me.  I would also prefer being there in the summer.

3. If you could visit another time period, when would you go (and where)?: Can I pick two?  I would like to visit the Old English Period in England.  (I would have to get good enough in the language to speak it rather than simply reading it.)  We have so little from that time period in terms of literature that has survived.  Maybe I could record some stories and/or rescue some manuscripts?  I would also like to visit the so-called Minoan Period on Crete.  Again - - we know so little about that culture.  (I would also like to visit Victorian England, but that's mainly because I would like to meet John Stuart Mill and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.)

4. What is your favorite flavor?: For candy: sour apple; for ice cream: chocolate or Blue Bell chocolate chip; in general?: strawberry

5. What was an important turning point in your life?: The obvious thing would be now, when I have finally got a promising career going.  But getting over somebody I truly loved (like nobody else I had ever met) but who did not care about me is another major one.  It's not original, I know.  But I am now a stronger, more independent person thanks to the experience.

As far as the issue of a standardized language goes: I do see a difference in the students I have had in the past few years. More of them seem to write the way they talk, for instance. And it's true that in early forms of English writing, such things as spelling did vary. If you look at an early medieval manuscript, you see that they did not have the same concept of "layout" (paragraph indentation, etc.) as we do. (This does not mean that they didn't ever have "markers" for changes in topic.)

Having said that, I wonder just how far we can carry this "rethinking of standardized language" thing. As many linguists will argue, the way you determine the "success" of a language is whether or not information is being communicated fairly effectively (I know it's more complicated than that. I am aware, for instance, about what a deconstructionist would say about language.)

It seems to me that to a certain extent, we do need some form of standardization to make sure that as many people who speak, say, "English" can understand us as possible. Perhaps in the U.S. (where I live) dialects tend not to be so different, but that is not the case in other parts of the world (and it really isn't true for all of the U.S. either). I am not an expert on German, but my understanding is that the different dialects can vary so much that a person who speaks one dialect would have trouble communicating with people who speak a different dialect - - so there's standard German.

I'm by no mean overly prescriptive in my relationship to language. I just think that it's useful to try to have a "common" form of a language. (Now, whether or not everyone has access to the learning of that "common" form is another important issue, as is how we determine what the "common" form should be.)

Okay, I wrote way too much, my head is spinning, and what do I know about all this anyway?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=9Px9CyYAI5c

http://youtube.com/watch?v=z3V698JzqC0