calling doctor bombay, emergency! come right away

Though Czech is the adjectival form and perhaps the additional republic makes the country sound as if it has to legitimise its standing somehow, the proposal of the Czech Republic (Česká republika) to change its English and hence international handle to Czechia smacks to me like a page from Gregor Samsa’s metamorphosis, in waking up to find oneself transformed in order to keep up with the times—those times being rather fickle and unperturbable.
Since the divorce from Slovakia, the country has been known as Tschechien in the German Sprachraum, which to my ears sounded too close to Tschetsschenien (Chechnya) and I feel that this forced change is confusing as well—though not exactly without some historical precedence, going back to latinate-loving Englanders observing the Holy Roman Empire’s tenant states. One has to wonder about exonymy and endonymy and the success rate of rebranding.

that glaswegian, tall chavvy fighting idiot of old

Via the always excellent Nag on the Lake, we learn about the recent surfacing of a list of personae non-grata from the legendary venue, the Half Moon pub of the Herne Hill district in London, which was closed due to flooding in 2013 but has yet to be reopened.
This guide of unwelcome, potentially troublesome patrons is perfectly British, pretty abusive and gangsterish too but pretty amusing all the same and I am glad someone bothered to share, reminding me of that burgeoning practise of asking customers names so they can inform you when your order is ready—one which I hope does not catch on since I rather like us being called the Englishmen or the doctors. There’s no Sodding McSodface on this list and most would require no further explanation, but Deaf Adam earned his lifelong ban for mistaking Coldplay for the Rolling Stones on the jukebox.

brav und borrel or thesaurus of feels

Professor and contributor to The Journal of Positive Psychology, Tim Lomas, aims to enrich our emotional landscape with a collection of some two hundred terms that have no equivalent in English. One can see the abstract at the journal’s website that began this continuing undertaking, but Boing Boing goes one further, sharing a selection of some of the terms of endearment (and they are positive and fulfilling sentiments in the main).

It’s hard to say if stocking our quivers with more precise, nuanced words improves our emotive literacy but I agree that the project and further investigation is worthwhile for its own sake. Some of my favourites included:

Rare English: grok—understanding so thoroughly that the observer becomes part of the observed

Icelandic: að jenna—perseverance for seeing a boring chore through

Hindi: talanoa—gossip as a social-adhesive

Greek: ξενία—recognising the importance of hospitality

Be sure to check out Boing Boing’s choices and learn more about the study, perhaps finding a new way of expressing what resonates with you. I especially appreciated how the article was categorized with the tag “the meaning of liff,” in reference to the Douglas Adams collaboration to fill lexical gaps for relatable experiences for which there was beforehand no adequate expression.

biotop oder flyover

With nice weather and reckoned sufficient time, I (possibly impulsively) decided to meet a couple of colleagues for dinner in Mainz under my own power and set out crossing the Rhein on foot from the Hessen capital of Wiesbaden to the adjacent capital of Rheinland-Pfalz. It’s a funny and persistent syndrome that’s mostly not been a disservice, but trying to imagine distances in my head are without fail translated to something much smaller, a sandbox that one can just dart from one corner to another without any investment of time and energy.

It always ends well, in any case, and I was treated to vistas that one could not appreciate at higher speeds, certainly not from the passenger seat of a car, and the islands of industry and the contemplative lagoons at rest and the green verge that buffered the city from the shore. I knew the general direction but away from the clearly marked path, I had a clever application in my pocket that gave me a nudge if I was marching in the opposite directly but did not reign in my exploration overmuch. Truly away from the roads and taking the most direct routes, given my mode of transportation, I was astounded to find myself hiking through a really amazing and unexpected nature reserve just above the river’s floodplain—unseen but infinitely more interesting than some fallow-field of highway median.
I found myself in a landscape of sand dunes (der Mainzer Großer Sand), whose pronounced topography did not present a struggle but was distinctly not flat, the sort of geometry one grows unaccustomed to along more manicured trails.
This ancient environment was host to tall cypress trees and other flora that belonged in more Mediterranean climes, owing to the fact that although nutrient poor, sand was far better at holding heat.  Approaching the boroughs of Mombach and Gonsenheim, the dunes made the transition into a great forest, only gently interrupted with a few paths, that is the largest contiguous one in the region at seven square-kilometers, a wood of some eighteen-hundred acres. Despite being often turned around and stopping to marvel at the landscape, I still made it on time but with none to spare.