One year and two days ago, Notes from a Linguistic Mystic first went online.
Now, 367 days and 44,000+ unique visitors later, LingMystic is celebrating its first birthday.
This year has been above and beyond any of my expectations. In addition to being interviewed by the Australian State Press, I’ve been linked on Wikipedia in several places, and I get 100+ hits from google each day for people looking for linguistics information. It seems that the word is definitely getting out, and that brings me happiness.
However, what brings me the most joy and amazement is the loyal and fascinating group of people who read my site frequently and comment on my articles. It’s wonderful to hear that other people find these ideas useful and interesting, and it’s a great motivation. All comments, positive and negative, help me improve the site and give me new perspectives. I really do appreciate the involvement of the readers, and it really makes writing here even more worthwhile.
Gazing down the road
So, what’s planned for the next year of Notes from a Linguistic Mystic?
Well, the simple answer is more of the same. I’m hoping to continue writing whenever I get the chance and get an interesting idea, and I’ve got some very interesting topics in mind. I’m hoping to build on my past work with some longer, more involved posts about subjects about which I’m really knowledgeable, and I’m hoping to continue being a resource for people searching about the internet. However, there are also changes I’m planning to make.
I’ve found myself posting more and more on subjects that I suspect mainstream readers will find interesting, but that I’m not as knowledgeable or interested in. Although it certainly does succeed in getting up the numbers of viewers, I’m realizing that it makes this site less enjoyable for me to write and less credible for you to read. So, I’m going to return to my earlier tradition, writing about what interests me, rather than what I think would interest you. This doesn’t mean that I’m going to try to be boring, and I’m going to do my damnedest to keep the postings readable and interesting to all readers. Please feel free to guide me along this path, letting me know what you think of the posts and letting me know if there was anything you didn’t understand.
Also, I’ll be diversifying a bit. I’ve been invited to Guest-Blog for an article at another site (I’ll announce it formally when I’ve finished the post), and I’m also planning some other sub-projects. Although the Linguistic Mystic blog will always be my main presence on the internet, I’m hoping that there might be some other ways of bringing interesting language to the masses.
So, that said, thanks for a year of reading, and here’s to another year of writing.
Finally, some Linguisticism
Since I do my best to include some linguistics in every post, and given today’s post’s theme, I’d like to talk for a moment about the Spanish word for “year”, año. Now, as most Spanish learners will find out, it’s very important that the tilde (~) be included over the “n” in this word, telling us that the word is pronounced pronounced “anyo” (/ɑɲjo/).
Why, you might ask? Well, without the tilde, we have ano, which is the Spanish word for “anus”.
Sometimes, one can get away without accents and diacritics, but you’re going to want to pay close attention to the tilde. That is, unless you’d actually like to wish your friends a happy new anus.
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My students were often asked in an email exchange with Northamericans:
Cuántos anos tiene?
One of my students asked: Haven’t they got only one?
Congratulations to Linguistic Mystic for its first birthday. A year full of good posts. Wish you many more.
Spanish año is from Latin annus and ano is from ānus (the latter not to be confused with anus, (a fourth declension noun meaning ‘old lady’). I wonder how Latin geminate n yielded ñ in Spanish.
Congrats on your anniversary! Looking forward to another year of mysticism!
Thank-you, I’ve been wondering what the spanish word for anus was.
Congratulations on your 1 year anniversary. I’m putting you in my blogroll, I think I’ll learn a lot. :smile:
I always check your website every once in awhile, but I have yet to leave a comment (though I might have left one longgg ago). Anyhow, I wanted to congratulate you on this year-long accomplishment and let you know that you not only affect the lives of ppl around you, but also ppl from all-around the world thru this website. You should be proud. ~*Congratulations*~
-your friend, guess who ;)
Congratulations on the year. I only discovered you a few months ago, but I try and read your posts as much as I can. A point of order though, news.com.au is not Australia’s State Press; that title belongs to the Australian Broadcast Commission, abc.net.au.
Re: Anuses and years, the same Latin geminate/simplicate opposition holds in Italian. A teacher of mine back in my undergraduate years was quick to point out the difference between quanti anni hai and quanti ani hai. Just how a geminate/simplicate contrast in Latin became a palatal/alveolar contrast in Spanish still eludes me. Does Spanish retain a consonantal length contrast? If not, it might be hypothesised that during the loss of the geminate, the imperative to keep certain forms differentiated forced the contrast to take on a different phonological basis – if that makes any sense outside my head.
Regarding your story about the difference between ano with and without the tilde: I have a language training center in Italy and a similar difference exists in the Italian language between “anno” (year) and “ano” (anus). In Italian it is very important to carefully enunciate each ‘n’ separately, but being American, I find this difficult, as a double consonant in the middle of an English word doesn’t change the pronunciation much and in any case is not usually going to change the meaning. Anyway, shortly after my arrival here in Italy back in 1984, I went to the doctor for the first time and haltingly tried to state my age in my best Italian – “Ho 37 ani”, I said. The doctor raised his eyebrows, regarded me a moment, then smiled wryly and calmly asked “Very interesting! Would you kindly disrobe and show me where all these orafices are?”
Ken