E is for ... Etymology

One of my Year 6 pupils last week asked why I was teaching them Latin since it was a "dead language". After pretending to have been physically wounded by the question - as you would - I calmly explained that Latin has influenced many modern languages, including our own, and that learning it helps us to understand the structure of ours, and lots of other languages that are still spoken today. She didn't seem convinced so we moved swiftly on.

The truth is (and it pains me to say it) that Latin is not essential to a child's education; some of my best friends are non-Latin-learners who function just fine in society. What it did for me, though, was to ignite a curiosity about language which has continued beyond my days in full-time education.

Etymology is basically the study of the origins of words and, although I'm no etymologist (I'm a Classicist), I bloody love learning about where our words come from. I also delight in telling other people about the origins of words as and when I discover them. People don't always delight in hearing about this ...

Now, because I've already written a bloglet about etymology (specifically words with origins in Ancient Greek), I'll try to avoid repeating myself. If you like what you see here, though, you might like to try this one.

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Have you ever wondered why the English word for a female offspring looks so odd?

daughter

I mean, look at it. Ask a young child who has never seen the word written down to spell it and you might end up with 'dorter' or 'dauta' or any number of variations, but I doubt you'd get 'daughter' because the word just can't be spelt phonetically. So why the Dickens is it spelt like that? Well, we can thank the ancient Greeks. Their word for daughter was 'thugater'. Unlike us, they pronounced the 'g', but on looks alone, doesn't their word look spookily familiar to ours?

Don't you think that's amazing? That a word we use today so closely resembles one which people were using over 2000 years ago?

THAT, my friends, is why I like etymology so much. Words and languages are changing all the time but there's something rather exciting, and somewhat comforting, about knowing that humans were using words which sometimes looked and sounded like ones we're still using now.

D is for ... Dos and Don'ts

Some dos and don'ts of life which I've discovered during my 24 years on this planet.

Do
- Try things, even if you're not sure where they'll lead. My PGCE course last year probably put me off
  full time teaching for life, or at least a few years, but I got friends out of it, and now I know one thing
  which I don't want to do with my life, so I'm closer to working out what I WILL do with it.
- Learn and use grammar/punctuation properly. Life's short, but not too short to take a moment to
  consider whether you actually need that apostrophe or not.
- Learn Latin: it's awesome.
- Wear hats. As many different ones as possible.
- Fart in public. Just the once to see if you can get away with it.

Don't
- Be afraid to like what you like, no matter how old you are. I play with Lego because it's fun, I
  watch Spongebob because it makes me laugh and I'm learning to knit because I think it's cool.
- Worry too much about what people think of you. I reckon the degree to which you worry about what
  someone thinks of you should be directly proportional to how much you respect and like them.
- Live like everyday was your last: you'd make yourself sick.
- Use washing up liquid as a substitute for washing machine tablets. Doesn't work: floods the kitchen.

And if you take just one thing from this bloglet, I hope it's this:

Don't, whatever you do, ever grow up.

C is for ... Cake

Before I start, I should make it clear that THIS IS NOT MY RECIPE. It belongs to those lovely people at the Hummingbird Bakery. If you try and like this recipe, then I would highly recommend you buy their book.

So, as I mentioned, 'c' is for cake. Specifically my favourite cake, Chocolate Guiness Cake. You need to have a go at making this cake. You can thank me later.

For the sponge
- 250ml (9fl oz) Guinness
- 250g (9 oz) unsalted butter
- 80g (3 oz) cocoa powder
- 400g (14 oz) caster sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla essence
- 140ml (5fl oz) buttermilk
- 280g (10 oz) plain flour
- 2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 1/2 tsp baking powder

For the frosting
- 50g (1 3/4 oz) unsalted butter, softened
- 300g (10 1/2 oz) icing sugar
- 125g (4 1/2 oz) full-fat cream cheese
- Cocoa powder for dusting

You will also need a 23cm (9 in) diameter spring-form cake tin.

1. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees celsius (325 farenheit), then line the base of the tin with baking 
    parchment.

2. Pour the Guinness into a saucepan, add the butter and gently heat until it has melted. Remove the
    pan from the heat and stir the cocoa powder and sugar into the warm liquid. Mix together the eggs,
    vanilla essence and buttermilk by hand in a jug or bowl, and then add this to the mixture in the 
    pan.

3. Sift together the remaining sponge ingredients into a large bowl or into the bowl of a freestanding
    electric mixer. Using the mixer with the paddle attachment or a hand-held electric whisk, set on a
    low speed, pour in the contents of the pan. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and continue to mix
    thoroughly until all the ingredients are incorporated.

4. Pour the batter into the prepared cake tin and bake for approximately 45 minutes (when I've made
    this cake it's taken much longer, if not double the amount of time) or until the sponge bounces
    back when lightly pressed and a skewer inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Set
    aside to cool, and then remove from the tine on to a wire rack, making sure the cake is cold to the
    touch before you frost it.

5. Using an electric whisk, mix the butter and icing sugar together until there are no large lumps of
    butter and it is fully combined with the sugar in a sandy mixture (sometimes it's a good idea to add
    some of the cream cheese to stop the icing sugar flying everywhere). Add the cream cheese and
    mix in a low speed, then increase the speed to medium and beat until the frosting is light and
    fluffy.

6. Place the cooled cake onto a plate and top generously with the cream cheese frosting. The cake can
    be decorated with a light dusting of cocoa powder.

7. Get milk to drink with cake. Eat cake.

B is for ... Buttons

It's not an obsession or anything ... but I kind of collect buttons.

Does it count as 'collecting' when you secretly pocket them from the pavement when no one is watching?

I gather that a button can be a different thing depending on which side of the Atlantic you live on. As far as I'm concerned, I'm talking about these little guys.

Don't ask me why I started collecting buttons: I can't remember there ever being a logical reason behind it, but like all collections (and Pringles) once you pop you just can't stop. You know what I mean.

I think (and I'm really not entirely sure), that I graduated from 'having a few extra buttons' to 'owning a button collection' at some point during university. This was mostly due to the fact that awareness of my fondness for buttons grew among friends and family, so that I would regularly (probably two or three times a week at my most buttony-affluent of times) hear,

"Oh Becky, I found some buttons for you."

Which would duly be followed by a "thank you" and an inspection of the newest recruitment to the collection.

Like most collections, my button hoard, is pretty useless. I don't do anything with the little blighters apart from keep them in a jar and look at them from time to time. Recently I've realised that this is a horribly pathetic life for my poor buttons and so have decided to endeavour to put them to good use by sewing them onto bags and cushions and other things beginning with 'p'.

But that's a whole different bloglet.

A is for ... Anagrams

For those of you who may have stumbled across my humble little blog and not know what's going on, I'm currently taking part in a challenge to post a new blog entry (I refer to them lovingly as 'bloglets') on every day of April, where each entry will be about topics beginning with a different letter of the alphabet. Today is day one.

So, as the title suggests, 'A' is for anagrams.

Mr. Google defines an anagram as 'a word, phrase or name formed by arranging the letters of another'. I like this definition but I would also add that it's better when the anagram is somehow amusing. Pretty much everything in life is better if it's amusing.
So, for the remainder of this short but sweet bloglet, please enjoy some of my favourite anagrams:

Astronomer = Moon starer

Desperation = A rope ends it

Margaret Thatcher = That great charmer

The eyes = They see

Nurse Florence Nightingale = Heroine curing fallen gents

Eleven plus two = Twelve plus one

To be or not to be, that is the question, whether it's nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. = In one of the Bard's best-thought-of tragedies, our insistent hero, Hamlet, queries on two fronts about how life turns rotten.

President Clinton of the USA = To copulate, he finds interns




Note: I didn't think of all these anagrams: I'm not that patient. Here are the websites I pinched them from.
One, Two, Three