I can’t think of a creative title.
September 22, 2006 – 10:55 pmTaco Time is far superior to Taco Bell. I mean, Taco Bell doesn’t have the crisp pinto bean burritos and Mexi-fries.
Anyway, over at FMH is a great post about recent LDS church activity ’statistics’. I recommend reading it, for those who are interested. I put statistics in quotes, because the source of the information is unknown, but to sum it up: 70% of 18-30 year-old members leave the church at some point in their lives. Whether this is accurate or whether the number is higher or lower isn’t the point, really, but it does open the floor for some discussion. I found one comment interesting (#22):
…The overemphasis on missions, temple, and motherhood teaches many youth to think that if they don’t go on a mission, haven’t been to the temple, and don’t have kids, they don’t fit the Mormon ideal and aren’t wanted. The Church (and I mean the rank-and-file members and the local program) has to figure out that non-mission young men can still be good Mormons and that unmarried young women still have a place in the regular program. I think the proliferation of singles wards has unintentionally allowed the Church to bracket the 18-30 age group rather than take them seriously. So many of them vote with their feet. It’s easier to see the problem than to solve it, though.
I fall in the 18-30 bracket the commenter refers to, as well as one of the mentioned non-mission boys. I don’t know. Never mind, it’s not a big deal.
I have been trying to find something cool to show you about Akkadian. Right now, all I have to say is that as far as can be shown by orthography Akkadian lost several Proto-Semitic phonemes. While it is hypothesized that PS had 29 consonantal phonemes, Akkadian had only 19:
b p d t ṭ š z s ṣ l g k q ḫ m n r w y.
One more thing to mention: a week ago my Syntax professor gave an example of linguistic variation in English by citing something we say in Utah that bugged him as a New Englander. Utahans often say things like this: anymore you can’t find good campsites in the Wasatch. This sounds okay to me. I think I have said this/do say this. How about you?
3 Responses to “I can’t think of a creative title.”
Wait, “anymore you can’t” as the beginning of a sentence? I have never heard that…huh. I’m with your professor there.
By Sasha on Sep 23, 2006
Same here. Anymore first? Why not anyway?
By Emily on Sep 24, 2006
That particular example sounds wrong, but I do similar things. I’ve been known to say, for example, “Probably I should do my homework.” I also prefer “I think there isn’t a quiz tomorrow” to “I don’t think there’s a quiz tomorrow.” These are things I’ve only been doing recently (in the past couple years), however, and as far as I know they’re completely by choice. The first I do simply to vary my speech patterns, while the second is because the placement of the negative seems more correct (i.e., if someone asks me whether there’s a quiz tomorrow, they’re not interested in what I -don’t- think).
By Daniel on Sep 24, 2006