Another day of heatwave, but also a busy day for Lois and me, because we have to creak and squeak our way around, somehow trying to temporarily convert our little house-for-two-old-codgers into a house-for-five, including two 10-year-olds, as we prepare to host our daughter Sarah and our twin granddaughters Lily and Jessica for one night only tonight.
It's all the usual stuff: -
(1) drive early (9 am) to Warner's Supermarket in Upton-on-Severn to get food that doesn't need the oven putting on - as today is going to be another "Phew what a scorcher" day.
(2) clear all the books and papers off the top of the guest beds - Bedroom 2 is Lois's "office" and Bedroom 3 is mine, and the guest beds double as our office desks and filing-cabinets etc.
(3) convert the dining-table in our tiny kitchen-diner from a 2-old-codger-seater to a family-size 5-seater, and the same for the table outside on the patio.
(4) Dust and vacuum throughout, and do as much food-pre-preparation as makes sense.
Then, when it's all done, you go to bed in the afternoon, and turn the floor-mounted top-of-bed-level electric fan to "max", and try to get a bit of peace and quiet before the visit starts.
And that's the way you do it! See? Simples, really, isn't it!
16:00 I manage to get some time to look at my smartphone and I browse the quora forum website. And I'm delighted to see that one of our favourite pundits, Susanna Viljanen (crazy name, crazy gal!) has been weighing in on the vexed question of "How did all the 'h's in the French language become silent, for example 'hibou' (owl), 'honeur' (honour) etc ?"
Susanna writes, "The /h/ phoneme had already disappeared in the Latin language by the Early Imperial era - during the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161-180 AD). It is one of the first documented changes in the transition of Classical Latin into "sermo vulgaris" (Low Latin) and Proto-Romance (the ancestor of French, Spanish, Italian etc).
So /h/ was completely silent in Proto-Romance. It was later reintroduced into Gallia (Gaul) by Germanic invaders, and into Romania by the Slavs.
Moreover, in Spain, the /f/ in the beginning of the word became /h/ (Latin falco [=falcon]> Spanish halcon) and the affricates which evolved from /g/ before /e/ and /i/ have transitioned into a strong ‘h’ phoneme in Spanish (general > /hene’ral/). This same process is currently happening in Brazilian Portuguese, where the initial r is becoming /h/ (rio > /hi:u/).
In French, the situation was complicated. There used to be “silent h” in those words which had their roots in Latin, such as heure (hour, from Latin hora), but a “voiced h” in those words which had their roots in Germanic, such as hache (hatchet), but this distinction disappeared in the 18th century.
The voiced h has survived in some French dialects, notably in Norman French - the locals pronounce Harfleur with clear /h/ phoneme.
Fascinating stuff! And it's interesting that, in English, we still pronounce the words 'honour' and 'hour', for example, with a silent 'h', and some very posh people do the same with 'hotel'. And Americans still do it with 'herb' and 'herbal' etc.
Fascinating stuff!!! [You've said that once already! - Ed]
17:00 Lois and I decide to make use of our last hour of quiet by doing the puzzles in next week's Radio Times. And do you know, once again we get an answer on "Pointless" - an anagram of Shakespeare's Cymbeline - that none of the Radio Times magazine's panel of 100 readers gets.
We must be something special, we two, that's for sure! [I can't believe you really think that! - Ed]
18:30 There's a ring at the doorbell, and suddenly mine and Lois's quiet life is turned upside-down, because Sarah and the twins arrive from Alcester - Sarah was working at her accountancy job in Evesham till 5pm and it's the end of her working week of course.
What a total total total change for Lois and me! And the twins just cannot stop talking, they're so excited, which is so refreshing for Lois and me, as well.
For the twins, this week, life has suddenly become exciting again, and it's so lovely to see that excitement - after over a year of being quietly home-schooled by dad Francis, out in the quiet of the Australian bush, suddenly they've had their first 4 days at an English village school, with 30 or so English children to learn with and to play with, and their nice teacher, Mr Palmer.
And they've been learning about all sorts of interesting things, like science, astronomy etc. Jessica tells me all about the planets, their temperature ranges, the length of their days and years, how many moons they've got - you know the kind of thing - and she knows it all by heart, just because she's so interested.
Isn't that marvellous?!!!!
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