I am American, not Irish!

 “On St. Patrick’s Day, everyone is Irish!”  Really?  Just what is Irish?  Is it the ruffian who flung his elbow in my face as he passed me in Killkenny?  Or is it the people named McGree who invited me to their home for dinner?  Is it the parish priest who let me look through church records?  Or is it the woman who smoked in the no-smoking car on the train back to Dublin.  Just like any other group, ethnic, religious, or skin hue, there are many different behaviors from the generous to the hateful.

One St. Patrick’s Day, my mother proclaimed that we were “Orange-Irish”.  I don’t think she had a clue.  If she knew the ancestry of my paternal grandfather, she certainly didn’t pass it on to me.  Neither did my German-born paternal grandmother.

From all the genealogical research I’ve done, it seems that the surname Magree, McGree, or MacGree comes from Ireland.  However, from all the genealogical research I’ve done, I have found no ancestor in my male line that was definitively born in Ireland.

The closest was my great grandfather, John J.R. Magree, who variously claimed to be born in Brooklyn or England.  In the last year or two I found that he was born in Liverpool of an American and a woman living in Liverpool.  Her name was Margaret Pope.  Her father was a customs officer, and so I assume she was not born in Ireland.

John James Richard Magree’s father was John Cornelius Magree, who generally went by John C. Magree.  I did find a record of his getting his seaman’s certificate in 1833 at the age of 15.  In the 1850 census he was listed first in a crew of a ship in New York or Brooklyn.   In 1851 he was the master of the ship Ivanhoe bringing about 400 immigrants from Liverpool to New York.  Most of the passengers were Irish.  I did not find a Margaret Pope or Margaret Magree in the passenger list.

I did link John C. Magree to his father twice.  John C.’s marriage document named his father as Vincent Magree.  The 1830 Census did list Vincent Magree’s household as containing a male about 12 years old.

With Ancestor,com, I can find no record other than these two of Vincent Magree.  I wonder if he (or others) anglicized his name from Vincenzo Magri to Vincent Magree.  I have found records where a Magri has also been named Magree.  It’s possible that my paternal line comes from Italy;  one relative told me that one of uncles looked “Spanish”.  I do know that I was one of the few “curly-haired” males in my family.

Just who are these “Irish” that the English of another time called a “race”?  We do know they were Celts who drove out another group.  Was this displaced group the “fairies”?  But then the Vikings came raping and pillaging.  After that another wave of Vikings came, but they were called Normans (Norse men).  But the Normans had settled in France, so are the Irish French?  Partly!  Names like Fitzpatrick come from the French Fils-Patrick, meaning son of Patrick.  Then the English came a-pillaging and taking land.  This invasion was so devastating that many Irish left for the Americas and Australia.

When the descendants of the Irish immigrants to Australia come to the United States, what do we call them?  Australians!

I do know that many grandchildren of people who immigrated to other countries are often labelled with their ancestry, but I don’t know if these labels persist for so many generations as they do in the U.S.  I enjoy springing the question “What nationality is the King of Sweden?”  By American reckoning he is French.  He is a descendant of one of Napoleon’s marshals: Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte!  Some often respond that Queen Elizabeth II is German.  She’s a descendant of Prince Albert of Saxony.

What are people who immigrate to the U.S. or their descendants called when they go back the “Old Country”?  Americans!   I read one Swedish novel where a man worked in Chicago for several years, came back to his home town, and was labelled as “American”.  I read another where a second-generation woman came back, could hardly speak Swedish, and was called “American”.

I was an “Ugly American” in Europe for six years.  If you read “The Ugly American” you know that he was the good guy in the local view and the “bad guy” in the expatriate community.  “The Ugly American” learned the language and customs of the host country, and he didn’t spend all of his time in the “country club” American community.

I worked on learning the languages of the countries I visited and used them both in speaking and reading.  A few others didn’t even make an attempt and were miserable.  In fact, one European colleague called me a “Northern European” because I worked at blending in.

But I can’t resist being the other kind of “Ugly American” in this country.  When someone says they are Swedish or Italian, I ask “Talar du svenska?” or “Parlai italiano?”  “Do you speak Swedish?” or “Do you speak Italian?”  Generally the response is either befuddlement or a negative reply.

So, this assumed descendant of some Irish immigrant won’t be drinking green beer on St. Patrick’s Day.  As much as he likes Guinness or Smithwick, he will probably be drinking a couple of glasses of Italian wine.  Sláinte or cin-cin!

Also printed in the Reader Weekly of Duluth, 2016-03-17 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2016/03/17/6888_i_am_american_not_irish.

P.S. About green beer and other "Irish" fare, see http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/dining/corned-beef-and-cabbage-not-so-irish-historians-say.html.

What did I learn in school?

I learned a lot but I’ve forgotten most of it.

I find I remember the classroom setting more than I do what was actually taught.  Maybe this is why so many of us think we were never taught about certain things.  I can still picture my first elementary school, buying Victory stamps, and the VE banner that was displayed.  I remember reading Dick and Jane and writing the numbers out to 200!

I remember many things about my second elementary school, but the classroom scenario that sticks out the most is the vote on the distance to the moon.  What, a vote on a scientific fact?  I remember a fourth-grade substitute science teacher doing this.  For years, I thought she didn’t know and was asking the class.  But she may have only been sampling the class.  I remember that incident more than I do how far is it to the moon.  Without looking it up, I’d say 250,000 miles. With all the moon shots in the news, you would think that number would stick better in my head. Is this one of those facts that get forgotten because we can always look it up if we really need to know?

I do remember learning typing and driving, probably the two most important life-long skills most of us need and use.  I do remember taking French in 8th grade, but I didn’t continue because I would rather learn printing.  How many people set type by hand now?  I took Latin in high school because I was advised that it was the basis for many other languages.  All I remember of that two and half-years was that I was elected president of the Latin club, and we read an abridged “Aeneid” and “Horatio at the Bridge”.  I remember a music teacher telling us that anyone with intelligence can learn to sing.  I didn’t get around to learning until I was in my 60s, and now I don’t practice enough to keep my voice in shape.

I don’t remember learning much about World War II in school.  That may because we might have been using textbooks that hadn’t been updated.  Also the teacher was not very inspiring.  The only history I remember from that whole year is a picture of the Haymarket Square riot in a text book. The picture was on the right-hand page of the small but thick orange textbook.  The picture was an engraving from some archive; I don’t remember if it was a photograph or a drawing.  And I don’t remember much about the Haymarket Square riot other than there was lot of police violence.  It was probably labor related and took place in Chicago.

Was I taught about Hiroshima and Nagasaki in my American History class?  I don’t remember.  I had that class in 1954.  It could be that the textbook hadn’t been updated.  These events have been reported over and over for almost 70 years, and so it is hard to remember where I learned what.

Another digression: “, and so…”  Mr. Conrad, my 11th grade English teacher, frequently told us how to use "and so", but I don’t remember exactly what he prescribed.  This particular piece of grammar was almost the only thing I remember from the class.

I had Mister Rush for trigonometry and another class.  I don’t remember much of the material but I remember his punctuating his remarks with “When you go to Case…”  meaning Case Institute of Technology, now part of Case Western Reserve University.  Darned if five of us didn’t go to Case. Only two of us graduated, yours truly not being one.  But I got to come back for graduate school.

Now, Miss Palmer, I remember her well.  She was a fearsome taskmaster, but she taught Shakespeare well.  I enjoyed reading an act each day for homework for both “Hamlet” and “Macbeth”, and then we would reread each act a few scenes at a time.  She gave me a lifelong love of Shakespeare, but I have yet to read all of his plays.

Interestingly, I don’t remember taking much homework home.  I had two study halls most days and got most of it done in one of them.  The rest of my study hall time I read science fiction from the school library.

College and graduate school are also a blur.  I remember translating “Clementine” into French,  I remember reading Candide (English, condensed) and “Brothers Karamazov”.  On the latter, what did I care what the meaning of the mortar and pestle was?

How much do you remember of school?  For most of us, that is only what we use on a regular basis.  I have a Master’s in mathematics and I don’t remember anything from “Functions of Complex Variables” in graduate school.  I do remember the book was blue, I think the author was from India, and it is still on the right hand side of my book case, first shelf above the bottom shelf.

What we really learned in school was to learn.

Back to Nagasaki and Hiroshima, I remember reading about the horrible deaths both immediate and years later.  I remember that prisoners of war were killed in the blast.  I remember the justification that lives were “saved”.  I have long questioned how many kids’ lives is one soldier’s life worth.

Where I think I learned this is from reading newspapers regularly.  If your only news source is radio or TV you’ll never have time for all there is to know.  With newspapers, you have a larger selection of stories, you read them at your convenience, and with the Internet, you have a huge selection to choose from.

One of Mel's high school classmates said, "Learn something each day."  Mel often wishes he wouldn't forget it the next day.

Also published in Reader Weekly, 2014-08-14 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2014/08/14/3890_what_did_i_learn_in_school

Witty ditty on how to pronounce snow

Oh! It’s snowing and blowing and I am not knowing if I should be throwing or plowing!

Quips of the day - boom and hype

Paul Krugman used "prophets of boom" and "hype springs eternal" in his New York Times column of 2002-04-30, "Herd on the Street", also published in "The Great Unraveling", p. 75.

I think Krugman is a master of the English language as well as of economics.  Of the latter, his own Cassandra-like predictions have come true more often than not.  The people in power didn't listen to his warnings, he was right, and they still don't listen.

Another witty ditty mined from my mind

Ginger the singer was singed by something rude and lewd zinged from the crowd.

There are no porches in Portugal…

and there are no gulls.

Well, I am sure many houses in Portugal have verandas or porches and many beaches have many gulls.

However, if you consider how many Americans pronounce the word Portugal and how the Portuguese pronounce the name of their country, you will understand my quip.

Many American pronounce the name of the country as Porch-uh-guhl or Porch-you-guhl where "uh" is the most frequent vowel in the English language, the schwa, an unaccented form of a short u.  Some may get closer to the Portuguese pronunciation with Porch-uh-gahl.

In the Google Translate (http://translate.google.com/#en/pt/portugese), the English speaker says POUR-chyu-gahl, but the Portuguese speaker says Por-tu-GAHL with the "l" held a bit longer.

Due to popular demand…

…grammar rules have been changed.  We no longer have to write "because of…"

I have seen "due to" usage in so many press releases that I think the strict grammarians of my school days in the 40s and 50s have lost.

If you think about it, correct grammar and spelling are what people actually say and write, not what some grammarian dictates.  Even French, with the French Academy defending it, is changing and has been changing.  If you listen to French radio you will hear "le weekend" about as many times as you hear "le fin de semaine".

Did you notice another "rule" that I broke?  I avoid putting punctuation between quote marks unless the punctuation is part of the quote.

Consider

Did he say, "I don't believe that?"

and

Did he say, "I don't believe that"?

That is, did the quoted speaker ask a question (first example) or did he make a statement (second statement)?

More fun with English orthography

The sow could not be a farmer because she cannot sow seeds.
The sow could not be a homemaker because she cannot sew beads.

As long as Robin Hood had his bow, he would bow before no man.
The Viking stood in the bow with his bow.

My nationality is American

A favorite conversational item of many Americans is "What nationality are you?"  This happens often because we are a nation of immigrants from elsewhere or the descendants of immigrants.  But how is it that the nationality of someone from Canada is Canadian and from Australia is Australian?

One of my favorite comebacks is "What nationality is the King of Sweden?"  Following the male line back, he's French; he's descended from Marechal Bernadotte, one of Napoleon's marshals.

As for me, my paternal grandmother is the only immigrant among my grandparents; she was born in Silesia, at that time part of Germany.  The other three were all born in the United States.  As I hardly knew my grandmother, I didn't have much German influence.

Of my great-grandparents, four were born in Germany, three were born in England, and one supposedly was born in Brooklyn.  More about him later.  I never knew my German great-grandparents, and we never had any German traditions in our house.  I only knew my mother's paternal grandmother, and the only thing English I experienced from her was tea, with Carnation milk!

As for the supposedly Brooklyn-born great-grandfather, I've found some indications that he probably was born in Liverpool, England.  Most of the records for him give his name as John J.R. Magree, but Brooklyn has no birth certificate for him.  I did find two Liverpool records for the child John James Robert Magree.  His mother may have been Irish or English, but his father was John Cornelius Magree, probably the John C. Magree who was the master of the Ship Ivanhoe bringing immigrants from Liverpool to New York in Jan 1851.  There was no John J.R. Magree in the passenger list.  Interestingly, on his marriage record, John C.'s father was Vinsent Magree [sic], Vincent Magree was in Baltimore in the 1830 Census.

Other than possibly John C.s marriage in Liverpool, I have found no ancestor that I can link to Ireland.

My only Irish link to the name Magree is from Magree's I contacted in Australia.  They can trace their Magree ancestors to Kilkenny, Ireland, and even to some specific pieces of land.

Interestingly, on one St. Patrick's Day, my mother said "We are Orange Irish".  Other than her in-laws, she knew nothing of my father's grandparents.

Having lived in Italy for two years and in Sweden for four years, I like to kid that I am more Italian than many Americans that call themselves Italian and likewise for "Swedes".

Pronunciation inconsistencies in other languages

English isn't alone in different pronunciations for the same spelling.  Put the following phrase in the left box at translate.google.com/#sv/en/

Kerstin kör till kören övning

and click the speaker icon.

If you don't know Swedish, you'll be surprised at what you hear.

BTW, the first "kör" should be translated "drives" instead of "runs".

Where's the "W" in choir?

In English we pronounce "choir" to rhyme with "inquire", but there is neither a "w" in "choir" nor a "qu".

The answer is that English spelling never keeps up with English pronunciation.  See "Two, too, and to are pronounced the same, right?" and "How do you pronounce two, too, and to?"  And sometimes the spelling changes even if the pronunciation stays the same.

"Choir" was once spelled "quer" and an archaic form is "quire".  The "quer" (kwer) was from the then French word for "chorus".

You might think that the spelling and pronunciation of "choir" was also French, but "choir" (kwahr) is a variant of "fall".  The French use "chorale".  Apparently "choir" was somebody's idea of making English spelling conform more to Latin or French.  See "Linguists: why is 'choir' pronounced 'quire'?" for an amusing discussion.  For a more serious discussion of English spelling see "Why not Spelling Reform?"  It is a bit long and I have yet to finish it.

How do you pronounce fir, fur, and for?

You think the first two rhyme and the third rhymes with a number, then listen to several speakers.  Just as "to" has morphed into "tuh", "for" has morphed into "fer", rhyming with the first two words.  See "How do you pronounce two, too, and to?"

I was reminded of this when my son, a manager in a large company, recently said "fer" for "for" in casual conversation.

I have begun saying that there is no "correct" language, only that which people use.  We constantly see words or expressions that were once "unacceptable" have become commonplace.  When I was in grade school, teachers reminded us that "kid" was a baby goat, not a young person.  Now teachers talk about their students as their kids.

We don't need a tower of Babel to create different languages.  We do it all by ourselves, both in the short term as above but in the long term such as the various Romance languages or the divergence (and melding) of American and British English.

Fun with computer translations

To make some small improvement in our Italian skills, we go to a monthly conversation group.  Each month, the organizer emails a reminder, and this last time she asked us to let her know if we'll be coming.

I can read Italian books and newspapers with so-so comprehension, but I have trouble coming up with the simplest everyday phrases, especially if they are not in the present tense.  So, I called on the friendly, knowledgable folks at Google Translate.

"We will be there" -> "Ci saremo"

That's OK, but do I want to make a statement of certainty?

"We plan to be there" -> "Pensiamo di esserci"

But that seems to me to mean "we're thinking of being there", implying we haven't made up our minds yet.

"We hope to be there" -> "Speriamo di esserci"

Naw! Hope is not as certain as plan.  I guess I'll go with "Ci saremo" and hope that our plans work out:)

Interestingly, Google translated "Pensiamo di esserci" to "We plan to be".  My goodness, we plan to be lots of places for many years to come!

Oh yeah!  Since May 1 is Labor Day all over Europe, I asked Google to translate "labor day" into Italian.  It gave, I kid you not, "Labor day", and pronounced it "lahbor die".  However, if I put in "festa dei lavoratori" it gives "labor day".

Ciao!

To my Ukrainian reader

If you know Yuri from Kiev who was a graduate student at Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland, Ohio in 1960-1962, please say hello. Probably you don't know him, but it is surprising how often there is a connection. Nothing ventured, nothing gained!

I still remember translating English to English between him and a graduate student from India.

To my readers from around the world for the past week

Thank you!
Danke!
Спасибо!
Terima kasih/谢谢/Nandri
Thank you! Merci!
Terima kasih
תודה רבה
धन्यवाद
Дякю!
If you can't guess all the languages above, see the labels for some hints.

Computer translations

Some of you may have heard the joke about the first computer translation from English to Russian and back. Supposedly "The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" came back as the "The vodka is good but the meat is rotten."

We have some Russian guests and one of them used www.translate.ru, which translates whole sentences rather than just words. Almost everything I asked it to translate into Russian I asked it to translate back into English. If I didn't like the result, I reworded the English and tried again.

When I tried "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." the back translation was weaker but still close: "The spirit wishes, but the flesh is weak."

Note: You don't have to read Russian to use this translator. Use http://www.online-translator.com/Default.aspx?prmtlang=en instead.

How do you pronounce two, too, and to?

If you say that all three are pronounced the same, you aren't listening.

More often than not, to is pronounced tuh. I've heard radio announcers, politicians, and ordinary people of all kinds pronounce to with a schwa (an unaccented vowel) rather than with the oo sound. I've even heard English people use tuh.

It sort of proves my point that there is no "correct" language, only "current" language that people actually speak.

Stanley Lindholm (Dec. 9, 1926 - Sept. 14, 2011)

Ingen flicka,
Ingen snus,
Inga pengar,
What's the use?

This Swedish/English doggerel was a favorite of Stan. It means

No girl,
No snuff,
No money,
What's the use?

The use, Stan, was all the friends you made at Bixby's Coffee Shop in Duluth. Despite the setbacks you had in your life, you shared laughter with others. We missed you when you moved to Florida, and we miss you now that you've left this life.

War of the words

In response to Germany's Transport Minister Peter Ramsauer suggesting that employees not use foreign words such as "der Laptop", U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood has suggested that employees respond to fellow workers sneezes with "Bless you" rather than "Gesundheit".

"Der laptop?  Nein, nein", Deutsches Presse-Agentur as reported by the Star Tribune, 2010-12-30

Hm!  Has somebody started a rumor?  If I go to either www.dpa.com or www.dpa.de and search for "laptop", I get "Kein Suchergebnisse" - "no search 'whatever'".  Besides, the Star Tribune is not using richtig Deutsche; it should be "Der Laptop?"  Nouns are almost always capitalized in German.

Mein Deutschekunnigheit?  Nicht so gut!  Ich habe zu viel vergessen:(

Which teacher gets pay for performance for our granddaughter?

Our son, his wife, and their daughter Kayo visited Minnesota from Tokyo recently.  Kayo stayed with us a few days while her parents took some relief from her high energy.

I consider Kayo a normal almost three-year-old.  Lots of energy and lots of rest.  Eagerness to please and obstinate to do things her way.  Curious about almost everything from books with lots of words and pictures to nooks and crannies she shouldn't get into.

She can recite the English alphabet and my son says she knows most of the Japanese syllable chart (100+ syllables).  I do know she knows the horizontal vowel sounds, but she never did the vertical consonant sounds for us.  She can count to 20 in English and Japanese.  She recognizes words in books.  Of course, the key words for a page are bold and in a different color, but she points at the word and says it.  She can switch back and forth between English and Japanese, but she speaks mostly in Japanese because her playmates speak Japanese.

Her parents don't hold fast to the "rule" of each parent speaking his or her native language to the child, but her mother speaks mostly Japanese to her.

What kindergarten or elementary teacher who was paid for performance wouldn't love to have Kayo in his or her class?

If Kayo is so normal why does she have such extraordinary skills?  Simple, she has a stay-at-home mom who has her own specials skills.  Kayo's mom has ten years of experience in early childhood development.  Now  instead of helping a roomful of toddlers and pre-schoolers, she has only one student.  Class size does matter.

Now consider the effort made by a teacher with a class of thirty, many who may not even have seen a book before.  That teacher probably should be paid extra for even trying.

So, if we are to pay for performance, should stay-at-home parents get paid if they spend a lot of time stimulating their kids' minds?  It will never happen.