I am bad at anything involving a sewing machine. I'm OK at hand sewing, but the machine always defeats me which is frustrating as machines are normally something I enjoy.
I am bad at anything involving a sewing machine. I'm OK at hand sewing, but the machine always defeats me which is frustrating as machines are normally something I enjoy.
All sewing machines? Cheaper ones can be like a blunt knife - they work after a fashion but give you grief, particularly as you begin stitching. I have a high-end Bernina that doesn't snag or choke - but you have to feed it good quality thread.
Many American accents collapse the caught and cot vowels, and many of them collapse that with the ah vowel.
This is how I know that the voice on my car Sat-Nav is working from an American phonology that has been Anglicised. I quite often go to Nottingham, which it pronounces as "Nahtingham".
Playing any kind of sport. School was hell (in part) because of the obsession with sport and PE.
When I left, I swore never to do anything of that sort ever again. And I haven't. (You can't really count darts and snooker as sport).
The odd thing is I quite like watching football and cricket, and I can enjoy reading about them. Especially the old tales of traditional cricket. You know the thing - how Percy Smithers hit 108 against the Australians in 1934.
But play? No way. I found them unutterably tedious apart from anything else and I detested their compulsory nature. No one would ever think to make it compulsory for kids to assemble plastic kits, would they? What's the essential difference? Just one type of pastime against another.
Playing any kind of sport. School was hell (in part) because of the obsession with sport and PE.
When I left, I swore never to do anything of that sort ever again. And I haven't. (You can't really count darts and snooker as sport).
The odd thing is I quite like watching football and cricket, and I can enjoy reading about them. Especially the old tales of traditional cricket. You know the thing - how Percy Smithers hit 108 against the Australians in 1934.
But play? No way. I found them unutterably tedious apart from anything else and I detested their compulsory nature. No one would ever think to make it compulsory for kids to assemble plastic kits, would they? What's the essential difference? Just one type of pastime against another.
Don't forget it would also involve people whose models weren't very good having them held up for everyone to jeer at, and the best model makers being treated like best mates by the modelling teachers and blind eyes turned to bullying of the less talented modellers in and out of modelling lessons while the perpetrators of that bullying were held up as heroes whenever the school won a modelling competition.
Playing any kind of sport. School was hell (in part) because of the obsession with sport and PE.
When I left, I swore never to do anything of that sort ever again. And I haven't. (You can't really count darts and snooker as sport).
The odd thing is I quite like watching football and cricket, and I can enjoy reading about them. Especially the old tales of traditional cricket. You know the thing - how Percy Smithers hit 108 against the Australians in 1934.
But play? No way. I found them unutterably tedious apart from anything else and I detested their compulsory nature. No one would ever think to make it compulsory for kids to assemble plastic kits, would they? What's the essential difference? Just one type of pastime against another.
Also, if you have no talent for a sport, it's pretty useless to make you play on a team with students who are much better at it than you are. Not really fun or productive for anyone involved.
I could be described as temperamentally a possessive individualist, and I've always resented attempts to coerce people into group activities, team-sports being the perfect example. I do have fairly strong legs, and a PhysEd teacher recommended in junior-high that I take up running, which I refused. I've often wondered how I woulda done.
I was fortunate that I could give up art after second year in the grammar school (as I recall it was on an option with music, so there was no contest); sadly PE was still compulsory.
Ironically, my longest continuous period of employment was in the office of an art college, a fact which amused my former art teacher no end when I ran into him when home on holiday.
Remembering numbers. I can’t even remember one number. If my friend says ‘we’ll meet at 7’ - I have to write it down!
I'm bad at all numbers, if I'm asked to read out a telephone number I get the digits jumbled up. If there's a term for being dyslexic with numbers, that's me.
Remembering numbers. I can’t even remember one number. If my friend says ‘we’ll meet at 7’ - I have to write it down!
I'm bad at all numbers, if I'm asked to read out a telephone number I get the digits jumbled up. If there's a term for being dyslexic with numbers, that's me.
Numbers make my eyes glaze over, though I am not totally incompetent.
I cannot draw, or do any creative practical arts, apart from singing. I’m no good at most practical things really.
I thought PE and sport were OK until I realised I was no good. When we had hockey I was never picked for the two teams. What a cruel method. Eight of us always left out, so we were swapped into various positions in the team for a few minutes. I gave up trying.
Numbers make my eyes glaze over, though I am not totally incompetent.
I cannot draw, or do any creative practical arts, apart from singing. I’m no good at most practical things really.
I thought PE and sport were OK until I realised I was no good. When we had hockey I was never picked for the two teams. What a cruel method. Eight of us always left out, so we were swapped into various positions in the team for a few minutes. I gave up trying.
I played hockey once at school. I was picked last for the team and put into left back. I scored an own goal. Never picked again!
I understand there's a sport called ice hockey which involves ice skating at the same time as playing hockey.
I don't exaggerate when I say I genuinely don't understand how this is actually possible. That's two things both of which require 100% of my concentration to even attempt being competently achieved at the same time. I file it with juggling - I can't throw a single ball in the air and catch it more than three times in a row, never mind keep three of the buggers going. You might as well ask me to fly by flapping my arms.
Boogie I have the 'cant remember numbers' thing too. In these days of two factor authentication which often involve entering a 4 digit pin from one device/app to another, if copying/ pasting is not possible (eg number from phone needs to be entered on desktop PC) I have to speak it out loud in order to commit to short term memory for the intervening moment - thankfully my auditory memory is excellent.
This works ok for 4 digits, but if I do one of those brain training games where you have to recall increasingly long strings of digits, my read out loud strategy will eventually fail when there is a long number with a 5 or 9 in it, as the vowel sound is the same for both, so it may get confused among the noise of other number sounds in my brain!
Discalculia is a different thing from what I experience and what I think @Sparrow was describing. Discalculia involves more than transposing numbers; it also involves challenges processing arithmetic functions and conceptualizing arithmetic ideas.
Discalculia is a different thing from what I experience and what I think @Sparrow was describing. Discalculia involves more than transposing numbers; it also involves challenges processing arithmetic functions and conceptualizing arithmetic ideas.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I have duscalculia(stopped learning math in about Grade 6; long story how I got through university), but I have no problem reading numbers as written on a page.
Boogie I have the 'cant remember numbers' thing too. In these days of two factor authentication which often involve entering a 4 digit pin from one device/app to another, if copying/ pasting is not possible (eg number from phone needs to be entered on desktop PC) I have to speak it out loud in order to commit to short term memory for the intervening moment - thankfully my auditory memory is excellent.
This works ok for 4 digits, but if I do one of those brain training games where you have to recall increasingly long strings of digits, my read out loud strategy will eventually fail when there is a long number with a 5 or 9 in it, as the vowel sound is the same for both, so it may get confused among the noise of other number sounds in my brain!
Yes, I relate to this. I can actually remember, if that’s the right word, my 10 digit library card number but I couldn’t tell it to you. I can type it into the library website though.
If someone tells me their address I can recall it all apart from the house number.
Boogie I have the 'cant remember numbers' thing too. In these days of two factor authentication which often involve entering a 4 digit pin from one device/app to another, if copying/ pasting is not possible (eg number from phone needs to be entered on desktop PC) I have to speak it out loud in order to commit to short term memory for the intervening moment - thankfully my auditory memory is excellent.
This works ok for 4 digits, but if I do one of those brain training games where you have to recall increasingly long strings of digits, my read out loud strategy will eventually fail when there is a long number with a 5 or 9 in it, as the vowel sound is the same for both, so it may get confused among the noise of other number sounds in my brain!
Yes, I relate to this. I can actually remember, if that’s the right word, my 10 digit library card number but I couldn’t tell it to you. I can type it into the library website though.
Yes, I remember the shape they make on the keyboard 🙂
@Boogie - When I enter my PIN for my money card I know if I have mis-keyed it because of the shape of the number.
When asked for my library number I often start giving my phone number as they are the only numbers I remember. When taking books out of the library we only need our cards - no PIN number. I once dropped my card in the library and someone used it to take out a bunch of CDs, for which, according to their rules I was then responsible for replacing when they weren't returned. Fortunately I was well known at that particular branch and they waived the charge. Since the I no longer take my card to the library.
This is how I know that the voice on my car Sat-Nav is working from an American phonology that has been Anglicised. I quite often go to Nottingham, which it pronounces as "Nahtingham".
I have my phone set to English defaults, which means I get guidance from an "English" voice, but it seems to have many pronunciation failures that the US voice doesn't have. One of the roads I drive down sometimes is named Cedarbrook. I'd think there was only one way to pronounce that in anyone's English, but my phone insists on calling it Said-er-brook.
Really? It's a pretty well-known tree. How can you muck that up?
Yes, I remember the shape they make on the keyboard 🙂
If they still have the same keypad, I could get in to the building I worked in 25 years ago. I haven't got a clue what the number was, but I know what shape it was.
My car is a VW, periodically I have to download a new update for the satnav. The last time I did it, for some weird reason all the vowel sounds got mixed up so none of the directions we get in England are correct. It's a bit bizarre.
I wish I could drive, ride a bike or operate any vehicle that doesn't have four legs and a mind of its own. When I failed my ninth driving test I packed it in for good. Double figures would have been humiliating. I can sail well and operate various watercraft, I can even pilot a glider with some semblance of competency but roads elude me.
I am generally good at spelling, but I cannot spell any of the "cei" words without reciting i before e, except after c first. If I learned something by using a mnemonic I have to go through the mnemonic first. The little nugget of knowledge is gate-keepered by the rhyme / mnemonic.
I am generally good at spelling, but I cannot spell any of the "cei" words without reciting i before e, except after c first. If I learned something by using a mnemonic I have to go through the mnemonic first. The little nugget of knowledge is gate-keepered by the rhyme / mnemonic.
Same here with the "i" and "e" formula.
I also usually have to recite "Thirty days hath September..." when figuring out when I need to pay rent etc.
(Incidentally, I first saw that rhyme in an elementary textbook, which insisted on adding a completely unpoetic final stanza about how February works.)
My handwriting is awful. (I blame my father: he was a doctor).
I can't write in cursive. One of my middle-school teachers told me it was "insane" that a student my age couldn't join letters, but it was never explained to me why it was so important.
I actually think that one of my problems was changing schools when I was about 7. While the first moved its pupils on from individual letters to "joined-up writing", it wasn't the old-fashioned cursive favoured by the second school.
Strangely enough, I can usually tell when the person writing is Scottish. I wonder why?
I also usually have to recite "Thirty days hath September..." when figuring out when I need to pay rent etc.
(Incidentally, I first saw that rhyme in an elementary textbook, which insisted on adding a completely unpoetic final stanza about how February works.)
“All the rest have thirty-one,
except February, which stands alone”?
I also usually have to recite "Thirty days hath September..." when figuring out when I need to pay rent etc.
(Incidentally, I first saw that rhyme in an elementary textbook, which insisted on adding a completely unpoetic final stanza about how February works.)
“All the rest have thirty-one,
except February, which stands alone”?
Is that one you've heard? It IS rather unpoetic, with the attempt at rhyming "one" with "alone".
I think the one I remember had no rhyming, and was basically just a prose explanation of the 28 days, with the leap-year info added.
The version I remember was all the rest have thirty-one,
save February which has 28 in fine,
and every Leap Year 29
I always reckoned that the line ending 31 was a spacer between 2 couplets.
I also usually have to recite "Thirty days hath September..." when figuring out when I need to pay rent etc.
(Incidentally, I first saw that rhyme in an elementary textbook, which insisted on adding a completely unpoetic final stanza about how February works.)
“All the rest have thirty-one,
except February, which stands alone”?
Is that one you've heard? It IS rather unpoetic, with the attempt at rhyming "one" with "alone".
That’s how I learned it as a child. It’s a slant rhyme, not a pure rhyme.
I also usually have to recite "Thirty days hath September..." when figuring out when I need to pay rent etc.
(Incidentally, I first saw that rhyme in an elementary textbook, which insisted on adding a completely unpoetic final stanza about how February works.)
“All the rest have thirty-one,
except February, which stands alone”?
Is that one you've heard? It IS rather unpoetic, with the attempt at rhyming "one" with "alone".
That’s how I learned it as a child. It’s a slant rhyme, not a pure rhyme.
Thanks for reminding me of the proper term for that kinda rhyme.
Personally, I don't think it should count as ANY sort of a rhyme, since the letters simply do not sound alike.
I also usually have to recite "Thirty days hath September..." when figuring out when I need to pay rent etc.
(Incidentally, I first saw that rhyme in an elementary textbook, which insisted on adding a completely unpoetic final stanza about how February works.)
“All the rest have thirty-one,
except February, which stands alone”?
Is that one you've heard? It IS rather unpoetic, with the attempt at rhyming "one" with "alone".
That’s how I learned it as a child. It’s a slant rhyme, not a pure rhyme.
Thanks for reminding me of the proper term for that kinda rhyme.
Personally, I don't think it should count as ANY sort of a rhyme, since the letters simply do not sound alike.
Well, the n sounds the same in both words.
The sound represented by o is different, but the two sounds are close to each other, resulting, with the n, in the slant rhyme.
Comments
Meatier oll (o a in doll) o (as in hope) gist.
Your accent may have the cot-caught merger. Mine doesn't. Hot, haughty and harp have three different vowels for me.
Same but o as in hop rather than hope. Mind you, I did the weather forecasting on a ship for several months once so it came up a lot!
All sewing machines? Cheaper ones can be like a blunt knife - they work after a fashion but give you grief, particularly as you begin stitching. I have a high-end Bernina that doesn't snag or choke - but you have to feed it good quality thread.
Meet-ee-or-ol-o-gist
The problem is "what sound does the o make?"
Many American accents collapse the caught and cot vowels, and many of them collapse that with the ah vowel.
This is how I know that the voice on my car Sat-Nav is working from an American phonology that has been Anglicised. I quite often go to Nottingham, which it pronounces as "Nahtingham".
Yes, in fact, I've seen a map of N. America, indicating where the merger prevails, and my hometown was marked as such.
When I left, I swore never to do anything of that sort ever again. And I haven't. (You can't really count darts and snooker as sport).
The odd thing is I quite like watching football and cricket, and I can enjoy reading about them. Especially the old tales of traditional cricket. You know the thing - how Percy Smithers hit 108 against the Australians in 1934.
But play? No way. I found them unutterably tedious apart from anything else and I detested their compulsory nature. No one would ever think to make it compulsory for kids to assemble plastic kits, would they? What's the essential difference? Just one type of pastime against another.
Don't forget it would also involve people whose models weren't very good having them held up for everyone to jeer at, and the best model makers being treated like best mates by the modelling teachers and blind eyes turned to bullying of the less talented modellers in and out of modelling lessons while the perpetrators of that bullying were held up as heroes whenever the school won a modelling competition.
Bitter, moi? Yeah.
Also, if you have no talent for a sport, it's pretty useless to make you play on a team with students who are much better at it than you are. Not really fun or productive for anyone involved.
I could be described as temperamentally a possessive individualist, and I've always resented attempts to coerce people into group activities, team-sports being the perfect example. I do have fairly strong legs, and a PhysEd teacher recommended in junior-high that I take up running, which I refused. I've often wondered how I woulda done.
I was fortunate that I could give up art after second year in the grammar school (as I recall it was on an option with music, so there was no contest); sadly PE was still compulsory.
Ironically, my longest continuous period of employment was in the office of an art college, a fact which amused my former art teacher no end when I ran into him when home on holiday.
I'm bad at all numbers, if I'm asked to read out a telephone number I get the digits jumbled up. If there's a term for being dyslexic with numbers, that's me.
I cannot draw, or do any creative practical arts, apart from singing. I’m no good at most practical things really.
I thought PE and sport were OK until I realised I was no good. When we had hockey I was never picked for the two teams. What a cruel method. Eight of us always left out, so we were swapped into various positions in the team for a few minutes. I gave up trying.
I played hockey once at school. I was picked last for the team and put into left back. I scored an own goal. Never picked again!
I don't exaggerate when I say I genuinely don't understand how this is actually possible. That's two things both of which require 100% of my concentration to even attempt being competently achieved at the same time. I file it with juggling - I can't throw a single ball in the air and catch it more than three times in a row, never mind keep three of the buggers going. You might as well ask me to fly by flapping my arms.
This works ok for 4 digits, but if I do one of those brain training games where you have to recall increasingly long strings of digits, my read out loud strategy will eventually fail when there is a long number with a 5 or 9 in it, as the vowel sound is the same for both, so it may get confused among the noise of other number sounds in my brain!
I did say I need to concentrate 100% to attempt to do them. Nothing about succeeding.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I have duscalculia(stopped learning math in about Grade 6; long story how I got through university), but I have no problem reading numbers as written on a page.
Yes, I relate to this. I can actually remember, if that’s the right word, my 10 digit library card number but I couldn’t tell it to you. I can type it into the library website though.
If someone tells me their address I can recall it all apart from the house number.
Yes, I remember the shape they make on the keyboard 🙂
When asked for my library number I often start giving my phone number as they are the only numbers I remember. When taking books out of the library we only need our cards - no PIN number. I once dropped my card in the library and someone used it to take out a bunch of CDs, for which, according to their rules I was then responsible for replacing when they weren't returned. Fortunately I was well known at that particular branch and they waived the charge. Since the I no longer take my card to the library.
I have my phone set to English defaults, which means I get guidance from an "English" voice, but it seems to have many pronunciation failures that the US voice doesn't have. One of the roads I drive down sometimes is named Cedarbrook. I'd think there was only one way to pronounce that in anyone's English, but my phone insists on calling it Said-er-brook.
Really? It's a pretty well-known tree. How can you muck that up?
If they still have the same keypad, I could get in to the building I worked in 25 years ago. I haven't got a clue what the number was, but I know what shape it was.
I'm not good at talking about something that either doesn't matter or I don't care about.
i before e, except after c first. If I learned something by using a mnemonic I have to go through the mnemonic first. The little nugget of knowledge is gate-keepered by the rhyme / mnemonic.
Same here with the "i" and "e" formula.
I also usually have to recite "Thirty days hath September..." when figuring out when I need to pay rent etc.
(Incidentally, I first saw that rhyme in an elementary textbook, which insisted on adding a completely unpoetic final stanza about how February works.)
I can't write in cursive. One of my middle-school teachers told me it was "insane" that a student my age couldn't join letters, but it was never explained to me why it was so important.
Strangely enough, I can usually tell when the person writing is Scottish. I wonder why?
except February, which stands alone”?
Is that one you've heard? It IS rather unpoetic, with the attempt at rhyming "one" with "alone".
I think the one I remember had no rhyming, and was basically just a prose explanation of the 28 days, with the leap-year info added.
Here's one I just came up with...
February's 28
But leap years add an extra date.
Except for February alone
Which has twenty-eight days clear
And twenty-nine each leap year
That might be the one from my textbook. "All the rest have thirty-one" was word-for-word in the poem.
all the rest have thirty-one,
save February which has 28 in fine,
and every Leap Year 29
I always reckoned that the line ending 31 was a spacer between 2 couplets.
Hath September,
April, June and November.
Seven more hath thirty-one
To see the rising of the sun.
February's 28
But leap years add an extra date.
Thanks for reminding me of the proper term for that kinda rhyme.
Personally, I don't think it should count as ANY sort of a rhyme, since the letters simply do not sound alike.
The sound represented by o is different, but the two sounds are close to each other, resulting, with the n, in the slant rhyme.