1st Reminder of Payment Issued

水曜日。週の早々というと、圧倒的にほとんどの場合、月曜日を意味するだろう。「来週、早々に連絡します」。連絡なし。期待してなかったけど。昨日、督促状を作成して、店のドアにすべりこませ、電話からその旨をメッセージした。返信なし。

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「ローコスト住宅はなぜ安い」（MSN不動産ページの見出し）？ローコストやからに決まってるやろ！

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おとといの夜だったか、「大坂万博」と背中にプリントしたＴシャツを着た人を見た。前面のプリントは、「Osaka 1972」やった。

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Anecdotes from “Language Instinct” by Steven Pinker:

Interestingly, phonological rules apply in an ordered sequence, as if words were manufactured on an assembly line. Pronounce write and ride. In most dialects of English, the vowels differ in some way. At the very least, the i in ride is longer than the i in write. In some dialects, like the Canadian English of newscaster Peter Jennings, hockey star Wayne Gretzky, and your truly (an accent satirized a few years back, eh, in the television characters Bob and Doug McKenzie), the vowels are completely different: ride contains diphthong gliding from the vowel in hot to the vowel ee; write contains a diphthong gliding from the higher vowel in hut to ee. (p. 172)

The actress Meryl Streep is renowned in the United States for her seemingly convincing accents, but I am told that in England, her British accent in Plenty was considered rather awful, and that her Australian accent in the movie about the dingo that ate the baby didn’t go over too well down there, either. (p. 295)

Henry Kissinger, who immigrated to the United State as a teenager, retained a frequently satirized German accent… Ukrainian-born Joseph Conrad, whose first language was polish, is considered one of the best writers in English in this century, but his accent was so thick that his friends could barely understand him. Even the adults who succeed at grammar often depend on the conscious exercise of their considerable intellects, unlike children, to whom language acquisition just happens. Vladimir Nabokov, another brilliant writer in English, refused to lecture or be interviewed extemporaneously, insisting on writing out every word beforehand with the help of dictionaries and grammars. As he modestly explained, “I think like a genius, I write like a distinguished author, and I speak like a child.” And he had the benefit of being raised in part by an English-speaking nanny. (p. 296)