Sea Life, Brighton.

 While in Brighton, we visited its Sea LIfe which claims to be the oldest, continually operating aquarium in the world. Designed by architect Evgenius Birch in 1869, it opened in 1872.

This was my first aquarium visit and, as you enter, the 68 metre vaulted corridor lined with water tanks containing rays, snails, turtles, etc., your attention is certainly held, especially with the constantly changing coloured lighting.

I think my favourite character there was the octopus. They have three hearts and blue blood, thanks to the protein haemoganin cyanin which contains copper. They are camouflage artists, possessing chromatophores which allow them to change colour, and papilli – tiny areas of skin which can expand and contract to change the texture of their appearance. Their 500 million neurons allow each arm to taste, touch and react to the environment independently. They are intelligent beings, able to solve problems such as navigate complex mazes and unscrew jars to access food. They can recognize individuals of other species, even human faces.

 Certainly, this one kept the one eye we could see trained on us, happily performing lazy, elegant arm movements before rising up the tank to retrieve his plaything resting atop a branch–a ball!                                         The octopus apparently has an artistic sense! Collecting their meal debris – the shells of clams and scallops – they adorn the entrance to their home. Cue in The Beatles’ ‘Octopus’s Garden!

As a linguist, I was interested to learn the collective nouns for jellyfish: a bloom, a fluther, a swarm or a smack – the latter being a sharp reminder of being a sting recipient in Greek waters! They are very simple organisms, being 94% water, and have a short life span, ranging from a few hours to several years. They have, however, been around for a long time – 500 million years or so - which means they predate the dinosaurs.

They move by contracting the muscles of their body and the water squeezed out from the cavity of their jelly belly😊 jet propels them in the required direction. I watched in fascination as the fluther – good word, that! – in the tank moved gracefully to and fro. They needed the accompaniment of some dreamy classical music. 

I was really happy to see some sea horses which I find beautiful. Despite their name, Hippocampus or horse animal, they are fish. Without a stomach, they suck food in through their snouts. Monogamous, it is the male who carries the eggs in his pouch, deposited there by the female, until they hatch. They, too, can change colour to avoid predators and, being poor swimmers, they tie their tails to plants as anchors, so as not to be swept away by currents.

 It was amazing to see several fairly large sharks swim overhead in some glass tunnels formations.

And it was fun to go into the little alcove and have the beluga whale holograms appear to rush over to welcome you.

 I was glad I had had that experience but, overall, my overall impression was that the aquarium was like a tired old dame, definitely in need of a revamp. Not like this bright, young dame below!

                                      

 

Non-Standard Grammar ....?

In British International Phonetic Alphabet, this heading reads Brighton Conference.

At the annual IATEFL conference we attended a presentation by John Hird, of Oxford University, entitled Non -Standard Grammar – Or Just Plain Wrong.               

I am continually dismayed by the standard of written English in evidence on Facebook posts and this in an age where spellcheck facilities are readily accessible. As a retired English teacher, I permanently suffer from a red-pen tic where errors simply beg to be corrected! ☹

John defined his term of non-standard grammar by appealing to our great grammar guru, David Crystal, who explains this as grammar features, forms and patterns and usages that are considered traditionally, technically and prescriptively incorrect but are so commonplace that perhaps we should consider them acceptable.

Traditionally the spoken word, being spontaneous and less formal, was the rich source of such forms, but the written mode in the social media is fast catching up!! American usage can frequently affect what is being expressed on a wider geographic scale, through advertising or what is considered ‘hip’. The McDonald’s ‘I’m Lovin’ It’ jingle is a case in point. Grammar books would generally not condone verbs expressing thoughts, opinions or emotions being used in the continuous verb form.

One form I rather like is ‘Be like’ as in the example below which has its origins in African American Vernacular English and is used to perform or mimic speech attitudes or behaviours – here the glottal stop which drops the ‘t’ in “British’.

Gretchen McCullock outlines the new language rules in her book entitled, ‘Because Internet’.           I must confess that in messaging, I may use the time-saving, non-ambiguous ‘Later I ‘ll go spa.’

I’ve often heard Gordon Ramsay tell his Masterchef contestants ‘Your 60 minutes starts now’, presumably focusing on the singular time period rather the minutes’ plurality.

John quoted ,’If I didn’t come along, there would be no NATO right now.’  But then no one expects Trump to be a paragon rule-observer, and he disrespectfully rides roughshod over the accepted chronological staging of verb tenses! I guess he could excuse himself and his linguistic knowledge by using the ubiquitous double-negative, ‘I don’t know nothing.’

The next phase of the talk I found fascinating when John had audience members access the mentimeter facility on their devices. He projected deviant language forms on the electric whiteboard and we had to plot them, as seen below, on a cline of least -> most offensive!

The overall ‘winner’ was the least contentious, the use of the adjectival rather than the adverbial form eg, ‘He did fantastic’ – sports-talk making its linguistic contribution.

Examples such as ‘I was sat on my own’ were deemed not too bad since they were ‘excused’ as genuine regional usage!  Verb forms and tenses were expected to be respected - examples as, ’I’ve drank it’ could not be forgiven!

Conditional clauses, especially those expressing the hypothetical, were given short shrift where faulty. Even Elton John’s lyrics from ‘Candle In The Wind’

..’And I would’ve liked to know you …’ would not have passed muster!

I must mention my pet peeves

a)       ‘Could of’ instead of ‘Could’ve’

b)       the use of ’less’ for countable nouns instead of ‘fewer’.

Our speaker admitted to disliking the extraneous ‘of’ in ‘He got off of the bus’ and drew the talk to a close by playing The Rolling Stones’, ‘Hey, you, get off of my cloud ‘!