The Book Man

Latin - split.
1624.
Strasbourg. Languages evolve.
1377 - VERY IMPORTANT DATE in the history of French language. ??

This is because our teacher was incapable of completing a thought. He would start with one topic, say, the regional accents of France, and suddenly we would be talking about Latin declinaisons. It was impossible to follow him and our notes displayed our desperate attempts to do so. In fact, I ended up buying a little History of the French Language Made Easy-type books and we combined notes, looked up dates/places using info from the book, and filled in the missing holes. That's how we studied for our final.

At some point during that semester, I had stumbled across a few used linguistics books in the local bookstore. I'm always up for grabbing deals like that, as most linguistics books are heavy fuckers and are thus in the 20-30 euro range.

There is a series of books at the introductory level, each of which features the writer on the cover in front of a white background. Each book in the series features a different topic: pragmatics, syntax, semantics, whatever. I picked up the general book, entitled, creatively, Linguistique. I read a bit, but mainly set it to the side for later, aka this year.

So, this year, of course, I have officially started my linguistics classes. As an optional course, I took French linguistics, because I think it's interesting. The class is divided in two: one day of the week is dedicated to morphology and the other lecture day is dedicated to lexicology. Imagine my surprise when I walked into the lexicology lecture and there he was, six months after I last saw him: Mr. Droning Professor Man.

Actually, it's ok. I started laughing out loud because I couldn't believe my bad luck. But I was pleasantly surprised that not only did I manage to follow his hour-long lecture, but that I was actually interested in it.

I'm chalking up the difference in his lecture styles to - and I am not kidding about this - the fact that my class this year is from 11-12 whereas last year it was from 14-16. The French eat lunch from 12-14, and a lot of them tend to drink wine with their meal. On multiple occasions last year, I found myself wondering if the professor hadn't tipped back a few too many. After seeing the difference in his lecture style before the afternoon beverage and his lecture style after, I can say that one is remarkably more clear and coherent than the other.

So now that I am two weeks into my classes, I'm trying to fill in a few holes where I may see them. Hence why I went to look something up in my used book called Linguistique which I had bought last year.

Lo and behold, it was Mr. Droning Professor Man on the cover! Erm... well, sort of. Granted, he was younger (by about 20 years) and thinner (by about 40 lbs), but it was definetly him. He looked jovial and fun on the back cover. As if he was just a real jokster of a linguistics prof and he just happened to be throwing a frisbee in the backyard with the dog or something.

Trust me. He's nothing like that.

But still, I've had this book sitting in my house for at least the last six months. I've moved it around, taken it out, looked at it. It was on my dresser for awhile, and I eventually moved it to the pile near the stereo. When I bought the new bookshelf, its placement got careful consideration amongst other books on the new shelves.

Never, once, when I saw the picture, did I make the connection. It was only this year, a few days ago now, that I realized he wrote the book. And I only figured it out because I now know his name, and I saw the author's name on the binding. But yeah, it's him on the cover alright. Or a better, more fun-loving version of him, at any rate.

Odd. Truly.