i got a 100% on this bostonian-to-english quiz but i grew up near boston….. i’m curious what you guys get. there’s a couple things in here i didn’t even know are regionalisms + a couple things i hadn’t heard before but could parse pretty easily from context. tag/reply with what you got and if you’re familiar with the area or not!
GENUINELY before today i thought fluffernutter and american chop suey were part of National American Culture ™. i was so puzzled by those questions that i googled both bc i was like “ohhh, this quiz maker thinks some american things aren’t as widespread as they are….. they’re assigning regional markers to things that aren’t regional…… every american will instantly recognize these….”
and then i discovered both of these things are, in fact, particular to the new england region.
& went. What.
This summer, I will have been married to a man from Massachusetts for 25 years. You learn things.
I…know a lot of people from Boston?
…I spent 3 summers in Mass while my mom lived in Worcester.
things english speakers know, but don’t know we know.
WOAH WHAT?
That is profound. I noticed this by accident when asked about adjectives by a Japanese student. She translated something from Japanese like “Brown big cat” and I corrected her. When she asked me why, I bluescreened.
What the fuck, English isn’t even my first language and yet I picked up on that. How the fuck. What the fuck.
Reasoning: It Just Sounds Right
Oooh, don’t like that. Nope, I do not even like that a little bit. That’s parting the veil and looking at some forbidden fucking knowledge there.
How did I even learn this language wtf
I had to read “brown big cat” like three times before my brain stopped interpreting it as “big brown cat”
I’m kinda reading “brown big cat” as “brown (big cat)”, that is, a “big cat” - like a tiger or lion or other felid of similar size - that happens to be brown. “Big brown cat”, on the other hand, sounds more like a brown cat that’s just a bit bigger than a regular housecat - like a bobcat or a maine coon cat or something like that.
yeah, a brown big cat is almost certainly a puma. a big brown cat is probably a maine coon.
yeah, if you put the adjectives out of order you wind up implying a compound noun, which is presumably why we have this rule; we stripped out so much inflection over the centuries word order now dictates a huge amount of our grammar
Just looked up why we do this and one of the first lines in this article is, “Adjectives are where the elves of language both cheat and illumine reality.” so I know it’s a good article.
This same order of adjectives more or less applies to languages around the world.
“It’s possible that these elements of universal grammar clarify our thought in some way,” says Barbara Partee, a professor emeritus of linguistics and philosophy at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Yet when the human race tacitly decided that shape words go before color words go before origin words, it left no record of its rationale.
One theory is that the more specific term always falls closer to the noun. But that doesn’t explain everything in adjective order.
Another theory is that as you get closer to the noun, you encounter adjectives that denote more innate properties. In general, nouns pick out the type of thing we’re talking about, and adjectives describe it,” Partee told me. She observes that the modifiers most likely to sit right next to nouns are the ones most inclined to serve as nouns in different contexts: Rubber duck. Stone wall.
Rules are made to be broken. Switching up the order of adjectives allows you to redistribute emphasis. (If you wish to buy the black small purse, not the gray one, for instance, you can communicate your priorities by placing color before size).
Scrambling the order of adjectives also helps authors achieve a sense of spontaneity, of improvising as they go. Wolfe discovers such a rhythm, a feeling-his-way quality, when he discusses his childhood recollection of “brown tired autumn earth” and a “flat moist plug of apple tobacco.”
Brain scans have discovered that your brain has to work harder to read adjectives in the “wrong” order.
TL;DR: No one knows why we do this adjective thing but it’s pretty hardwired in.
Since it’s never credited, this is from Mark Forsyth’s The Elements of Eloquence, and just one reason why I think it’s required reading for anyone interested in prosecraft. Every page is this useful.
The best thing about new zealand english is we get to pick and choose what we like from american english and british english.
The bad thing is that sometimes we choose wrong.
Like. Americans have fries and chips vs brits have chips and crisps. Both valid.
Here? We have chips and chips.
Youd think it’d be fine and that you can figure out which one a person is talking about from context but trust me a good percentage of the time you cannot. And often the person will try to differentiate them by clarifying they meant “Potato chips” only for them to realise a second later that both chips are made from potatoes
I shouldn’t make fun but that last part is DEEPLY hilarious to me
I usually try to be tolerant of anachronisms in books, particularly ye olde medieval generic swords and sorcery type books, but I think I broke the sound barrier with how quickly I just shot out of my immersion in this book when ye olde ancient archivist in the ye olde fantasy-england castle’s library tells the protag where to find a certain book by giving him its dewey decimal number.
Today in an arthurian retelling set in pre-saxon britain I encountered a character who said he was going to quit drinking “cold turkey,” which I think puts him roughly a thousand years prior to European awareness of the existence of turkeys, and the dissonance had barely registered in my mind before I remembered the medieval lending library run on the dewey decimal system and decided a chronologically misplaced poultry idiom wasn’t worth noticing in comparison.
I’m 99% sure ‘cold turkey’ is a reference to Turkish baths though…?? Its equivalent in Danish (my 1st language) is 'kold tyrker’ which means 'cold Turkish’. Poultry would be 'kold kalkun’, which is not a phrase.
Wikipedia doesn’t say anything about Turkish baths, but this is the only reading of the idiom that makes sense to me, since a Turkish bath includes a sudden plunge into really cold water.
Learning that the English equivalent of the phrase might actually be referencing poultry is bewildering to me. It makes no sense???? Why would doing something quick, difficult, and unpleasant be called 'cold poultry’ and not 'ice bath’???
I’m just impressed that that a medieval library had enough books to require a numerical shelving system. Those things were expensive.
See yeah, 200 people (at the time of this reblog) is obviously neither definitive nor likely representative of tumblr at large, but I do not think I would get a 45% yes rate to this question in many other forums. 😂
Did you know that the english word “star” and the japanese word 星（ほし）don’t actually mean the same thing?
Language does not simply name pre-existing categories; categories do not exist in ‘the world’
— Daniel Chandler, Semiotics for Beginners
I read this quote a few years ago, but I don’t think I truly understood it until one day, when I was looking at the wikipedia article for “star” and I thought to check the Japanese article, see if I could get some Japanese reading practice in. I was surprised to find that the article was not titled 「星」, but 「恒星」, a word I’d never seen before. I’d always learnt that 星 was the direct translation for “star” (I knew the japanese also contained meanings the english didn’t, like “dot” or “bullseye”, but I thought these were just auxiliary definitions in addition to the direct translation of “star” as in “a celestial body made of hydrogen and helium plasma”).
To try and clear things up for myself, I searched japanese wikipedia for 星. It was a disambiguation page, with the main links pointing to the articles for 天体 (astronomical object) and スター（記号）(star symbol). There was no article just called 「星」.
It’s an easy difference to miss, because in everyday conversation, 星 and star are equivalent. They both describe the shining lights in the night sky. They both describe this symbol: ★. They even both describe those enormous celestial objects made of plasma.
ALT
But they are different - different enough to not share a wikipedia article. 星 is used to describe any kind of celestial body, especially if it appears shiny and bright in the night sky. “Star” can be used this way too (like Venus being called the “morning star”), but it’s generally considered inaccurate to use the word like this, whereas there is no such inaccuracy with 星. You can say “oh that’s not actually a star, it’s a planet”, but you CAN’T say 「実はそれは星ではなく惑星だよ」 (TL: that’s not actually a hoshi, it’s a planet). A planet IS a 星.
星 is a very common word, essentially equivalent to “star”, but its meaning is closer to “celestial body”. I haven’t looked into the etymology/history but it’s almost like both english and japanese started out with a simple, common word for the lights in the sky - star/星 , but as we found out more about what these lights actually were, english doubled down on using the common word for the specific scientific concept, while japanese kept the common word generic and instead came up with a new word for the more specific concept. If this is actually what happened, I’d guess that kanji probably had something to do with it - 星 as a component kanji exists inside the word for planet, 惑星, and in the word for comet, 彗星, and in the scientific word for “star”, 恒星, so it makes sense that it would indicate a more general concept when used standalone.
This discovery helped me understand that quote - categories don’t exist in the world, we are the ones who create them. I thought that the concept of “star” was something that would be consistent across all languages, but it’s not, because the concept of “star” is not pre-existing. Each language had to decide how to name each of those similar star-like concepts (the ★ symbol, hot balls of gas, twinkling lights in the sky, planets, comets, etc), and obviously not every language is going to group those concepts under the same words with the same nuance.
Knowing this, one might be tempted to say that 恒星（こうせい） is the direct translation for “star”. But this isn’t true either. In most of the contexts that the word “star” is used in english, the equivalent japanese will be simply 星. Despite the meanings not lining up exactly, 星 will still be the best translation for “star” most of the time. This is the art of translation - knowing when the particulars are less important than the vibe or feel of a word. For any word, there will never be an exact perfect translation with all the same nuances and meanings. Translation is about finding the best solution to an unsolvable problem. That’s why I love it.
working with little kids is so dangerous. you get one kid who has a unique way of speaking & then spend the rest of your life with an internal monologue like “me’s go bathroom?”
other thrilling destructions of my vocabulary:
the kid who replaced his hard G sounds with soft ones, leaving me incapable of thinking of glasses as anything other than jlasses
kid who would holler “DID” any time she finished her work no matter how many times we told her to just raise her hand
kid who began her scary stories with “once a time” and her friend who began his with “paw time”
middle schooler i had during student teaching who pronounced magritte as “mah-gritty”
the kid who said “i got boogies comin out my nose” while sobbing and the kid who said “theres his puddle of cry” while describing a drawing, both of whom i think of when im crying
kid who said that if he was 80 he would get big and turn grandpa
kid who, for no reason in particular, would just say “like a little feet” as a standalone phrase in relation to nothing
edit how could i forget. the kid who got sneezed on and angrily said “whyd you blessyou on me”
My niece who asks people with dogs “are him big or him little?”
And every person without fail answers “uh.. him big”
Years later my vocabulary is still influenced by:
kid who called snakes “nakes”
kid who called calculators “cockulators”
my little cousin who referred to anything he didn’t have an immediate answer to as “vewy mystewious”
Oppositional sexism is a very useful term actually. Like, so much is better explained by the idea of “there’s a societal belief that men and women should remain opposites and should have no overlapping traits” than “this is homophobia/transphobia”. Why does society hate displays of femininity in men and masculinity in women? It’s oppositional sexism. They hate that you’re proof that masculinity and femininity aren’t inherently opposites. Thank you julia serano for another banger
tonight I had the privilege of hearing a 13 year old explain the terms “cooking” and “cooked” to my 45 year old manager and she said something so excellent I have to document it.
“cooked is bad. cooking is good. you’re either in the pot or you’re holding it.”
I’m so fascinated by languages with different levels of formality built in because it immediately introduces such complex social dynamics. The social distance between people is palpable when it’s built right into the language, in a way it’s not really palpable in English.
So for example. I speak Spanish, and i was taught to address everyone formally unless specifically invited otherwise. People explained to me that “usted” was formal, for use with strangers, bosses, and other people you respect or are distant from, while “tú” is used most often between family and good friends.
That’s pretty straightforward, but it gets interesting when you see people using “tú” as a form of address for flirting with strangers, or for picking a fight or intimidating someone. In other languages I’ve sometimes heard people switch to formal address with partners, friends or family to show when they are upset. That’s just so interesting! You’re indicating social and emotional space and hierarchy just in the words you choose to address the other person as “you”!!
Not to mention the “what form of address should I use for you…?” conversation which, idk how other people feel about it, but to me it always felt awkward as heck, like a DTR but with someone you’re only just becoming comfortable with. “You can use tú with me” always felt… Weirdly intimate? Like, i am comfortable around you, i consider you a friend. Like what a vulnerable thing to say to a person. (That’s probably also just a function of how i was strictly told to use formal address when i was learning. Maybe others don’t feel so weird about it?)
And if you aren’t going to have a conversation about it and you’re just going to switch, how do you know when? If you switch too soon it might feel overly familiar and pushy but if you don’t switch soon enough you might seem cold??? It’s so interesting.
Anyway. As an English-speaking American (even if i can speak a bit of Spanish), i feel like i just don’t have a sense for social distance and hierarchy, really, simply because there isn’t really language for it in my mother tongue. The fact that others can be keenly aware of that all the time just because they have words to describe it blows my mind!
But you do have it! because American English has titles and also hierarchical treatment of last names (if your name is Jeremy Jefferson, there’s a huge semantic weight difference between Jerry, Jeremy, Mr. Jeremy, and Mr. Jefferson, for example). English marks hierarchy and familiarity even if it doesn’t do it in more grammatical terms. Think of being a kid and your parents yelling your full name across the house when you were in trouble.
I speak Icelandic. Icelandic doesn’t have titles or last names or everyday use of a formal plural or any other obvious markers of formality and intimacy. Formality is still marked, just in non-grammatical lexical terms…but because it’s not marked in ways I as a L1 English speaker recognize, it’s harder for me to reproduce.
The reason you feel like this doesn’t exist in English to the point where it exists in Spanish is because it’s easier to spot for a L2 learner who has to think about categorizing the new language in a way that makes sense in the L1, and unless you have some more in depth information about language registers and intimacy marking and whatever it’s easy to consider this as a novel phenomenon in the L2. But a lot of this semantic stuff is pretty universal, just marked in different ways.
THANK YOU. This is a misconception. Speaking from my experience of living in Japan and studying Japanese while being a native speaker of American English:
1. For folks who don’t know, Japanese words/grammar change depending on formality, the genders of the speaker and listener, the age of the speaker and listener, etc.
2. But English words/grammar ALSO change depending on the above contexts described. It’s just not formalized in grammar books. Consider the differences:
A. “The honor of your presence is requested for dinner this evening.”
B. “I would like to invite you to dinner.”
C. “Do you want to get dinner together?”
D. “Wanna grab a bite to eat?”
E. “Yo, bro, you want a burger?”
Etc. People will be like “it’s wild that Japanese has different words for ‘meal’ depending on formality!! Gohan? Omeshi? Crazy!!!” But ENGLISH IS THE SAME WAY.
And this actually makes it harder for speakers of languages like Japanese to learn natural English, because they’ve been taught that there’s no difference in tone between telling a waiter “I’d like a coffee” and “I want coffee.” Since one of those feels easier to learn, they’ll choose the option that makes them sound weirdly dickish to the waitstaff.
In short: English has levels of formality! Conveniently, saying otherwise fits the stereotypes of rigidly hierarchal East Asians, refined and sophisticated Europeans, and lawless/casual Americans and Australians—but us not recognizing these differences makes it harder for ESL speakers to learn real English
official linguistics post
anyone who doesn’t think english has a formal register has never called a shitty boss sir just to emphasize that their power over you is both fully understood and deeply resented.
So much of this is regional, as well. I grew up mostly in the northeast, where you might call your friend’s parents Mrs./Mr. (Initial of last name), but doing the whole Sir/Ma’am thing feels like a super awkward thing to shoehorn in.
And then I lived Texas for a bit, where I’m pretty sure I was given a ticket once purely because I didn’t call the cop “Sir”. When someone else pointed that out to me, I was like, “If you do that elsewhere, the default assumption is that you’re being rude and sarcastic.”
But then plenty of non-northeasterners think I’m rude because I cuss basically every other word (I would be more insulted if someone told me to shut up than if they said fuck you) and I’m fairly direct (other places, there are way more social conventions and dancing around the answer).
I’ve lived a lot of different places in the contiguous US, and I’ve had to learn to code switch because of it. I’m also a gremlin though, so once it was pointed out to me as a kid that X or Y social thing was different in different places and I started paying attention, I’d sometimes deliberately use language/tone/register that gave off distinct “I’m not from here” vibes just to mess with people. (TBH I still do this … any other autistics get taught a neurotypical skill and IMMEDIATELY think, “How can I utilize this for maximum comedic effect??”)
going from Canada to Australia also made this incredibly apparent. where i’m from in Canada, we do the sir/ma'am thing in customer service, or to a stranger (“excuse me ma'am, you dropped this!” “have a great rest of your day, sir!”). not everyone does it, but small town alberta does.
in australia? calling someone 'sir’ like that tended to be met with confusion and/or comment. it was excessive. the australian dialect marks hierarchy in different ways that the canadian dialect i was used to, and familiarity isn’t used in the same way, since australians tend to use first names and nicknames to a far greater extent than canadians.
(i got a small dose of reverse culture shock when i was interviewing for a job back here in canada after 6 years away in australia, and my interview panel kept referring to me as “dr.[my last name]” and i kept referring to them by their first names.)
ultimately, every language will have ways for marking relationships to one another, because that’s how we humans are. we’ll mark hierarchy and closeness and social roles because this is how we experience the world in connection to one another, and language reflects (and feeds right back into) that.
There are only around 1,500 native Cherokee speakers left, and most of them are elders
Little Cherokee Seeds is a program where mothers and babies spend all day with first language Cherokee speakers, speaking nothing but Cherokee, so that the babies become a new generation of native speakers. They’re also teaching traditional skills and mothering practices to the mothers to pass on.
This is so so important for the survival of the language. These babies are on track to being fluent first language speakers, and they will be able to keep the language going for another lifetime.
Okay not to dox myself but I live on Cherokee territory (#landback) and there are a few universities I know of that are working to restore the language among younger Natives. I’m not an expert, but I recommend checking out Dr Sara Snyder Hopkins and the incredible work she’s doing to translate old Cherokee writings so we never lose them and Dr Ben Fray who is Cherokee and fluent and teaches it to students as a revitalization effort.
Decades after being punished in a residential school for speaking his own language, Sol Mamakwa will hold the powerful to account at Ontario’s legislature in the very same language past governments tried to bury.
On Tuesday, Mamakwa, the only First Nation legislator at Queen’s Park, will rise in the legislative chamber — with his mother, sister, brothers, friends and elders watching from the gallery — and ask a question in Anishininiimowin, known in English as Oji-Cree.
For the first time in its history, the Ontario legislature will allow, interpret and transcribe a language other than English and French.
It will also be a birthday gift to his mom, Kezia Mamakwa, who turns 79 that day, and a nod to his late father, Jerry Mamakwa.
“Language is nationhood, language is identity, language is where history comes from and language is me and my people,” Sol Mamakwa, a 53-year-old NDP legislator, said in an interview.
“It’s important because there’s so many of us who are losing our languages. I think it’s a step toward reconciliation and a step toward reviving our languages.”
i know it’s been said many times before but i will never get over how jacob anderson, a british man with a british accent, not only nailed a louisiana creole accent but also developed a studiously (almost eerily) generic accent that louis uses in the present AND showed the first accent bleeding into the second accent at key moments as a way of aurally externalizing his character’s inner journey. what did god put in this man when she created him.
@dedalvs anything to add about jacob anderson’s accent/valyrian pronunciation work?
Pardon me, but is someone praising Jacob Anderson without letting me praise him first?!
Backing up. It’s October 2009, and my Dothraki is chosen as the official version for HBO’s Game of Thrones. Absolutely the job of a lifetime. Conlangers were never hired to create languages for big budget productions, and language was central to A Song of Ice and Fire. The fact that this was on HBO guaranteed that it was going to be huge, and now I was going to get to be on the set of a TV show, work with actors, go to Hollywood parties, and create a language that would be as popular as Klingon.
June 2011, only one of those four things had happened, and of all things, it was going to a Hollywood party—the season 1 premiere event for Game of Thrones. It was very cool! None of the cast attended, but it was cool! But as for the rest, the idea that I would ever actually talk to any of the actors or be on the actual set was, apparently, laughable. And as for Dothraki, it had a very loyal following of about 6 or 7 people, all of whom I came to know personally. Dothraki was discussed in the press, sure, but nobody was going to learn it; there were never going to be any Dothraki conventions. It wasn’t the next Klingon.
June 2012, and by this point I’d gotten used to seeing my work on screen—and by that I mean I’d gotten used to seeing it performed…so-so. Every so often it was really good, but for the most part, I got used to hearing jumbled consonants, dropped syllables, missed words… I’ve always been a perfectionist, so this was difficult, but I didn’t have much choice. I had absolutely no control over it. I never got to work with any of the actors, so all they had were my recordings, and a series of dialect coaches who had absolutely no idea what they were doing with my stuff. (And, as I would learn later, just because an actor nails 9 out of 10 takes doesn’t mean the editor won’t like the one take they screwed up. Sometimes that’s the take that makes it to the screen.) Basically, if someone has an English line on a TV show that goes “It looks like the mechanism got screwed up somehow”, and what they say is “It locks like a manism got scroot up someho”, they’re going to reshoot the scene until the actor says it right. If that happens with a conlang, no one will notice or care. This was now my life.
July 2012, I get the opportunity to create High Valyrian (yay!), and then a “dialect” of High Valyrian to be spoken in Slaver’s Bay. Knowing the history from GRRM’s books, I knew this “dialect” was actually a full daughter language with lexical/phonological material from an extinct language (Ghiscari) that I wasn’t being asked to create, so I was going to have to create two languages at once, and at least have an idea for a third one—and, in fact, there was going to be a lot of dialogue in this new daughter language. Consequently my focus was split. I can honestly barely remember creating Astapori Valyrian, because I wanted to be sure that High Valyrian was right (I knew book fans didn’t care about Dothraki, but did care about HV). Despite the lack of attention, I did realize that Astapori Valyrian had a cool sound and a great flow (it really does!). I wish I’d had more time to appreciate creating it as a daughter language (I wish High Valyrian had been as complete as Dothraki was at that point), but I was pleased with the result. I was curious to see how the actors would handle it.
April 21, 2013. I am absolutely over the moon. I’d just for the first time saw a scene that I loved in the books because, for once, I predicted what was going to happen (as a reader, I’m sitting here thinking, “How do you trade your entire army to someone and not wonder if they’re going to use it on you after they get it?!”), and it actually plays better in the show than the books, and it all hinges on a language I created. I still get chills watching that scene: Episode 304, Daenerys revealing she speaks Valyrian. To this day that’s still the best thing I’ve done. The same issues I mentioned above were present, as always (watching thinking, “Did she say mebatas instead of memēbātās…?”), but they’re minor. The scene is outstanding. I realized that whatever was going to happen after this, I would always have this scene. That was a good night.
April 28, 2013. After last week’s episode, I wasn’t really waiting for anything. In episode 305 there’s only one scene with any conlang work in it—nothing really major. Introducing Grey Worm, characterization, etc. Everything in this episode is about what’s going on in Westeros. At this point I’d heard a fair amount of Astapori Valyrian in Slaver’s Bay. It was good! Definitely good enough. Did the trick. The prosody wasn’t quite what I did with it, but it was good. I was somewhat interested in this introduction in 305. Grey Worm only speaks Astapori Valyrian at this point, so this actor wouldn’t have had had any other speaking lines, and aside from one short line and saying his name at the beginning, his next line is a huuuuuge speech, comparatively speaking. I was curious to see how he would do.
Critters and gentlefolk, that night I witnessed a miracle.
NEVER had I heard ANYONE speak one of my languages better than me until that night.
Every word, every syllable, EVERY SOUND OF EVERY CLAUSE Jacob “You Heard My Name” Anderson uttered was ABSOLUTELYFLAWLESS.
I was stunned. My mouth literally hung open—probably for the rest of the damn episode, at which point I went back and watched that scene—again, and again, and again.
And so you don’t have to go searching, this is Grey Worm’s line (not the first two short ones—the big one [note: j is [ʒ], except in Daenery’s High Valyrian name, where it’s [dʒ], dh is [ð], q is [q], r is [ɾ] and y is [y], in IPA]):
“Torgo Nudho” hokas bezy. Sa me broji beri. Ji broji ez bezo sene stas qimbroto. Kuny iles ji broji meles esko mazedhas derari va buzdar. Y Torgo Nudho sa ji broji ez bezy eji tovi Daenerys Jelmazmo ji teptas ji derve.
That was my translation of this English line:
“Grey Worm” gives this one pride. It is a lucky name. The name this one was born with was cursed. That was the name he had when he was taken as a slave. But Grey Worm is the name this one had the day Daenerys Stormborn set him free.
That is a LOOOOOOOOOONG ass line. And go watch that scene. There is nothing on the screen but his face. It’s a closeup the entire time. Any slight deviation would be visible as well as audible. Take a look:
This…KING just casually dropped the greatest performance I have ever witnessed on screen at a time when I had already given up on ever seeing a truly great conlang performance on screen.
And then he proceeded to do it again and again and again and again and again for the rest of the entire show. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the very last conlang line of Game of Thrones is his. They knew how much I loved him—I told them. I told anyone who would listen and twelve people who wouldn’t, along with their next of kin. He didn’t take my language and make it his own—no, no. He is graciously allowing me to claim that I created his native tongue—the one he’s been speaking since birth. THAT’S how good he is.
So yeah, accent work? In English? I guess I’m not surprised he’s pretty good at that. Something like that to this…adonis, this living, breathing Master Class™ in perfection is like yawning to an ordinary human. Jacob Anderson can walk into my house in the dead of night, take anything out of my refrigerator, and then leave the door to the fridge and the house open when he leaves. He has earned no less.
