A relatively long day. Will likely turn in early because I have a long day tomorrow. My penultimate Toastmasters club for the TM year.
Come to think of it, I actually have a "penultimate" story. I took a couple Spanish courses in university. (At one time or another I studied French, German and Spanish while pursuing my degree, just because I wanted to.) The instructor was a very passionate Spanish woman who told me more than once that she wanted to kill me because I wasn't applying myself enough in her class. I could not deny it. I had to concentrate on my core studies, and Spanish wasn't one of them. But I digress.
One day, we were discussing numbers, and she asked us what the English word for the next-to-last item in a sequence was called. She had forgotten. I said, "penultimate" because I had studied Assembly language a few years earlier and had had to learn to understand phrases like "the penultimate bit" in an octal or hexadecimal number. You know, in an effort to impress women. But I digress.
The instructor looked at me and smiled. Or maybe she had gas. I am still not sure. At any rate, she said that the Spanish word was very similar and said
"penúltimo!!"
She said it loud enough and with enough gusto that I felt justified in rendering it like I just did. She also frightened me a little. Enough to make me study a little harder in her class, going forward. At least the death threats stopped.
BTW, that was the same class where we had to adopt Spanish names. I was re-christened Benito. There was a girl in our class named Georgina. Because that name exists in Spanish, she was allowed to keep her name, but had to pronounce it in Spanish, were the "g" sounds were like heavy "h"'s. It sounded a bit like "Hey Or Hee Na". I ran into her many years later when I was a gym rat (which I need to be again!). She remembered me and recalled that incident and her flukey name.
Yeah, I know. You don't care. But would you rather read about a piddling incident like this from my youth, or not have a blog post at all this evening? Hmm?
See you tomorrow.
Bevboy
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