Category: Research

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Because the origin is Welsh, the plural of “corgi” is actually “corgwn” which is pronounced “corgoon”.

Hello Dear Reader! Non-writing post ahead.

Well hello again!

Sleep Over has been optioned for adaptation to the screen, which I am very excited about!  Everything is sort of slow going at the moment as you may know though, but I’ll keep you posted.

For a break while I’m hard at work writing, I enjoy putting together educational posts about animals.  This one took a turn for the etymological…

I want to start posting them here, not just to reddit.  I put a lot of work into this one and I would like to use my website platform a bit more, so here we go.

I will say that I sometimes forget not everyone has tinkered with their web browser like I have; if you don’t already have the Chrome extension that lets you mouse-over image links for a pop-up view, I cannot recommend it enough; you can just get a little visual to go with things a lot of the time instead of having to click and leave a page. A lot of my linked text is actually just a picture 😉

Well folks this might be my strangest (and longest) awwducational post yet; it’s one third aww (awwviously corgwn -remember, corGOON– are cute as heck!), one third history, and one third language/etymology facts! Hope there’s something for everyone 😀

Onwards! I figure if we can all switch over from calling Phở “foe” to calling it by the proper “fuh“, surely we can get the plural of corgi to be as it should!

So WHY it is that we don’t use the proper word for a pile of corgwn?

(Source)

Culture erasure. In a single sentence: the English have historically been prejudiced against the Welsh language, and they have tried to suppress the use of the Welsh language. (Source 2) That erasure still echos into our time, in language remnants like this corgis/corgwn thing; let’s do our part to update our language.

Corgooooooooon!

I initially learned about this from an episode from the podcast “No Such Thing as a Fish”, where the final fact in that episode is that:

“The English language has more words borrowed from the Hawaiian language than it does from the Welsh language.”

And you’re not alone if you’re wondering how Wales, England, “The UK”, and the whole general British malarky are actually divided up and named; would you like to spend 5 minutes to learn about The Difference between the United Kingdom, Great Britain and England?

Now onto facts about, not just one corgi, but all corgwn (corgoon)! Because I know why you’re here (and I hope you’ll forgive me for tricking you into learning an etymology thing at the same time).

But first, obvs, PICTURES OF CORGWN!

Source. There are two breeds of corgwn; seen here on the left is a Cardigan Welsh Corgi, and on the right is a Pembroke Welsh Corgi.

View post on imgur.com

Source

Source

Here is an album with a ton of cute pictures of a corgi with amazing facial expressions!

Source@genthecorgi

Also, the source for the image I submitted is here.

FACT TIME

Okay it’s language time because I am a writer and for some reason words and etymology really floats my boat, really peels my grapes, really darns my socks.

Etymology

Borrowed from Welsh *corgi*, a compound of *cor* (“dwarf”) and *ci* (“dog”).

Sources for notes on the proper pronunciation are here.

And see here for the specific usage notes, which read:

Some breed authorities prescribe the etymologically consistent plural form corgwn. Nonetheless, the plural form corgis is considerably more common.

(So was “foe” until we got it sorted!)

Also: “The Pembrokeshire Corgi Handbook” (1952) by C.L.B. Hubbard states: “The plural of Corgi is Corgwn and not Corgis.”

Oh and is the Oxford English Dictionary a good enough source? I know I certainly knead it wile writing… “The Oxford English Dictionary [Second Edition]” lists corgi as:

Noun
corgi (plural corgis or corgies or corgwn)

I see “or” and “or” and I’m like fool of a Took! I really liked saying “go for foe” but we have to be proper twenty-first century citizens.

I must admit that the spelling is tripping me up a bit… But it’s definitely “corGOON”, I’ve some sources just to back me up. I really wanted to be sure on that, and it wasn’t just the accent of the podcasters where I first heard it!

Because I’m a poet, and I didn’t even realize it:

Very soon we’ll say corgoon.

Please get a spoon and feed corgwn. (One spoon twixt an unknown number of corgwn, I know, it could be *disastrous* but that is a risk I am willing to make you take.)

A bright full moon shines on corgwn:

Also I feel like there should be a D&D spell called Boon of Corgwn but I should not continue to procrastinate to the extent of making up magical items to summon a hoard of corgwn… must.. resist urge..

Furthermore, and extremely awesomely, if you type the proper IPA (*not a beer*) spelling

ˈkɔːɡuːn

into this extremely cool text-to-speach IPA tool, you can hear it being said! I may or may not have tried a bunch of accents XD

Bonus pics of Corgwn for all who made it to the end!

Source

Source is a deleted flickr account but I found it first here.

Source

 

Worth noting: I made a post over in /r/Wales before I felt confident enough to finalize my post… I am not Welsh, and, with any culturally sensitive issue, I would feel wrong to speak without first listening. So I asked, and they answered, much to my gratitude.

 

As ever, thanks for reading!

Source. I so enjoy putting these together! I ended up learning a lot, and hope you did too.

If you’d like to see more awwducational posts like this that I’ve done (much less etymology, more so animal facts), have a look at the following:

Binturong – Pangolins – Margays – Aye-Ayes – Nyala – Elephant Shrews

And if, for some regretable reason, you like my sense of humour, you can follow me on reddit here to get a steady stream of truly awful jokes, OC memes, and other nonsense in your general direction.

Cheers!!

HG out!

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Sleep Related Research, Glass, Prop Hunt

Well dear readers, I hope you are well.  I have had the flu for the past several weeks!  For a few days, it was that kind of sick where you can lay on the couch in silence and not even feel bored.  Your body wants you to be laying down and it makes you not care that you don’t even want to watch Netflix.

When I got better (after a solid week of eating like a maniac and napping every afternoon), I got Prop Hunt.  I have played it for the past 5 days (not all day… not today anyway haha), and it is incredible.

Prop Hunt is the modern day video-game-age equivalent of Hide-and-Seek.

The “Hunters” are “it” and they are blind for 30 seconds while the “Props” take their preferred form (or hastily-chosen-in-a-panic-form [A CABBAGE NEXT TO THE TOILET OH HOW INTERESTING]), and hide.

Once released, the Hunters must find the Props and kill them.

Hunters have health, and every time they attack an innocent object (I swear that lamp looked suspicious) they take damage.  An ill-placed grenade can be lethal.

Props have health directly correlated to how big they are.  That honkin’ vending machine is sitting pretty at 200 health, but is way out in the open.  A tiny pop can is able to hide in small spaces, but only has one health.  A nearby grenade can take one out, even if they weren’t the intended target.

So for the past few days, I’ve been a filing cabinet, a bottle, a lamp, a hula girl figurine (the hardest thing in the game to shoot!), various boxes, all sorts of junk.  It’s been a lot of fun.

When I get sick, I watch Youtuber “Seananners” play Prop Hunt, so I already knew what it was all about.  I’m glad this time I was able to play it myself.  Here he is in action.

Seananners. Pretty fun.
Onwards!

There is sleep research showing up on my feed nearly every week!  I always get excited to see how interested people are in it.  I think my novel will strike at just the right time.

Here’s some neat things, if you’re interested:

Discovery of a sleep node in the brain could lead to treatment for people with sleep disorders, such as insomnia.

How your brain actually makes decisions while you sleep

Scientists find evidence that narcolepsy, a chronic sleep disorder, may in fact be an autoimmune disease.

So yeah, interest in sleep and sleep research is high right now.

Here are some amazing things made of glass. I may have posted a few of these before… they continue to amaze.






Source is the very talented Paul J. Stankard.

I’ve always loved watching glass blowing.  Some day I’ll have a setup to play around with.

So that’s all for now!  Everything publishing-related is still hush-hush.  Though I can say, I have another manuscript waiting to be looked over by my fabulous agent, Beth Campbell, and as soon as she can give me notes on it I can get to work.

I’ll leave you with these: pictures of ink dropped in water.  Cheers!

Full album here!
 

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You Will Never Know as Little About _____ as You Do Now.

Hello dear readers!  It’s been a while, mostly because I can’t really talk about things in the exciting phase.  I can say that my agent has begun the first round of submissions with my novel, and that it’s going extremely well.  I just need to wait on editors to get back to us about… things.

Hurray!

Mean time, I volunteered at SiWC again this year, and I gotta say it felt different.  Being there knowing an agent is hard at work for me was such a different feeling than being there searching for representation.  It was much nicer.

I got to time appointments with authors, called Blue Pencil Appointments.  It’s where writers sit down with published authors and get the first few pages of their work critiqued.  It was neat to be a part of from a distance; I like to think I’m familiarizing myself with stuff like that now because hopefully soon I’ll be in the author’s seat at conventions like SiWC!

Many writers got tons of good advice over the weekend.

I’m starting a new project, a comedy western.  Need to do something fun.  But you know how much I know about westerns?  Near 0%.  So I had an interesting idea; record everything I think I know about westerns.  Like, before I start my research.  Because I have a perspective that I will never have again (and it goes for just about anything):

I will never know as little about X as I do right now.

From here on, I will only know more about westerns.  But I’d love to know what someone who knows nothing about westerns knows about westerns.  So I might as well write it down.  All the archetypes I know, all the plot devices, all the tropes etc.  And then as I do my research I’ll get a better idea of the genre, but still have a record of what “no-knowledge-Heidi” knew.

So, when you begin learning about a thing, take note of what you know before you begin learning, so you can look back and see what a layman knew about the thing!  A highly useful perspective that you won’t be able to have once you begin your quest.

That’s all for now!  I’m working on a list of common mistakes writers make when they’re starting out, and I’ll have that set to auto-update once I get the first entries few finished.

Thanks for stopping by!

Heidi out.