Articles by mgedwards

A foray into Guaraní

Last Wednesday I met the Paraguayan Spanish instructor to learn Guaraní, an indigenous language that is one of two official languages of Paraguay (Spanish is the second).  Spanish will be the medium of instruction.  We plan to meet each Wednesday at lunchtime for the next three weeks.  
 
Guaraní is a very interesting language.  Unfortunately, Spanish and Guaraní have little in common except a few Spanish-derived cognates such as "problema" (problem).  Today I memorized a short conversation in Guaraní in anticipation of my next Guaraní session.  Here is the short conversation I memorized, which I found on the web site of Professor Lustig of the University of Mainz, Germany:
 
Mrs. Natividad: Good morning. Do you speak English / Spanish?
Ña Nati: mba’éichapa ne ko’ê. Reñe’êkuaápa inglépe / karai ñe’ême?

Jasy: I’m sorry, I  dont speak english.
Jasy: Añembyasyete, nañe’êkuaái inglépe.

Mrs. Natividad: Unfortunately, I speak only a little Guarani.
Ña Nati: Añe’êkuaamichimi mante guaraníme, anga.

Jasy: No problem. You speak already very well.
Jasy: Ndaipóri problema. Reñe’ê porãitereíma.

Mrs. Natividad : Thank you.
Ña Nati: Aguyjevete ndéve.

Jasy: ; Qu te vaya bien
Jasy: Tereiko porãke.

I want to learn a handful Guaraní phrases and dialogues so that I can better function linguistically in Paraguay.  Although only four-to-six million people speak Guaraní, most live in Paraguay.  94% of Paraguayans speak Guaraní, while just 40% of Paraguayans speak Spanish.  In Paraguay, at least, Guaraní is more useful than Spanish. 

Guaraní has an intriguing sound.  For example, the pronunciation of the vowel "y" sounds like a drop of water when combined with the consonent "b".  Considering that the Paraguayan have been known to use Guaraní to define their national identity and confound those who are not Paraguayan, I feel like I’m learning a special language by learning some Guaraní.  During the Chaco War (1932-1933), Paraguayan soldiers spoke Guaraní exclusively, eluding their Spanish-speaking Bolivian adversaries.  I’m happy to have a chance to pepper my Spanish with a few indigenous phrases.

Featured Blog: The Stand-Up Economist

Now that I’ve finished my Spanish class, I’ve moved on to another class that crams as much political and economic theory as is physically possible into three weeks.  (Really, how much can you learn in three weeks?  A LOT, apparently–they’ve crammed an amazing amount of stuff into a short course.)  In today’s economics segment, the presenter talked about the fact that economics, the dismal science, is fraught with statistics with built-in margins of error.  Virtually every sacrosanct measure we trust to accurately measure an economy, from the average price of a gallon of gasoline to gross domestic product, is ultimately an estimate with a varying margin of error.  As I heard this, I thought, but so much depends on these economic measures!  Interest rates, Social Security expenditures, the Federal Budget, you name it–they all depend on the veracity of economic statistics that are merely estimates.  So I got to thinking, how can one bridge the gap between economic assumption and reality? 
 
Sometimes it takes humor to get the job done.  The Stand-Up Economist, a jovial chap named Yorum Bauman, an economics professor at the University of Washington and part-time stand-up comedian.  His YouTube presentation, "Mankiw’s Principles of Economics, Translated," is a classic.  In it, Dr. Bauman boils the ten principles of economics into the following, easy to understand translations of generally accepted precepts:
  1. People face tradeoffs (choices are bad);
  2. The cost of something is what you give up to get it (choices are really bad);
  3. Rational people think at the margin (people are stupid);
  4. People respond to incentives (people aren’t that stupid);
  5. Trade can make everyone better off (trade can make everyone worse off);
  6. Markets are usually a good way to organize economic activity (governments are stupid);
  7. Governments can sometimes improve market outcomes (governments aren’t that stupid);
  8. A country’s standard of living depends on its ability to produce goods and services (blah blah blah);
  9. Prices rise when the government prints too much money (blah blah blah); and
  10. Society faces a short-run trade-off between inflation and unemployment (blah blah blah).

After watching The Stand-Up Economist, it all makes so much more sense to me!

Hershey’s Chocolate World

During Memorial Day weekend we headed to Hershey, Pennsylvania to visit Hershey’s Chocolate World, one of several attractions on the site of Hershey’s large entertainment complex.  (For those who haven’t heard of Hershey’s, Hershey’s is one of the world’s largest candy companies.)  Although the large complex features multiple attractions, including Hersheypark, an amusement park, the Hershey Museum, Hershey Gardens, and ZooAmerica, among others, we only visited Hershey’s Chocolate World.  Hersheypark is celebrating its centenniel this year, so it was a momentous time for us to visit.  What we saw was plenty for one day.  We visited the animated moving exhibit that highlighted the chocolate-making process, and we spent some time mingling through the shopping area.  Our son became an honorary factory worker at the Kiss Works center and took home three boxes of Kisses.  Dad wondered humorously whether any child labor laws were sacrificed in the name of fun!
 
We also milled through the entrance to Hersheypark and the Hersehy Museum.  We spent just the right amount of time at Hersehy, because it started to rain immediately after we left town.  In fact, the drive home from southern Pennsylvania to Washington, D.C. was hideous.  I’ve driven through heavy rain, and I’ve driven through lightning storms, but I’ve never driven through such a treacherous combination of both.  I almost stopped the car to wait out the storm, but we pressed on and passed the storm after about half an hour.  I’m glad we did, because it was a massive storm.  We could have been waiting a couple hours for it to let up. 
 
For the shutterbugs:  I posted some new photos for the shutterbugs of our visit a couple weeks ago.  They’re probably the best imagery of our trip there.