As I stated more or less over on Pajiba, I just want to say that I adore the UK with every fiber of this American heart of mine--it's the place I love most in the world, honestly. I wasn't entirely cut out for where I am, but choices were made in 1633 and here we are, and immigrating is really quite difficult when you're competing with an entire continent of qualified, multilingual people. But UKIP is an unmitigated trash fire of awful, and they must not be allowed to win. And if that lessens my chances of ever getting back to the place my ancestors left so they could come to a place called Maggotty Bay (really? really.), then I'll have to live with that.

My heart and mind are with you guys today. This will pass, as our own American brand of awful must surely also pass eventually. And hey, if anybody knows of a job opening for a left-leaning, bookish, computer savvy Britophile American on that side of the pond, you know, I'd be happy to add to the light side the next time this kind of referendum comes up.

Also a Hufflepuff. I have been told that this is the correct decision by pretty much everyone who knows me so I'm not fighting it. Plus I like labs.

I'm very glad to know exactly what Sansa the floof is.

There's a lot of filth in Chaucer.

I have a degree in Literature. We had to do the untranslated Full Canterbury Tales in undergrad. THEN in grad school we went on to the untranslated if you please Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and I looooooonged for the simplicity of Chaucer and his fart jokes and double entendres. Luckily my Arthurian class professor was more interested in proving that he could pronounce Beowulf than in making us do so, and the only other class where we covered that particular work was a history class using the Seamus Heaney translation, which is truly a thing of immense and glorious (modern English) beauty.

All said, Chaucerian English is easier than the stuff that came before it, in that you will recognize more of it without feeling like you suddenly lapsed into reading Danish. However. It is still pretty much another language for all intents and purposes. It's not until I get into Elizabethan/Shakespearean texts that I start feeling like I'm reading something I can understand more as a native tongue and less as something I studied for a couple of semesters in high school and college and kind of get on an intellectual level but could really only reliably find my way to the bathroom with.

And. I'm from Kentucky. Our Appalachian speakers have very interesting accents, and I haven't the first clue what Elizabethans might have sounded like back in the day, but they must have sounded pretty twangy backwoods to sound anything like what our people sound like now. I think the gist of those original studies is that some of our idioms held over, which I'll believe. But Kentucky by and large (which I realize is only a small part of Appalachia as a whole), is more Scots-Irish than English in ancestry, and if you don't believe there's much of a difference, I'd advise you not to make that known to the folks out this way.

I am always mystified by how quickly these particular breeds embiggen. Sansa has gotten ginormous -- particularly her feet. She is still floofy and beautiful, though.

How beautiful, and thought provoking. Like many Americans I was raised wholly monolingual. I picked up French in middle/high school and college because it's what you do as an arts student, and I was fairly good at it, but it was never something I particularly connected with (although I did love it more than the two semesters I spent slaving in German). I have tried off and on to pick up Irish and Gaelic, because those always spoke to me more (my family believed for the longest time that we had Celtic ancestry. We don't. We are English to the bone. Both sides). But they, as well as Welsh, are truly fiendishly difficult. But so very worth it. This lovely piece made me want to try one more time.

I was deeply into the UB40 version. That and Can't Help Falling in Love. My mother spent my adolescent years being appalled with me and my choices.

I almost prefer Rufus's Hallelujah. But then Buckley drags me back every time.

I am very much not trying to harsh your buzz, but I can also do this! My mother is a die hard Neil Diamond fan and I grew up on Monkees reruns and the two things sort of coalesced into being able to identify an early Neil record by the way the chorus sounds.

By the by, can you also identify pretty much anyone's voice, like in commercials or whatever? Even people who have not been famous or even tangentially famous for decades? Because if you can also do this we may be clones.

OMG, Finn is the bomb and this article gets all the love. He is so believable! I totally understand the way he reacts in every situation, except for I would be shrieking obscenities, like, nonstop. But other than that, dude is just the best. He's so human, but he's the BEST human. I mean, I love, love Rey and thank goodness she is a kickass female for all the girls out there, but seriously, Finn is who I identify with as a rational adult that can't help thinking about consequences but will still do the right thing in the end, and who loves my friends more than my own hide a lot of times.

And John Boyega is super cute.

People who hate on Finn are terrible people.