The Seventeenth Day of August
in the Year of Our Lord
Two Thousand Twenty Four

(2024-08-17)

WE'RE GETTING MARRIED!

Once upon a time, there were two linguists. One from Minneapolis, one from Edinburgh. 

Daniel and Ye-Ye first met at a Catholic student social event at the beginning of the 2023 school year, and occasionally crossed paths at daily Mass thereafter. Ye-Ye had recently moved from Oxford to Bloomington to start a Ph.D. in French Linguistics at Indiana University. Daniel was entering his third year of a Ph.D. in Computational Linguistics.

Then came the fateful day in October when Daniel agreed to give a guest presentation to the Corpus Linguistics class and in the process got roped into helping many final projects on Lamkang, including Ye-Ye's Scrabble™ game. After working on it, the two of them fell to talking about other things, one of them Daniel's invented language kay(f)bop(t).

In December, Daniel attended Ye-Ye's Christmas choir concert at church. She wished to see the absurdity of his language (with all its hat-tossing) in person, so she invited him over for tea just before winter break. He said two words in kay(f)bop(t):

kay(f)dan(f)nib(t)beb(p)no(p)bin(t)zhil(f)vlir(t)sang(b)es(p)zzz(b)vom(b)ash(f)tin(f)vlim(p)kay(f)

fab(f)feb(t)sup(p)dul(b)ses(f)tesh(p)ja(t)ja(t)vlir(t)sing(b)es(p)u(t)vom(b)gag(b)ash(f)tin(f)vlim(p)va(f)dan(f)

The first of these roughly translates to "I, who am finite in number, larger than a breadbox, and in a normal state of mind, like you; and this statement is expected and true and I think it's pretty great. Also, it's Saturday and there's only about a 7% chance I'm wrong about all this."

The second word, as we all know, means "Perhaps there could be a finite number of dates, though I don't entirely expect this to actually occur. These dates would be inedible, would be neither animal, vegetable, nor mineral, and would die at the paws of a wombat. If they did happen, that would be pretty great."

At the time, though, he gave a rather briefer translation:
"I like you. Date, perhaps, question mark?"
"That's sweet," she said. "Wait, are you asking?"
"Yes."
"Okay."

One hundred emails and a winter break later, said date occurred. Two hundred emails and some number of dates later (0 to 7.25, depending on your preferred system of counting), the question of marriage was discussed, and answered affirmatively.

The Proposal

On March 23, 2024, having realized that some events weren't in a normal order, Daniel and Ye-Ye planned to call her parents, go ring shopping, fill out church paperwork, and do the proposal, all in one afternoon. Somehow, they managed it.

Since Daniel had originally asked for dates ending in a wombat attack, he provided a wombat for the occasion.

Thanks to Julie Swanson for the photoshoot (top three) and to John for documenting the proposal.