Hakn a tshaynik
Well I am currently reading another book in my series which I will now call "The Books I am Reading Because Now I Ride The Subway Collection". The collection includes such classics as "The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul", "Confederacy of Dunces", "Tough Jews", and the new addition is "Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods". This book also marks the second book in a row that is not only Jewish in nature, but also non-fiction (although I guess "Dunces" can be debated to it's realism depending on what Tom Kennedey O'Toole's life was actually like). Of course both books are also written humorously, because if you want me to read, you have to keep my attention, and the best way to keep my attention is to make me laugh. "Kvetch" definitely stands out well above "Tough Jews" (a book chronicling the rise and fall of the Jewish Mafia in 1920's-40's NYC) because it deals with a language that is built to be rebellious and smart-aleky.
Through reading this book, I even have more of a respect for Ebonics as a language, because the basics behind it is the same as the basics behind Yiddish; a language developed for a specific group of people in order to rebel against a non-inclusive society. And thus another bridge between blacks and Jews has been drawn.
However, another thought that has enveloped all my thinking processes since I started reading this book, is who starts languages? There is no way they just come out of nowhere. A whole mass of people don't just wake up one morning, all spouting words and know what the other means without having previously discussed it before, right? I mean, I know I learned English from my parents, and then learned proper grammar from my teachers and Microsoft Word, but they had to learn it from someone else, as did the people who taught them, and so on and so forth until you get to one point where it all starts. I am extremely interested to know about this starting point. Is it a small group of leaders, who met and convened over a large table, discussing what things should mean, and how they should be said? Or perhaps it all begins in a small population, where the most popular guy says something, and everyone else uses it? Any new words and phrases now come from media saturation where everyone can learn it and over use it in a matter of minutes, but even those have to start somewhere. Who came up with the old chest nut "The Bomb" to describe something that is awesome, because bombs are generally not awesome, unless they are bombs that when they explode they emmit rockin tunes, candy and naked ladies. Or who even said "old chestnut" is a good term to use to describe something that is old and once very common? And obviously the "starters of language" were not all the same people, because we have different languages all over the world, and then even different ways of speaking the different languages (English is a prime example of how different cultures can have different words, even in our own country English is different in different parts; people from Western New York have a different word for Soda then us normal people from the rest of New York, and so on). How do the different cultures decide which elements of the basics get kept, which get scrapped and which get modified accordingly? Also why do some languages last, and some fade completely. Why can't I understand Shakespeare without the translated text?
Of course with language comes letters and symbols to represent words when written/painted/chiseled/typed/etc. How did we come down to decide that "d" was the symbol for a lowercase letter D, and not "P" or "%"? Why don't Chinese use our lettering system, or why don't we use theirs. And then when it comes to transliterating words, who is it who decides what is the "correct" way of spelling the "foreign" word? Why can't I spell the word for jewish beanie "yamuka" like it is pronounced, instead of having to spell it "yarmulke", which, when read aloud phonetically, sounds like the noise one makes right after vomiting? Why is it that I can't spell? Maybe it is everyone else who can't spell, and I who am the only person who can spell correctly?
There is only one way to test this, and that is to try and create a language. Obviously I will need all of my readers help to bring it to pass. From now on at the end of every entry, I will put a new word or phrase, or perhaps even a word or phrase that already exists, but give it a completely different meaning. It is then upon you guys (as well as myself) to use this new word or phrase whenever possible, instead of the contextual words or phrases you used before.
Today's entry:
Flobdalflick - dirt or stain on a person or article of clothing
"Sarah, you've got some flobdalflick on your blouse. It's probably from that cake you were eating before."
(Upon spell checking this document, "Flobdalflick" is spelled correctly. LiveJournal is already on board.)
Through reading this book, I even have more of a respect for Ebonics as a language, because the basics behind it is the same as the basics behind Yiddish; a language developed for a specific group of people in order to rebel against a non-inclusive society. And thus another bridge between blacks and Jews has been drawn.
However, another thought that has enveloped all my thinking processes since I started reading this book, is who starts languages? There is no way they just come out of nowhere. A whole mass of people don't just wake up one morning, all spouting words and know what the other means without having previously discussed it before, right? I mean, I know I learned English from my parents, and then learned proper grammar from my teachers and Microsoft Word, but they had to learn it from someone else, as did the people who taught them, and so on and so forth until you get to one point where it all starts. I am extremely interested to know about this starting point. Is it a small group of leaders, who met and convened over a large table, discussing what things should mean, and how they should be said? Or perhaps it all begins in a small population, where the most popular guy says something, and everyone else uses it? Any new words and phrases now come from media saturation where everyone can learn it and over use it in a matter of minutes, but even those have to start somewhere. Who came up with the old chest nut "The Bomb" to describe something that is awesome, because bombs are generally not awesome, unless they are bombs that when they explode they emmit rockin tunes, candy and naked ladies. Or who even said "old chestnut" is a good term to use to describe something that is old and once very common? And obviously the "starters of language" were not all the same people, because we have different languages all over the world, and then even different ways of speaking the different languages (English is a prime example of how different cultures can have different words, even in our own country English is different in different parts; people from Western New York have a different word for Soda then us normal people from the rest of New York, and so on). How do the different cultures decide which elements of the basics get kept, which get scrapped and which get modified accordingly? Also why do some languages last, and some fade completely. Why can't I understand Shakespeare without the translated text?
Of course with language comes letters and symbols to represent words when written/painted/chiseled/typed/etc. How did we come down to decide that "d" was the symbol for a lowercase letter D, and not "P" or "%"? Why don't Chinese use our lettering system, or why don't we use theirs. And then when it comes to transliterating words, who is it who decides what is the "correct" way of spelling the "foreign" word? Why can't I spell the word for jewish beanie "yamuka" like it is pronounced, instead of having to spell it "yarmulke", which, when read aloud phonetically, sounds like the noise one makes right after vomiting? Why is it that I can't spell? Maybe it is everyone else who can't spell, and I who am the only person who can spell correctly?
There is only one way to test this, and that is to try and create a language. Obviously I will need all of my readers help to bring it to pass. From now on at the end of every entry, I will put a new word or phrase, or perhaps even a word or phrase that already exists, but give it a completely different meaning. It is then upon you guys (as well as myself) to use this new word or phrase whenever possible, instead of the contextual words or phrases you used before.
Today's entry:
Flobdalflick - dirt or stain on a person or article of clothing
"Sarah, you've got some flobdalflick on your blouse. It's probably from that cake you were eating before."
(Upon spell checking this document, "Flobdalflick" is spelled correctly. LiveJournal is already on board.)