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[be_themoon]

things I read recently on the power of words and languages!

In my English reading book Major Themes for Modern Writers, the author Harvey Wiener wrote an introduction to a group of essays about language and said:

Yet we cannot help asking what exactly is language. ... It is a gift of the supernatural, societies with a strong belief in magic assert.

Comments

[marycontraire]

WHAT? I LIKE PAST!YOU.

[be_themoon]

ahahaha YOUR ICON. every time I see it my brain goes to mush and I start giggling over how much I ADORE Misha Collins.

[marycontraire]

He is the product of a mass fangirl hallucination.

[be_themoon]

this is obviously the only logical conclusion! he's simply too awesome to exist in real life. TOO AWESOME.

*weeps*

whyyyyyyy can't he be real?

[zempasuchil]

Sometimes the truest answer to "Who are you?" is "I don't know."
HOW TRUE IS THIS.

this class on translation has been absurd with all its "the answer to a theory of translation is THERE IS NONE" and "the solution to this problem is FOLLOW YOUR INTUITION" and "translation is a progress towards an IMPOSSIBLE GOAL". and yet we keep reading this stuff that tries theorizing and comes to the same non-conclusion. So it's refreshing to see this put so succinctly in your quote.

Also I totally agree about the changing languages thing. You should take a linguistics class, it totally tears down norms and rules and any standard for language. It's very freeing and sort of tore me away from that linguo-centric nostalgia that glorifies tradition and even archaicisms. That class taught me more about prejudice than anything else has.

[be_themoon]

SO TRUE I DON'T EVEN.

hahaha! oh, classes that don't really give you an answer. and then going on and on about how there is no answer. silly people, the point of having no answer is that you have nothing to say. (but that would mean no textbook to make money with, so. :P)

oh, man, I can't wait to take some sort of linguistics classes. I don't think DSC actually offers any, which is so sad. D: but linguistics is one of the things I'm going to require in my college, so. heh.

[zempasuchil]

That is what classes are, sigh. all we can do is try to make connections I think. and create, yessssss. it is not about answering questions in the end and I think I am okay with that.

Linguistics is interesting! I didn't end up going into it because once you tear down those things and say All languages are too different to be comparable, all forms and stages of language are too different to be comparable, all the rules you try to put on language are stupid because it's all up to the user and the agreement between the speaker and interlocutor - after you say all those things it just turns languages into these things you deconstruct and dissect, observe and model with science and math, at least in the intro courses here. ugh. yeah, that's why I'm not a linguistics major.

[turkeyish]

I LOVE GLEE!

[be_themoon]

IS IT NOT EFFING FABULOUSSS?

[animus_wyrmis]

Sometimes the truest answer to "Who are you?" is "I don't know."
YES.

Words are sooo important, and while I totally think that they have histories and those histories have power and sometimes we have to say "It doesn't matter what this word means now, what matters is what it used to mean" (or the other way around, sometimes)...sometimes also the words have changed and the meanings are different and that is okay. So, um, I don't know, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

[be_themoon]

language is so fluid! that's part of what's so ridiculously awesome about it. I get what you mean, though, it's just really hard to put it into words, isn't it? histories of words are important... but then some people overdo them (see again: my dad). and it's this huge glorious mess of no one actually knows, which is fabulous.

[katakokk]

Words and blood are the double helix that connect us to the past.

YES. <333 Oh, this reminds me of how at nerd camp we read some essays on stories/language, and how it needs to be passed from generation to generation, and how it connects people across the world and lets us understand what they see, and how it is our connection to the past and that people preserve them to feel a oneness with their ancestors. YES. Did that make sense?

[be_themoon]

it's very much the same thing! it is hard to understand your ancestors without understanding the world they lived in and the language they spoke, and stories give you both of them, which is fantastic. it's why they're passed down so much - each generation leaves their own mark. it's a connection to the past much more important than any other.