Elizabeth Barrette (ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
  • Mood: busy

Language Influences Thought

...in these 5 examples.

However, a crucial counterpoint is that English makes it easy to NOT lay blame, with the passive exonerative ("Mistakes were made.")  English is a popular business langauge, partly because of that passive exonerative: many other languages require  specifying who or what caused something (bad or good) to happen.
Tags: linguistics, news, reading
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  • 23 comments

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siege

siege

May 28 2011, 13:02:50 UTC 10 years ago

One draconic word which has been hard for me to grasp is "ke". It literally refers to the experience of time as a flow of space, a dimensional concept humans have trouble understanding outside of the purely intellectual. I had to spend a lot of time developing my spiritual senses and repairing old wounds before this sensation made sense to me. And with draconic mostly being an early, very simplified language (with few or no timepieces), ke refers to many different concepts of a flow or amount of time, in which translation depends on context. Fortunately, there are words for specific daily and yearly regions of time: daybreak, evening, sun-high (noon), hot/cold season, fullyear, and so on. That really helps. But when you want to translate the phrase "an hour", it's "ke na" (time comes), with few or no applicable modifiers for length (and "na" isn't always used).

And that's just one concept. It's like reading compressed computer code, sometimes: you have to understand the processor (mind) that generated it, or some concepts will escape you entirely.
ysabetwordsmith

Thoughts

ysabetwordsmith

May 28 2011, 19:26:30 UTC 10 years ago

>>One draconic word which has been hard for me to grasp is "ke". <<

Coooooool.

>>And that's just one concept. It's like reading compressed computer code, sometimes: you have to understand the processor (mind) that generated it, or some concepts will escape you entirely.<<

Yes. That happens to me with Seshaa, which has a LOT of words that don't translate precisely into English. Sometimes it happens with Torn Tongue too, given the different cultural references.
siege

Re: Thoughts

siege

May 28 2011, 19:32:49 UTC 10 years ago

And with Earthly languages, all this stuff is why Muslims generally insist that converts learn Arabic and read the Koran in its original language.
ysabetwordsmith

Re: Thoughts

ysabetwordsmith

May 28 2011, 19:38:45 UTC 10 years ago

Yes. That's a good idea with any crucial material. The Baha'is have a custom of translating and then backchecking their holy works, so a lot of the stuff has been translated into many other languages. But there are some that won't translate accurately, no matter how many times people try, so those are only available in the original. Arabic, Farsi, and Hebrew are among the better languages for discussing certain spiritual concepts. Spirituality is one field where English has less useful vocabulary and grammar than a bunch of other languages. Native American ones tend to be good for spiritual discussions too; Lakota and Cherokee have some dandy terms.
siege

Re: Thoughts

siege

May 28 2011, 19:46:13 UTC 10 years ago

In my understanding, it's because a lot of Saxon vocabulary was suppressed when Christian-influenced nations invaded and then converted the nations of Britain. So the words we could have had for spiritual concepts have had to be borrowed from the languages where English-speaking cultures found their teachers: Greek in a very few cases, but much more often dialects of Sanskrit and various Asian languages as we imported Hindu and Buddhist teachings and teachers.
ysabetwordsmith

Re: Thoughts

ysabetwordsmith

May 28 2011, 20:23:52 UTC 10 years ago

That would make sense.

I'm always bemused by the term Anglo-Saxon. The Angles and the Saxons hated each other, but after all the raiding and post-battle screwing, they wound up sort of stuck with each other. People should learn to watch where they put it.

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