h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I think I proved how very newbie I am. All this related to the first page of Language and Linguistics - I really should learn how these forums work before I jump in - sorry for the non sequitur
...

'S okay, Anaximenes. (Great name, by the way!)

>> Writing is thus a bastard, inferior, secondary imitation of speech as it involves, among other inferiorities, the absence of the speaker's and even the listener’s mind. <<

Yes. But I would add that when something is well written and ideas are unvieled with both logic and imagination, as you have done in your posting, something of the speakers mind is revealed and those who are listening can be moved to think if not actually reveal their response.

The absence of a reply or other confirmation of reception does sometimes leave writing looking like a one way street. As you say, speech is the superior medium for immediate feedback leading to clarity but perhaps writing has other better long term values, especially when care is taken to achieve understanding in the reader (listener).


~jwf~

Many thanks for your generous responses. Having now read the current postings on this thread it was interesting to see my ramble about Deconstruction wasn't entirely irrelevant as I'd feared, especially following April's post about the West's taste for logic - both of us even listed some of the binary oppositions that structure and delimit (limit but make possible) western thinking.

I agree the Greeks set us on this path of thought and its accompanying cultural imperialism. I liked April's reference to their 'ability to see "both sides" (aka "double-think")' which we've inherited, allowing us to comprehend contradiction, to construct upon criticism, that is to co-opt opposition. Nietzsche aphorism was never more appropriate, whatever does not kill it makes it stronger; or as April put it, it
>>has generally proven to be a more succesful world view than any form of single mindedness, obsession or blind faith.

Though we use a different language I think the way we use and understand English, the supreme value we give it and its respected place and function in culture, evolves from the sense of superiority the Greeks had for their mother tongue. We've even kept the Greek word 'barbarian'to refer to lesser mortals. The Greeks used the word to refer to foreigners who couldn't speak Greek, or, even worse, spoke it badly. There are passages suggesting they felt greater pain on hearing their adored language mangled than a totally other speech.

Recently the BBC seems to be more democratic in its use of various accents, but I think there is a complex web of ideas, implicit values and ingrained prejudices driving the self-promotion of English. One definition of the difference between a language and a dialect is that the former has an army and navy behind it. Allied to such obvious means of linguistic colonisation and domination are countless social institutions. Indeed policies like the BBC's advance the concept of English as neutral and open and self-empowering, a useful tool for individuals of any culture, while at the same time displacing 100s of languages and literary culture every decade. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but like April, encourage awareness of the gyroscope of reality, the plethora of ideas left unthought in the progress of traditional western culture.

>> ..the binary oppositions that structure and delimit (limit but make possible) western thinking. <<

Yes it was strange reading your posting knowing you were doing what h2g2 researchers call a 'Post 21', replying to a much earlier posting only to discover the conversation had moved on.

This happens all the time, to the point that it has long since acquired its own name. If in your reading you ever come across references to a Posting 21 you will now know what it means.

I am recently on record in another thread as saying the usual response to this supposed 'error' is too often and too predictably saeveral short and rude postings full of derision and discouraging 'newbie bashing' followed quickly by apologetics and hugs from more mature types, usually too late to save an embarassed newbie from beating a hurried retreat.

The point I had tired to make (elswehere) was that cyberspace is timeless. That which was writ last week, last year or four years ago in the 'past' is still 'present' to 'future' readers. So if an earlier posting inspires a reply from someone new, then perhaps the original posting was/is/willbe worthy of review and further discussion. But this suggestion met with little response so I had made up my mind to make a point of replying fully to the next Post 21 I saw. Yours was in fact the kind of well considered posting I was hoping for, so I did reply in full and in ernest rather than just dissing you for being a dumb newbie.

But what was really strange was the realisation that without having read my more recent posting on the roots-of-bi-polar-neuroses-in-western-thought you had subconsciously tuned in to the vibe of the thread. Your comments were far from irrelevant and certainly worthy of further comment. Of course I'm obliged to say that because you agreed with my hypothesis and it is unusual for anyone to agree with me, escpecially when I make sweeping generalisations that require a complete re-thinking and re-writing of 2500 years of history.



I also need to point out that the 'april foolish' bit of my name is just an addendum, a qualifier, a descriptor of my current condition tagged unto my usual h2g2 identity ~jwf~. Many researchers append some sort of advert or teaser or qualifier to their usual name.

For example, the founder of this thread currently markets himself as "Edward the Bonobo - Oooh, me achin' cremaster!" The first bit, 'Edward the Bonobo' is his usual name and the last bit 'Oooh, me achin' cremaster!' is just one of many temporary add-ons which will no doubt change again soon. I change mine about once a week to some timely or topical reference. Last week it said 'equinoxious'.

So my name is simply ~jwf~ which is a monograph of my initials representing my real life name, John W Fulton. As for the tagline, 'april foolish', I probably shouldn't have been so publicly anticipating 'April fools day' while we are all still Marching.

But for me the entire week prior to April first is a period spent considering possible pranks for the day of fools. I seldom ever think of a good one that doesn't involve property damage or hurt feelings so I haven't actually played an April Fool's joke on anyone for years.

If I have inadvertantly given you the impression that my name is April then I have successfully done all the April fooling I could wish for. Sorry if my premature reference caught you off guard, and sorry that I now have to dash any hopes that 'April' might have set you to flights of springtime fancy, but I'm just not that type of guy.

And the really funny thing is that I'm the one around here who is usually being corrected by those of the feminine persuasion. When a name gives no hint of gender I simply assume the proper grammar and use the masculine form as I was taught in school for occassions when gender is unknown or ambiguous. In spite of it being proper grammar I am forever being scolded by the girls for my 'assumptions'.

In this case of course the fault is entirely mine for forgetting that April isn't just a month, and you had every reason to believe my name was April, ...fool.



~jwf~

>> ..policies like the BBC's advance the concept of English as neutral and open and self-empowering, a useful tool for individuals of any culture, while at the same time displacing 100s of languages and literary culture..<<

And yet as someone recently pointed out somewhere around here (I haven't checked to confirm it) fewer than 5% of the world's population of billions are native English speakers.

Now, a factor of 5% is generally considered 'insignifcant' to those who believe in statistical analysis. Obviously the English language must have inherent aspects of Quality over Quantity to have survived so successfully for so long. It certainly is fun to play with.

Speaking of so long,
so long for now,
peace
~jwf~

Hi Anax! *waves*

Didn't understand too much about Derrida, have never read him. The closest I got to reading French deconstructionism was Foucault, and I got bored of his sentences which start out stating assumptions that subtly morph into statements of fact by the time they end. But their perspectives are certainly interesting, if a little difficult to comprehend (for poor reductionist me, at least).

>> ... Obviously the English language must have inherent aspects of Quality over Quantity... <<

Methinks it has to do with its evolution - being an amalgam of languages & syntactic structures, it is inherently more flexible since it seems to have been used & created more flexibly than other languages I know (3 of them from the Indic family, which have very specific structures). That, and little things like the lack of strict gendering - I mean, who cares whether a chair is a 'he' or a 'she'? I find it very fluid - as someone who is multilingual, when speaking with friends with a similar linguistic background, I find it easy to blend words & phrases from other languages; Indian english is fascinating in that regard - I can tell which part of the country someone is from just by listening to the way they form sentences in English, without regard to accent. I also find that it can reflect different styles of writing - i've been able to write poetry (*cough*) in English that is based on meters in old Tamil poetry (an Indic language), as well as incredibly expressive prose, as well as banal academic writing. No other language I know can reflect non-Western cultures as well as English does, or can be made to.

~ db

While English is probably more practical than, say, Finnish (although maybe I feel that way only because the culture is formed by English), my opinion is that its success lies firmly in British Imperialism and the American economic expansion. You learn the language you need to learn. If we're speaking of quality over quantity, why isn't Esperanto the lingua franca of the world?

Phew! Worra lorra postings!

Wading back in about...Eskimos. Since that minor controversy...I've come to the conclusion that the idea that 'Eskimo' is offensive is largely a non-Inuit concern. I've since come across various examples of Inuit peoples refering to themselves as Eskimo. These include both those whose second language is English (ie Canadian) and whose second language is Danish (ie Greenlandic Eskimos). I'm all in favour of the deliberate use of politically correct language as a tool of agit-prop - but I suspect that here the desire for change comes from well-meaning outsiders. Possibly the Inuit/Eskimo themselves are more concerned with things like jobs, global warming, alcoholism, etc. etc. See also 'Native American'. This is the term I use myself - but many refer to themselves as 'Indians'

Barbarians - That was the Romans, surely? The name means 'Bearded ones' and generally refers to the 'uncivilised' hordes to the north. However - the Greeks wer allowed to get away with beards and were nevertheless regarded by the Romans as being slightly culturally superior (in the same way that Anglophile Americans drool over the English gentry). The Greeks *did* have a similar word - but I can't recall it offhand.

Number - English has a similar system to Murik
One
A couple
A few (= 3 or 4 ish)
Several (= 5-7 ish)
Lots.

Sibling terms - A Zimbabwean friend (Shona father, Matabele mother - but English-speaking at home) once asked me to explain the word 'cousin' to him. To him, the son of his father's brother was his brother - and you had to get quite far down the patriarchal line before a relative ceased to be a brother. On the other hand, there was no particular word for the offspring of the mother's siblings - although the English word 'cousin' might be pressed into service to signify some vague kind of kinship.

Derrida/ Whorff etc: - Does language shape our thoughts - Yes. Obviously. That's what it's *for*! But it doesn't constrain it. A person without the word 'cousin' can still handle the concept. A racist can talk of African-Americans. If we follow Derrida too far - we can read all sorts of things into any text which weren't actually intended by the writer. Or is Derrida maybe saying something about the wider context in which meaning is constructed by the recipients of a text? He's in the world of ideas, rather than psycholinguistics. I'm reminded of the IRA's ceasefire declaration. There was endless debate over the meaning of 'cessation of hostilities'. Was it permanent? etc. etc. Eventually word came back 'Jaysus! If we thought you were going to make so much of it, we'd have thought a bit more about the wording!'

"The Greeks *did* have a similar word - but I can't recall it offhand."

Do you mean xenos? Haven't we done that one here? About how it means stranger, guest, foreigner etc.

The Greeks also had a dual, btw (singular, dual, plural). Though we never used it when I was learning Classical Greek, so it may have been limited to certain dialects, periods of time, types of writing or something.

For now: Barbar was the greek word for a certain set of tribes near Greece that didn't speak Greek (remember reading this in 'The Marriage of Cadmus & Harmony', Roberto Calasso). The word became 'barbaros' in Greek, meaning outsider, and then turned into the Latin 'barbarus' [Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition]

You're quite right. Beards came from barbarians, not versa vice. I now recall that 'Barbar' was from what the language sounded like to the Hellenic ear: 'Bah bah bah'

The definition I have for the Latin 'Barbarus' is 'Non-Roman inhabitants of Italy'.

Incidentally, 'Troglodyte' comes from the Latin word referring to the native inhabitants of Ethiopia.

Greek pronunciation is always fun.

I've seen it stated here-abouts that their alphabet is 'literal' in the sense that what you see is how it's pronounced.

For example the 'e' on the end of words is always pronounced as a long 'e' - hence, Persephone has nought to do with telephones but is actually spoken as "Purse-effin-EE".

So our new friend Anaximenes must pronounce his name as - "An axe IN m'knees" - which brings a rather painful image to mind. Perhaps he will return to tell us his thoughts on selecting that name.

~jwf~

Hello again,
I'm still working all this out, seeing in My Place 'no replies' I thought I'd been neglected as a harmless mistake, but having seen the trails of response I have generated I feel more at home. Thank you especially ~jwf~ for your informative welcome post my Posting 21. May I ask if you desire those strange marks around your monogram? If so, why? And, more importantly,what are they called? I heartily commend your attitude to serendipity of Posting 21 sorts. Most great discoveries are accidents, and, yes, I thought I might have encountered my latest lov. Then again, I position myself outside the straight/gay bi-polar madness of recent times, and have adopoted 'queer', by way of 'transgressive reinscription', to signal my polyeroticism or multisexuality.

Interested in chat about "inherent flexibility" (a near oxymoron) regarding English. While we don't have academies like the French policing its evolution, I'm not sure English can change more easily and quickly than other living languages, all of which develop as quickly as their speakers need to. So 'shopping' is a new Russian word. I'm not sure the use of "Inuit" by English speakers need be criticised for being promoted by "well-meaning outsiders" if it alerts us to the way our language is a tool of colonialisation.

Bemused by 'barbarian' chat. The Greek word "barbaros" (originally an adjective, but quickly used as a noun) was, according to my researches (primarily Liddell and Scott), used of all non-Greek speakers, and later mainly of the Persians. Interestingly it is only found once in Homer (Il. 2. 867), and there in a compund, barbaro-phonos, 'rude (outlandish) of speech'.I found no mention of 'Barbar' tribes, and can only guess some mistaken etymology linking it to Barbary. In a similar way to how 'barbal', 'of the beard', might be understood to be barbarian's origin. Significant to my point, I noticed that in post-classical time the term was used by Jews of Greeks.

I'd brought up the thought to suggest the cultural imperialism implicit in English language. I have to disagree with Edward why o why? about language not constraining the thought of its users. I think the very fact we have the word/concept barbarian indicates the presence of a superior attitude to others, foreigners and philistines. Just as telling is the absence in English of an equivalent to the Greek 'xenos', 'a welcome refugee'. Maybe we can develop the idea of like untranslatable terms by using phrases, but that creates the sense the idea has been developed by the speaker and is not 'native' to the language. There are obviously many effects on thought, speech and writing, on needing a quantity of words, in a combination that is probably unheard previously, than having one quality term. I would not suggest the spread of English is not due to some moral or linguistic quality but the particular qualities it has developed playing its part in imperial enterprises.

I enjoyed learning the history of 'serendipity' recently. Coined in the 1750s by Horace Walpole in a letter which was edited in the 1780s and the word slipped in the discourse of the editors, and over the next 50 years into the academic world, particularly the historians of scientific progress. Only dince the 1950s has the word entered into popular currency, becoming, according to an online survey in 2001, Britons favourite word. No other language has an equivalent. Many have taken the English word, though, curiously, French seems to have resisted it. I wonder if its etymology says something about the nature of English being able to exploit the happy accident.

I do share with dancingbuddha and jwf an affection for English and the fun it permits, it is my mother tongue. But feel a need to question the effects it has on me. That's part of the reason I enjoy Derrida. Edward lemon firebriage oh why? posits
>>If we follow Derrida too far - we can read all sorts of things into any text which weren't actually intended by the writer
Ah. It makes me wonder where we'd be if we went 'too far' with Derrida? Who knows? But I must agree he helps us find meanings unintended by the writer - well understanding his 'actually' to mean consciously. I would suggest, perverting a line of Bourdieu, because we do not know all that we say, we always say more than we know.

thanks
r

>> ..we do not know all that we say, we always say more than we know. <<

Your wisdom is inspirational.
Please, feel free to wander about the grounds.
Now what do you think of the idea that brevity is wit. It was one of the more interesting old conversation threads around here a couple of years ago. Someone might be able to drag up a link, but I'd prefer to completely revisit the issue from a fresh perspective if you have any thoughts on it and can express them concisely.

~jwf~

>> polyeroticism <<

That's what I always thought gay meant. I think it did a hundred years ago to those in the life.
But ever since their late 2oth century stampede out of the closet the homosexualists (same sex specialists) have co-opted it entirely (and almost exclusively) into their faggoty lexicon.
To my ear the word queer always meant same sex exclusivity in an almost medically pathetic way, where-as gay was polyeroticism and multi-sexuality in a youthful, innocent, alcoholic or other fog. The stuff of idle decadence and not my scene at all, at all.

~jwf~
Oh, PS, the squiggly things are there to represent the kind of fine needlework flourishes that are found in antique monograms from a time when people put their initials on their hankies and pillows and pajama pockets. Similar designs were also used when mongrams were painted in gold and gilt on carriage doors and this became known as 'scrollwork'. But I don't know what they are called in Print.
I find them in the Shift Caps position on the upper left hand corner key (top row, outside left of the number 1) which also gives ` in the lower case.

Anax (do you mind me calling you that, I'm lazy with long names?)

Sometimes a web browser keeps showing the old version of a page, even if it has changed. So, if you don't see any changes to the number of responses to a thread on your space when you are expecting to, just press the 'reload' button, and it should update itself. Alternatively, you could use the 'my conversations' link (on the left in the brunel skin) to track your conversations.



About english & quality vs quantity: of course, part of its 'popularity' is because of imperialistic impositions. However, I think that it has an inherent flexibility, which, *combined with* imperialistic impositions makes it so fluid and absorptive. That's what I meant by saying it seems to have been flexibly used - the use (forced or otherwise) supporting its flexibility and vice versa, sorta like an autopoeitic process.

I just looked up esperanto, and it has very specific naming conventions, and conjugation styles. English is much more free form. Also, Esperanto seems to have been 'frozen' - the document for the language's structure (not content) is supposed to have stayed the same since somewhile after it was invented.

My point is, in English, 'pukka' (a Hindi word) is 'pukka' (an English word), and there are numerous other examples. A native speaker wanting to adopt English can thus simply substitute the word she knows in her language, and use it as part of an English sentence, and that would be acceptable. I don't know how many other languages afford that kind of flexibility. Of course, I don't know any other Romance languages, or indeed any other non Indic languages other than English.

*goes off to hunt down Jared Diamond tract on pidgin English in New Guinea*

Re numerics: wasn't Aina's point referring to an earlier post about a study of some peoples whose number system was 'one, two, three, four, a whole friggin' lot, and gadzillions', and not whether languages have multiple terms for increasing plurality?



jwf: it's called a 'tilde', sometimes used as an accent mark, as in 'manaña'. I suppose it is flourish-like enough...

>> we do not know all that we say, we always say more than we know <<

hmm. a language is a set of symbols, organised in such a way as to communicate a corresponding organisation of the referents. unless a symbol captures everything about the referent (in which case it is the referent itself), it must necessarily select, based upon use and context, some aspects of the referent. in other words, a symbol always contains less information than its referent itself.

now the above statement can be interpreted to mean:

1. 'we do not know all that we say' - the set of things we know is non identical with the set of things we say
2. 'we always say more than we know' - the set of things we say is greater (and a superset of) the set of things we know

which, in the light of the above definition of languages & symbols, seems to make sense only in terms of combinatorics - when the organisations of words we create in our speech are more numerous & different from the organizations of referents we can find in reality - speech does not reflect knowledge of reality.

is that what you were hinting at?

~ db, who was so fogged by that statement that he forgot to capitalise his sentences

on the adoption of the english (as contrasted with french)

http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=883997