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

Sorry, I don't have time to read that right now, I'll try to read it later.

>>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?<<

Yes. The number being part of inflection, and not a separate word. So In english there is only 'pig, pigs', but Moruk has two more categories.

As I haven't read the article to which you linked, I'm probably just shooting myself in the leg (can you say that in English? My English is on vacation), but the ability to accept huge amounts of loanwords is in no way a unique English trait. Other languages are receiving a whole lot of *English* words nowadays (at least when they don't have a French-style Academy trying to control language change). So for example, when I say I'm going shopping, I use the verb 'shoppailla'. When I say my computer has frozen up, I use the verb 'bugata' (from 'a bug'). When I talk about my computer screen, I can say the long, native word (kuvaruutu), but I'll probably use 'skriini'. So at least Finnish seems to be taking ifluences just fine.

Close. 'Shoot yourself in the *foot*'

Many other languages have loan words. Spanish is peppered with Arabic. Turkish has Arabic (Aslan = Lion), Farsi (Sabze = Vegetable) French (Garson = Waiter; Gushet = Ticket Counter) and German (Fertikçi
= station master - because they shout 'fertig' when the train is ready to depart).

Hindi/Urdi have a lot of Farsi, from Mughal times - and in the Urdu version there is more Arabic than the Hindi.

The use (or not) of loan words is probably due to a combination of factors: Imperial expansion, Imperial subjugation, trade, proximity of neighbours, political status - etc. etc. Some of the touchier linguistic communities attempt to enforce a purity by artificial means - French, German and Spanish have official academies.

Serbo-Croat is currently undergoing a peculiar fracture. Essentially there is one language, spoken in only slightly different dialects in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia (but written in Cyrillic in Serbia and Roman in the others). Each state has now declared its own language and is attempting to purge the 'foreign' elements used by its neighbours.

I can't quite remember the full details of this, but my Zimbabwean friend once told me that Shona tends to borrow words from English, wheras Ndebele makes up its own, and also has a lot of onomatapoeia. Thus Shona for 'helicopter' is (something like) 'helicoptrra' while Ndebele is (something like) 'eskoppakoppa' (try saying it to see what I mean).

An interesting one - A couple of years ago I asked a Hungarian how to say 'goodbye' in his language. He said "It's 'sia'. I think it's from the English, 'see ya'."

<>

Close. The phrase is to shoot oneself in the *foot*.

The use of loan words in English seems to have a strong connection to our imperial past. New 'technospeak' words on the other hand seem to have the ability to penetrate quickly into lots of languages.

Noggin

Ach! I changed it from 'foot' to 'leg'!

>>Serbo-Croat is currently undergoing a peculiar fracture. Essentially there is one language, spoken in only slightly different dialects in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia (but written in Cyrillic in Serbia and Roman in the others). Each state has now declared its own language and is attempting to purge the 'foreign' elements used by its neighbours.<<

I've just been reading (and should still be reading) a coursebook on sociolinguistics. It was mentioned there that there are language varieties in Papua New Guinea that are linguistically speaking *identical*, but which are considered different languages by the speakers.

There's been a lot of talk about the Serbo-Croatian situation, but it isn't that unique. Swedish, Norwegian and Danish have been separated from each other by differing standardized forms, and linguistically speaking they are still one language as they are mutually intelligible. Even though it's the ortography that makes the languages seem different, even their written forms can look very similar. Here's an example from that sociolinguistics book:

Danish: Hun sidder i vinduet og ser ud over gaden.
Norwegian: Hun sitter i vinduet og ser ut over gatan.
Swedish: Hon sitter i fönstret och ser ut över gatan.

(English: She sits by the window and looks out to the street.)

"Serbo-Croat is currently undergoing a peculiar fracture. Essentially there is one language, spoken in only slightly different dialects in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia (but written in Cyrillic in Serbia and Roman in the others). Each state has now declared its own language and is attempting to purge the 'foreign' elements used by its neighbours."

This frightens me every bit as much as their more visible and warlike activities. More, perhaps, because it tells how deeply the feelings are ingrained.

Hello tildajwftilda, db, aa, etc,
Always infuriated and motivated by my ignorance, I'd greatly appreciate learning from you what the ideographic footsteps in Apple's first reply signify? If he/she was walking out on me, I'd love to know.

>> because we do not know all that we say, we always say more than we know. <<
It feels like there's a lot of irony around as I reply to discussion on what the above line means.
>>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<<
I heartily agree with 1. My problem with 2 starts with the premise, which I now see exists in my statement, that what's said and what's known are qualitatively similar enough to permit quantative comparisons. It seems as silly to say the set of the said is greater than the set of the known, as I have greater honesty than pounds, my hopes are bigger than my furniture. That said surely 2 requires 1.


>>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. <<
I would suggest there are infinite ways to combine the symbols of language. I'm not sure I understand "the organizations of referents we can find in reality". Taking it to mean our perception of the world, say what I see know - laptop on desk in corner of room etc. - I reckon there is also an infinty of perceptions made meaningful by organization of referents or "things recognised".

The idea I was trying to get across though was in response to a remark about intention and Derrida. I was suggesting any remark we make contains meanings, implications and significance which were consciously unintended. I suppose this means the set of what we say is a bigger set than the set of what we thought or know we said. Indeed, I wasn't aware I'd said 2. above.

I do believe, unlike some extreme po-moists, that there are effects and traces of consciousness in speech and other writings. The type or genre of a piece of writing or speech determines the degree of influence made by the individual speaker, how much it's an original product of his/her thinking. The discourse of air traffic controllers with pilots, or military radio controllers relaying orders are formal communications that show little evidence of the actual individual involved, whereas pillow talk or a collection of poems are contexts where we expect to find signs of individual consciousness. Teachers addressing class, politicians addressing conference are instances between these poles, where we expect personal passions have been curbed so the speech could in many ways be said by others.

The nature of language however, I'd suggest, cannot permit a speaker to entirely comprehend their utterance, to say exactly what they mean no more no less. I think there's a delusion Western civilisation has long promoted, regarding the possibility of original expression through language. I think it is still promoted from early schooling to the publishing industry. It's evident in gushy praise, where the critic suggests a work is an opening onto the writer's soul, that it gives access to his or her mind. I enjoyed db's use of the word >>combinatorics<< for reminding us we do not create words, but merely repeat them in different combinations.

Let me be brief or at least address ~'s request for brevity discussion, by suggesting the delusion is driven by our desire for language's facility to express our unique identities and any particulars of life the universe and everything and is well exemplified in compliments of pithy utterances, as I gratefully accept for the line of Pierre Bourdieu's repeated above (he actually wrote, in French, "Because we do not know what we do, we always do more than we know"). The 'bon mot', the perfect, apt word, the fittest phrase assuages our anxiety that our words don't actually fit the world of our experience. English is flexible, and I'd suggest essentially vague, every word an approximation. Every word gains significance through repetition, dragging associations made in the context of previous uses. And this essential iterability means no context can ever pin it down. A word means something somewhere only because it can mean something else elsewhere, and this alters its original meaning. Well it undoes the idea of an original meaning because repetition has no one starting point, like rhythm already underway when it starts. In fact the consequences of meaning only becoming possible through repetition is relevant to perception. I can only see my laptop and desk etc because I've seen them before. I can only ever perceive new combinations of things in the world. No word or saying can reveal reality, but merely satisfy a prejudice or anxiety created by language's inadequacy.

I hate the way people refer to dictionaries to find some 'proper' definition of a word, because dictionaries are always out of date. English words are changing and growing with every use, and lexicographers have an impossible task, as the interesting Economist article db mentioned made clear.

Perhaps all I'm saying, after Habermas, is that we don't speak language, language speaks through us. Well of course that's not all.

I say thankyou again,

Cheers db, that link you posted

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

is a very readable and fairly comprehensive essay on the situation. It has just enough classical reference to establish its authority and its style of amused wisdom is most convincing.

The connection to political realities is often overlooked in many assessements. Defense of one's tongue and bitter hatred for invading languages are natural reactions that combine our natural resistance to change with politically charged, death-defying resistance to all forms of foreign invasion. It will take a lot to prevent foolish nationalist pride from creating still more pointless language wars in Quebec, India, France, China, Japan, etc


jwf

mark

>> ..appreciate learning from you what the ideographic footsteps in Apple's first reply signify? <<

It's one of hundreds of available smileys available on site.
See: A155909

In this case the footprints are used as a form of bookmark. It shows they have been here. Some people use .

It is considered by some to be a simple courtesy, an acknowledgement that they have been reading but have no comment at the time.

And it also functions as a bookmark for further reading. By posting something, anything, the 'my recent conversations' list on your homepage will refresh its info on that particular conversation and then susequently show when any new postings have been made. You then click on the line showing your last post and the thread will open to that posting.

Some people (especially those with slow download speeds) consider it rude to just leave tracks or a book-bookmark because it causes them to load up to see what new posting has been made only to discover there is no vital content.

Navigation of the 'my recent conversations' lists also varies depending on which h2g2 skin is engaged. There are also realibility issues on the 'latest post' info. These usually sort themselves out eventually but as you yourself noted, you were left uninformed of the updates. As somone suggested this can also be a browser cache or refresh situation. Refreshing your homepage usually brings things up to date.

~jwf~

thankyou ~jwf~, for again generously leading me out of my ignorance a couple of steps at least. Though I can't help feeling a touch of the disappointment you refer to of returning to a thread to finding a posting with unsatisfying content. Sensing you've grasp my thinking better than most I was disheartened to find you troubled yourself describing the footprints while neglecting my daring aphorism:

we do not speak language, language speaks through us.

Admittedly it's not MY aphorism, indeed proprietorship of any text is surely a troubling issue, vide the author function, its death.

Yet let me hazard a perhaps more contentious proposition, that in the beginning was the word and at the same time god. Remembering that a word only exists if it is repeatable and repeated and so there is no one point of origin. So the origin of language as of divinity is a myth and I'm coming to feel the two are linked; that the use of language depends on a faith amongst speakers in a transcendental power. It's interesting how religions give language perhaps the highest reverence among man-made things - well that being the crux, in that certain texts are revered as God made, the word of god. I was interested to hear recently how Sikhs regard any building that holds its holy book as a temple. And blasphemy, or speech offensive to a religion remains a major preoccupation. Also pertinent is the use of verbal formulae over centuries as though by saying the same prayers, repeating "Hail Mary"s, singing the same hymns will be better understood by god. Further, the use of Latin and Hebrew, and the reluctance of religious authorities to reduce their application, has illustrated a faith in the words above their understanding by many.

I do not think it is merely an issue of religious peoples fetishizing certain texts, though I think that's apparent, but more importantly the global belief That language Can be the revelation of the transcendent. I'd be interested to hear of any religion that does not hold certain texts or speech sacred.

The discussion about language and national identity indicates to me the need we feel for language to be revered as having a transcendental underpinning in a world where god in the traditional sense is dead. We need to believe the language we speak has a spirit, a power beyond our ken, that provides a profound significance to what you say and think, that is to our identity. It is impossible to think about language from outside, but I think it imperative to attempt the task of interrogating the prejudices and values inherent to it and thus instinctive for us.

Waaa.

Anax

<>

Yes, of course! I am cross with myself - I should have noticed before this... I thought it'd be something on the character map. More fool me!

Anaximenes, hello... no, the mean I am wandering along, listening, have nothing particular to say, and am marking my place for next time. I used to put marking, and then heard that someone got peeved when I did that (I dunno why, it just means I have nothing useful to contribute.) It means - I am listening with interest, not walking out on you!

I know very little indeed about Post-modernism, except that a lecturer we had in linguistics called it "Po-Mo" and was not a fan... Which is why I am reading, but not contributing, so I can learn.

PS - I have a very slow connection myself! That's one reason why I do bookmark, as it can otherwise take me a whole heap of time to find out where I was up to, if things have been very busy.

No disrespect intended ..

>> More fool me! <<

Jeez, it's not even April first yet and I've scored twice already!

jwf

>> I was disheartened to find you troubled yourself describing the footprints while neglecting my daring aphorism: <<

A fairly regular regime of disheartening comes with the h2g2 territory I'm afraid. Just try starting a critical conversation about the works of Douglas Adams. You'll get three postings asking who? And four telling those three to bog off. And not much else.

You have asked if I think your aphorism looks tight in those pants.
Well, yes. But is it true that:
"we do not speak language, language speaks through us."?
Yes and no.
The first bit is a rhetorical lie designed to soften objection to the second bit about speaking in tongues, a reality vehemently denied by our modern secular humanism. But the second bit is actually true.

Cosmic truth revealed by possession, visions and incoherent babbling is the real source of all that overbundant faith you noted that is blindly put in 'The Word' by preachers of all tongues.

Y'see, once god has spoken to you it's hard not to keep an ear peeled for updates. Theologians, priests, witchdoctors, shaman, gurus, evangelical healers and disc-jockeys all do it for a living. Skit-so-free-niacs do it for fun. It's tough work, but somebody's gotta do it.

~jwf~

*chuckles*

Salve all,
One step backwards:
>>It will take a lot to prevent foolish nationalist pride from creating still more pointless language wars in Quebec, India, France, China, Japan, etc
and let me mention my gratitude to AA (Now decided...)(Does that mean you know your mind and it's made up?)(Cat Woman)(after previous confusions I'll just restate my polymorphous perversity) for backing up the signalled steps of her absence with heartening interest. Though you do suggest the talk is of Po-Moism, which indicates your listening in is not as passive and open as you otherwise suggest. Listening/reading as if to a PoMo chat will no doubt yield different understandings than as if to a chat attempting to open an area outside Western phallocentric hierarchies of taxonomic toplogies. That's not to suggest that's what our chat is, but merely a challenge to your assertion your ignorance, which I'm confident is no greater than mine, is
>>Which is why I am reading, but not contributing, so I can learn

>>no, the mean I am wandering
Not all who wander are lost

Sorry, I stray. Let me digress briefly. Douglas Adams, bog off?! Hmmm. His work strike me as of the type that offer diminishing returns on rereading. After 3 and 4 postings dismissing critical conversation, I think I'd add /././actually I've changed my mind, that the frequency I've read allusions to his 42 recently impresses on me his striking a resonant chord in contemporary secular society, and its mask of irony slipping to show a two faced expression of the need for transcendent meaning, an anxiety about the arbitrariness pervading our sense of reason and a tragi-comic acceptance of ordinariness.

This brings me neatly for what I think I thought I was going to say in reply to tilda man's agreement he and you and I are helpless conduits of the divine stream of meanful words flowing through our mouths and keyboards. Everything we say is always already arranged for us. It's as though the footprints precede our steps. Or the way my homeland, the Great Southern Land, Australia, Oz, was already sketched in on maps cartographers created with beliefs in a globe with balancing land masses. I recall johnny Keats writing in a letter how he felt an impersonal relation to his best lines of poetry; that he didn't feel he was creating them but that they arose formed into his consciousness. And then there's that distance we can all feel when we listen to ourselves speak, or speak to ourselves. How can people still cling to that delusion our words can be understood as products of what we mean? Hasn't everyone experienced various agonies of "I didn't mean to say that" and "that's not what I meant at all", and don't these apply to all we say? Call it God or English, we are playthings of linguistic forces.

Know what I mean?

ANax

This is an interesting site. Does anyone know if there is a way I can pring the whole conversations from beginning to end without having to print each individual page one at a time?

Hia MoFoLo,
Glad you dropped by and found our chat of interest. We like to make a point of welcoming newcomers and encourage spontaneous contributions - if you're tickled by something just let it fly. Don't think about it, or worry if you're making too much sense or whether we'll get what you mean.

Have you heard of 'automatic writing'? The version practised by the French surrealists usually involved a few days sleep deprivation, excessive quantities of absytnth and scrawling reams of whatever one's frazzled brain poured forth - logorhea I suppose. I reckon adapting this practice could be the key to forwarding this thread on Language and Linguisitics. And 'forwarding' should be understood more like hands on a clock than people on a linear track.

Thus we, or at least I, encourage Posting 21s. If that's new lingo to you - it refers to responding to postings made at an earlier stage of the thread. Your desire, Go for it!!, to print out our thread suggests your getting ready for this already. We like to change our names which might confuse you, especially as a few of us like to adopt new styles and tones as part of our project investigating language, identity, dialect and the assumptions we make regarding their connections.

Or do I make an assumption that you made a typo when asking
>>Does anyone know if there is a way I can pring the whole conversations from beginning to end... <<
I'm unfamiliar with the word 'pring' and we would all love to learn about it if it belongs to some dialect used in Ohio. Maybe you meant to type 'prink', a lovely old world which means to spruce or smarten up. We'd all appreciate any efforts to prink up 'the whole conversations'.

Again you seem to express your wisdom with wit and/or the passing levity of a mistake. Maybe you have already perused our ongoing investigation into the problematics of number in language and its consequences for a society's possible concepts and percepts of groups of things and people. The "whole conversations" is the finest expression I've seen of the multivocal polyvalent endeavour you've hopped on board.

As others will verify, I'm hopeless with technical aspects of our work, so will have to leave it to ~jwf~, a most generous mentor, or dancing buddha or aa to help you print the lot if that's what you really want to.

Don't let me scare you with big words. I make most of them up to cover up a latent insecurity I have with conversation. It's my way of blasting a position in the ongoing war of languages.

He war.


Anax

>> I recall johnny Keats writing in a letter how he felt an impersonal relation to his best lines of poetry; that he didn't feel he was creating them but that they arose formed into his consciousness...<<

Ah yes, good 'old' Johnny, who never got old.
And Browning who when asked what he meant by 'Sartor Sartoris' replied, "Only God and I knew what I meant when I wrote it and now only God knows." (I paraphrase.)

Yes I do undertsand (most of) what you're saying or rather what is being said thru you. At least I grasp the notion that we often are mere conduits for prepackaged thought. I do it (almost) all the time. I find if I try to edit what I've written it either starts or stops making sense.

Good to see you getting in the spirit and welcoming newbies.

As for prinking out the backlog, I wouldna bother.
By all means read it if you will, but very little of what is posted at h2g2 is deserving of becoming a hard copy. It is written in the immediacy of timeless cyberspace - what was writ in the past remains present for the future. But that 'present' or 'presence' is entirely a subjective reality for each reader in turn. By the nature of this electronic medium what is writ here will often have a gripping sense of immediacy, but none of it will ever be engraved or chiseled in stone.

~jwf~