the_life_of_language neesh all language has life (except perhaps esperanto). i sometimes exclaim that french is a more beautiful language than english, but i think that's probably just it's newness to me, just the excitement of a different language. you still get silly french words that don't sound smooth at all, like semblable.. it even looks silly! and from my favourite book comes the line "Ce sera comme si je t'avais donne, au lieu d'etoiles, des tas de petits grelots qui savent rire...". doubtlessly a beautiful line, but i don't like the word "grelots", meaning little bells. it sounds too rough a word to me for such a melodic object. "It will be as if I had given you, instead of stars, a lot of little bells that can laugh". i feel you won't agree with much of what i say, but i think the delicacy of the bells is brought out by the simplicity of the line and the alliteration. in truth, and this may be evident from my choice of favourite book, i think simplicity in language is more moving than grandiose rhetoric. i prefer lucidity, because words are only precursors to feelings, and so the less the words get in the way, the more the feeling can come through. and i think english is brilliant for this, because we have such a variety to choose from, words of all origins, appropriations of phrases from other languages; whatever we find most fitting we take. does that not seem more like dynamism of language rather than staidness? i only know one man who has the complete oxford english dictionary, and it consists of thirteen tomes, and cost him over a thousand pounds. taking grelot again, it to me isn't a fitting word because it does not capture the essense of a bell; where is its resonance? our word has a booming b that echoes off and lingers into a softer set of l's. i'm currently studying Pope, whom i'll speak more of later, and in his "Essay on Criticism" he tells us: "'Tis not enough no harshness gives offense, The sound must seem an echo to the sense: Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows, And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows; But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar; When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, The line too labors, and the words move slow; Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain, Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main. Hear how Timotheus' varied lays surprise, And bid alternate passions fall and rise!" is that not the beauty of english? its ability to convey any mood simply by careful selection of words. i oughtn't argue that english is "better" than any other language, in honesty, because i don't know any other languages fluently enough to comment, but one cannot deny that english not only gives us all the tools to express ourselves in whatever way we desire, but is also keen to update and modernise itself to suit demand. french, conversely has a council to prevent the de-frenchification (ie modernisation?) of the language, banning such words as e-mail. i do worry, however, that english is not free from political destruction of language, as is seen in this new campaign to remove the concept of failure from education, so that now work is not "wrong", it is "less meritable" and your grade is not a "Fail", it is a "Nearly". i've just begun reading Nineteen Eighty-Four, and couldn't help but find this technique familiar; i only fear the repercussions of breeding a generation who when they leave school into a rather unforgiving world haven't a concept of failure. unless we remove failure from the workplace too, along with common sense. sorry, i digress... i don't think it is but a few who can make english alive, it is an entity unto itself, it has grown for hundreds of years, developed so much that most would struggle to comprehend, for example, Chaucer, and it continues to change, refuses to rest, though it currently sprawls, unfathomably vast. living language isn't just the likes of Pope tickling us with zeugma, bathos, punning and general wit - "Whether the nymph shall break Diana's law, Or some frail China jar receive a flaw, Or stain her honour, or her new brocade, Forget her pray'rs, or miss a masquerade, Or lose her heart, or necklace, at a ball.." (love that, will she lose her heart or her necklace? such tragedy either way..) - but is it not too something very simple? i do not cease to be moved by words of a fox: "It is very simple. It is only with one's heart that one can see clearly. What is essential is invisible to the eye." i cannot help but cry with laughter at some of winterson's work, yet it is not her complex diction, it is her vibrancy, the way her words burst forth with their ideas, their truly genius concepts: a world where words are physical entities that have power and personality and must be swept from the air, a town where love is an epidemic, a tribe who have no concept of time (who truly exist - the Hopi Indians). again you could argue that these are isolated cases, a few people of talent making use of something essentially sparse, but my point is that it is not the skill of the author, it is their emotion that is important; Pope loved to subtly and less subtly insult and belittle, for example, and it's clear that he relishes his writing. it is just so with anyone speaking with a passion in this language: they will be equipped to do so, it is an essentially accessible language for conveying feeling, for expressing opinion, for being functional, for being subtle, for anything at all! and don't get me wrong oldephebe, i'm a fan of my jargon too, just look at my website www.freewebs.com/emmarevision but i don't like to put fundamentally simple things in a complex way, i'm a stickler for clarity and precision. and i'd like to think i can do this and still show my feeling. in fact i think it easier and truer to express feeling thus. to reach the heart one must get to the heart of the matter. at the end i've given some words i will always treasure, because i know they were meant, and because they meant a vast amount to me, and that gave them a power (for me at least) that was greater than the sum of their parts. i said to a friend that my favourite word is vitriol, and he told me he thought it an ugly word, preferring my suggestion of mellifluous as a favourite word. but to me vitriol means sleepless scrabble at villier's park, a band well-loved by two close friends, and an introduction to these very blue pages. and so it is my favourite. finally, i defy anyone to read Pope's "Rape of the Lock" and Jeanette Winterson's "Sexing the Cherry" (neither are particularly sexual, despite their titles) and consider english anything other than beautiful, powerful and vivacious in every way. btw i've not majored in anything, i'm doing A levels, and technically i'm more a mathematician than linguist, but i prefer the life of words to numbers. here is my treasure: "Thank you for being so loving an angel. Your light sustains me, flight inspires me, words console and wings mend me. If there was a god he'd be smiling on you." 031003 ... oldephebe look, i was talking about the facility of exemporaneous eloquence, umm look if a language written or spoken or mimed or whatever makes music in the listers or readers heart..then that is for me the hiehgt of rhetoric or language..feel totally free to forensically disagree..i like some of the things you wrote..learned a little bit..but if the language dance out of the air or of the page into the interlocutors (wait..interlocutor suggests a cooperative exchange..and i guesse i am just speaking about an audience stunned in its wonder..or hearts turned to contemplate a new thing..)so yeah I got a big head..sure..big ego..while all the while asserting the rarefied virtues of humility..blech..music..music..music if words make music..that's what takes its shape in me. and yes of course ofr all those other contexts the relative aesthetic attributes of ones words or explanation are irrelevant. Sheesh neesh..i'm gonna give this one a rest..i'm all tuckered out.. ... 031003 ... oldephebe perhaps i will persue what i feel may be an invigorating exchange on some of the intriguing issues you framed in this blathe..but for now..I gotta clear the cobwebs out..I am always excited about learning and adding someones distinctiveness to my own hurly burly hodge podge of knowledge..so perhaps another time..I'm not so arrogant or egotistical that I cannot open myself to another perspective..take a little from here..and add a little from that tree..and throw in a little from this school of thought and so on later, ... 031003 ... oldephebe I have a confession..ah ..neesh..when you read my writing..don't take what I write literally..I will use imagery and evocations merely for the convenience of suturing some kind of improvisatory image..i'll take this tether and that thread and plait them merely for the rhetorical music it makes..not to impress or anything..it just comes from being a jazz musician/singer (and yeah i sing opera, pop, gospel, blues..they are all different styles and come from a different aspect of my being..)so yeah scat singing and Coltranesque harmonic excursions out into the undiscovered country carry over to the way I write..so I think you took mywords a little too literally..anyone who loves language as much as I do could posibly think that the language was dead..however..the way I hear it spoken and written..without the souls glow..comes off to me as being dead..still though..your blathe was extremely well written..and like i said earlier somewher in the layrinthine catacombs of blue..there are a few of my treks into the random..pontificating on the protean enrgies of american english..it's flux..its owing to so many heterogenous streams.. later, ... 031003 ... oldephebe damn!! my spelling and omissions.. should have written..anyone who loves language as much as i do could not possibly assert that american english is dead 031003 ... neesh peace, oldephebe, you clearly like to play with language, and that you enjoy it shows through in your blathes; to not lose the energy of what you're saying while twisting it through such diction is quite a feat. if you prefer to do that than hone it down, strip it of its orthography, then by all means don't change your style, an artist must remain true to himself. a friend of mine had a really clever idea which i might put down later if i get time, it'll be under the_death_of_language 031004 ... oldephebe uh..orthology? 031004 ... oldephebe ye gads!! my spelling!! labyrinthine..and why use catacombs to modify or augment labyrinthine?..blech ... 031004 ... neesh "He was wont to speak plain and to the purpose, like an honest man and a soldier; and now is he turned orthography; his words are a very fantastical banquet, just so many strange dishes." I.iii "Much Ado About Nothing" (it means flowery; to be fair i can't find that in any of my dictionaries, so perhaps an obsolete usage?) 031004 ... oldephebe ah..clarification..I don't think any word is really obsolete if it conveys the writers intent..cogently..why should we limit ourselves to a 20k or 25k vocabulary? What are there..like 400k plus words in the english language? So anyway..i read your blathe again and i find that we are making essentially the same argument..so gimme the gestalt..it's no ones fault..oh such jarring juxtapositions..i really do go on..um..check out what i wrote under..the blathepage blatherskites, or oldephebe i just can't believe part 1..or i am not rowbes..o ryou have got to be kidding me..or arthritis..or just about anywhere i've pooped my pile of pungent prose..some of it is rather didactic..but some of it makes some of the same points you so elegantly sutured together on this sparkling stream of a wordream..do ya KNOW what i mean?..i remember back in the neolithic age when i atended college..and ah an english prof tried to convince me to change my major from music to english..i ah of course declined..but i recall the scintillating discussions we would have regarding orwells prophetic 1984..so yeah its kinda ominous..kinda unsettling when the government tries to overtly pursue political correctness at the cost of blunting competition..obfuscating an implicit and ineluctable dynamic threaded through our culture of meritocracy..i'm going to enjoy reading more of your writing..looks like you don't have too much to worry w/r/t those essays.. the similarity between the cadenses..or potentialities of math as it relates to the rcognition and processing of language resonates with the mathematical possibilities and computations a composer or an extemporaneous composer (jazz solos)undertake..most people think jazz improv bursts from some atavistic well of being..maybe a little..but at least for me..there are computational processes at work in sifting through the 470 plus potential permutations of a leit motive for any given chord change/measure..and that's not factoring in the transpositions intothe 12 different modalities..or even keys signatures..and don't even start me on the devices of transient dissonance and other seemingly implicit modes of incongrous (yet fleeting) juxtapositions..so yeah this is what informs my writing style..this protean always in flux quality of american english..is an endless fountain of inspiration..blah and blah.. peace ... 031004 ... oldephebe oh yeah and francophone fastidiousness..yeah they've been scouring and monitering thier mother tongue for centuries..i do enjoy french operas when they are sung by either a native speaker..or someone whose is able to inhabit the francophone soul..is able to convey the implicit gestalt..and what not.. later ... 031004 ... neesh thanks. i'm glad we agree it is the sense of feeling behind language that's important. ha, just wait till you read my next mini-essay, which kind of contradicts all of this. well sort of anyway. i love words and language, but they frustrate me at the same time. and i don't mean frustrate me like these essays i just can't write atm, i mean when there are no words to translate thoughts into, when you think in thoughts instead of words. oh, i won't start it now, i'll only get myself confused and annoyed. 031004 ... oldephebe i eagerly await you erudition 031004 ... ferret heheh i remember when someone would swear, you used to call out "language!" and we'd all respond with "english!" such stupid juvenile fun but no more... 031005 ... pipedream what an enlightenment-page *me sticks a golden star sticker on the title* (one good juvenile memory deserves another; i miss the golden stars) 031005 ... pipedream if you could eat a word, what word would you eat? (and 'beefsteak' doesn't count) 031005 ... nomatter infatuation 031005 ... oldephebe yeah so neesh i checked out your site..your writing is very, very impressive..especially when jarringly juxtaposed along side my undisciplined wordsprawl. still though..i don't think i'll ever be rehabilitated from my rhetorical eccentricities..perhaps that's why i chafed whenever i was placed in the bridle of writing essays either on musicology or gray tombs of eminent writers..i just prefer conjuring congeries of glittering breaths..embroidered exhalations out of the aether.. later ... 031006 ... neesh I love essay-writing. In class last week Dave asked if literary critics saw their work as art in itself, and I nodded keenly. Especially of late I’ve been proud of the way I fashion my essays, there’s something indelibly me in all of them. I used to hate my essays as I was writing them, find them clumsy and incoherent, and only once I had distanced myself from them and came back to read them did I realise their wrought cogency. But this year essays are increasingly a matter of using text as a prelude to looking at life; where my teacher and I disagree is where we have a different outlook on the world. I joke with my teachers, writing anti-feminist views to annoy Mrs W, and I learn from it about my teachers too, like I’ve greatly grown in respect for Mr S, who’s revealed a strong sense of principles and who clearly considers balanced judgement to be fundamental, with which I wholeheartedly agree. He picked out the phrase indicting the "libertarian oppression of moral judgement" from my last essay and commended me on it. I’m quite mathematical and logical, so I do enjoy making links and finding links thematically and in imagery, but this to me is very much secondary to discussing the themes themselves, even in close analysis. She said that literary analysis is almost the inverse of scientific research, which is progressive, because it is looking at things that have been written, and taking them apart. I disagree, I think it is a progressive art. It is a taking apart and a putting together of ideas, constructing them in a way that fits you. And as such, it reflects the changes in society, not the literature, but the analysis; feminist criticism or Marxist criticism couldn’t exist before feminism and Marxism took off. People this year have started to specialise in English on whatever interests them, so Dapo’s writing Freudian analyses, and Nina’s doing Marxist and Jungian theory, Dave’s placing everything historically, and so on. I love learning generally, so anything I recall that appears relevant I’ll talk about, which is why denial came up in my last Nineteen Eighty-Four lecture, because she’s told me excitedly (for neurology is her passion) all about denial and neglect patients. Literary criticism is not looking at the past and asking "how did they think then?", it is looking at it and saying "what do we think of this now?". It is about extracting the universal ideas of literature and using them to analyse ourselves and our lives. For me, anyway, some like to use literature as historical evidence, but then you could argue that the study of history is itself anti-progressive. But even historical study is simply a prelude, a shaping of awareness for analysis of the present, for consideration of the future. And just this week I realised I tend to appropriate the style of whoever I’m writing about too! Rather odd, but my Mamet essay was dynamic and conversational, my Austen essays are gently ironic and mild, and my Pope essays are vivacious, slightly archaic and subtly witty. I guess I become so totally immersed in their style it imprints itself into my mindset. While exploring Oleanna with us, my teacher admitted he sees teaching as a satire, which I think is a fantastic concept; he’s a very funny and intelligent man. Also he kept unthinkingly saying "Do you see?". Most amusing. I’ve said this to her before, that I automatically apply my literary analysis to life. I notice slight actions, and consider them as metonyms, I observe motifs in relationships, I’ve seen myself and my love converging as characters, and done more dangerous things, like when looking at The Merchant of Venice I wondered if my being charitable was truly a desire to entrap people, rendering them indefinably indebted. And when looking at Part III of Nineteen Eighty-Four I momentarily found myself guilty of paring her character down and causing sufferance by backing off when I needed to back off. I’ve had a crazy amount of work lately, and find myself writing essays and doing papers when I should be sleeping, and sleeping when I should be eating. And she wondered how I can do my work. Well, for English it’s a true pleasure, not like for maths, where I struggle through impossible papers for only the mild satisfaction of getting the right answer eventually. How does that work? If it’s impossible then I can’t be getting it right, and if it’s not impossible, where’s the satisfaction? I’ve told her this before aswell, I’m good at doing impossible things. I get up every morning, for one thing. My work is as impossible for me as hers is for her, the difference is that somehow I do it anyway. I didn’t know how to do any of the questions in the last paper, and there was one period where I completely stopped understanding Pure maths, and even now basic Mechanics simply makes no sense to me (M2 actually makes more sense than M1 to me, I just see the logic of things in it). A defeatist attitude is when you think you can’t do something; that’s not what we have, we know we can’t do it. That doesn’t stop me getting on with it, though, somehow. Not just in work, I know I’m not strong enough to run a certain distance or push myself physically for very long, because I’m not that strong, but still I kept up with a friend who went for a 45 minute run in the heat of Indian summer, and I outdo fitter, stronger people in karate. I’m not exactly like her, she can’t do things. The nearest I got to understanding her was when I said tiredly and unhelpfully "Why don’t you just get on with it?", and she said "Why don’t you just try to sleep?", because she knows I hate it when my mother totally fails to comprehend the concept of insomnia, and thinks that simply trying harder will get me to sleep. Wow, all those years of not enough sleep, and all I needed to do was try harder, why did I never think of that? When she said that, for the first time I could truly empathise, and not just sympathise. In any case, I’ve digressed slightly, and I still have an essay to write on the_death_of_language (tomorrow, perhaps), so I think I’ll grab a bite to eat then try to sleep (j/k, I’m also anorexic and abhor food). 031018 ... oldephebe sheesh neesh! That was brilliant. Have you ever read any of David Foster Wallace's work? you know the neurotic but brilliant science and literary adept and lapsed tennis adolescent adept who penned the forensic and fastidious..and yet lyrical at times..heart rending Infinite Gist(sp)a few years back. Also he's got several collections of essays and other books out as well..but ah I've only read Infinite Jist. You're writing subtley reverberates with his impressive and yet seemming facile or effortless acuity?..no acuity is definately not the word..hmm..effortless ah intimacy?..no..not there..not..yet..okay i think what intrigues me about your writing is this sort of casual facility with what is for others the dense and unweildy. This is a compliment..sure i promenade and throw out a few judiciously placed or lobbed referances to shisms and isms and scoff at what to me are staid achectectures of reasoning or orthodoxy enshrined in ivy..but..yeah science and philosophy and the higher maths..they so elude me. And yeah i reflexively chaffed as i read through your essay or the slender semblance of a projected facsimilie of yourself..and yeah i saw the seeds of my cellular and maybe unresovable incongruitites with systems of codification and order and structure..now listen..these murmerings of mine do not constitute an attempt to defecate upon the merit of your and ..ah the whole concept of literary criticism..perhaps if i subjected myself to the rigor and discipline of analysis..it would yeild a more ordered and palatable style of writing. I've always though chafed against order and codification academic or otherwise..so i'm afraid it's inextricably intertwined in the helix and hubris of me. Stamped deep into the derma as it were. Still though i'm learning every time i read one of your extremely well written blathes. I've been wanting to get into mamets stuff for several years now. Also David Foster Wallace employs a post-adolescent conversational style even when discussing the esoterica of game theory and chemical spectography and er..the physics of convex and concave lenses and just about all manner of mathematical and metaphysical erratum..er indicia.. please continue sharing..i enjoy your discourses and ah..yeah take care of yourself try and nibble a little to fortify yourself..and yeah i get the whole insomnia thing..had since i was ten so yeah long time.. 031018 ... oldephebe i will probably need to read your blathe again to adequately ..respond..wait adequately? why should i just settle for adequate..how about inspired..or intelligent..how about addressing some of the provocative extrapolations and provocations so elegantly sutured into the seams of your gushing erudition? yeah so i'll ah read it again..forensically..and I'm really looking forward to "The Death of Language" later ... 031018 ... oldephebe and to think that all these learned spumes of conjecture and codification were the product of an errant aside on one of magicforests shimmering scriptures of spirit...hmm.. but isn't that protean quality the thing that endows blather with it's ever expanding archetectures of knowledge? this impulse to debate and argue, that wich caused the sophists to be spurned, hated and labeled with that pejorative connotation? to spead ones learning and not hold it to the narrow breadth of your chest? Sure there are some things written in that omnibus lexicon that defines and delineates the learned man, that elude my grasp but the human animal and it's cellular propensity to be expanded..to elevate our cognition..to deepen it..to narrow the gap between the learned and the not so learned...every thing can be broken into its constituent components, and assimilated by most if given the requisite amount of time and study..to be tenacious in our getting of knowledge..that is what probably distinguishes most of us that are here..to acquire a knowledge of the Other..and not merely expurgate the empty columns of oration... i am still a relative blather neophyte and am still discovering the wonder of these pages ... 031019 ... neesh yes, i am glad we started this debate, i really enjoy it. i shall look up david foster wallace. and i think i've done the_death_of_language i await your response (and anyone else's who has any thoughts on the matter) 031019 what's it to you? who go blather from