Stephani Stephenson on tue 10 sep 02
reading the thread which somehow turned to precise languages. . .
I once read a book on the Tewa (Pueblo) language which also made
references to Navajo language. I cannot remember the name of the author
. He was, I believe a native Tewa speaker and became a linguist,
teaching at the University level in the United States. though it was
years ago, and I am speaking from memory, some thoughts from his
writings have remained with me for some time.
The author described how English has become the preferred language of
commerce worldwide. why? because it IS precise. You can say. "That mug
is Twenty dollars. The tax is $1.55, therefore you owe me $21.55. " You
can say it quite directly in English. You can split hairs in English
and conduct business readily in English without spending a day and a
half and pulling the whole history of your clan into the transaction.
English can get you from point A to Point B in a straight line , (if
you choose!)
However English becomes notoriously inadequate when you try to speak
about matters of spirit or matters of beauty...inscrutible
matters....universal notions and states of being.
With English we can write technical manuals. Have any of you ever taken
an 'aesthetics' class? I took one in college, taught by a philosophy
professor and we read many writings, some probably first written in
German then translated into English,
All trying to dissect and describe the 'aesthetic experience' . I
admire the writers for trying ,but I could not understand one bit of
what they were saying!!! It was the most densely worded,
incomprehensible puffery I have ever read!!!!
I was forever knocking on the professor's door, saying I am reading this
over and over and not one thing am I comprehending here!!!!
And to my mind , it always seemed to miss the point, and drag me, the
reader FURTHER AWAY from the experience.
the precise language cannot always grasp and communicate what is
perceived and understood by the intuitive intelligence and being in
us., though it can try.
A good writer, a poet , can link the two, I think by painting 'word
pictures' for us, which have to do with intuitive linking of words and
intuitive response .
What the author on the Navajo language was pointing out, was that
these languages provide many nuances of words having to do with spirit
and beauty. We have all heard the story , (whether it is true or not),
about Inuit languages having 40 different words for 'snow'.. describing
the nuances of different types of snow. Well the Navajo language, and
likely many other languages, were largely concerned with expressions of
beauty, spirit, and so the language was rich in this way.
I think that people who work toward keeping languages from becoming
extinct will say this also . That languages all have unique and
important qualities of human expression which are not necessarily
reflected in all, especially mainstream modern languages. Languages are
more than numbers of words, they are verbal models, structures, which
reflect the preception , perspective and world view of the speakers. It
is ingrained in ways we often don't even notice.
how often do we feel the word 'god' falls short of what we experience
and what we want to communicate ? how often does the word 'art' miss
the point ? yet we use it because it is what we have.
That is one reason I think we bash and flounder around with language
when we turn to discussing art. We have one big wooden mallet with the
word 'art' on it and another mallet with the word 'craft' on it and
with these two mallets we try to pound out an answer. I see a musical,
layered world when I perceive this topic, and I almost always find
myself straining to find words that do not do it justice, words that
simply are not there, in my spoken language .
so I think, though English is precise in some areas, in others it is
lacking. The words 'Art 'and Craft' are two overloaded barges , carrying
more than their shares of our cargo (and baggage).
Stephani Stephenson
Martin Rice on wed 11 sep 02
I read this letter from Stephani three times. After reading it the first
time I thought I read it too quickly and missed something. So I read it
again and thought the same thing. Finally I read it a third time and =
knew I
was right the first time.
I just don't understand where these ideas about language come from. =
English
is a precise language that great for going from A-B. "However English
becomes notoriously inadequate when you try to speak about matters of =
spirit
or matters of beauty...inscrutible matters....universal notions and =
states
of being." That's news to Joyce, Keats, Auden, the author of Beowulf,
Emerson, Conrad (and it wasn't even his native language) and every other
great author who has written in English that has ever lived. WHAT,
SHAKESPEARE COULDN'T WRITE ANYTHING BUT A TECHNICAL MANUAL! (yes, I =
know,
I'm shouting). To quote Vince twice: "AGGGGHHHHH" and "Oh my God, how
little you know." Or, maybe it's how little that guy who wrote that book
your read long ago and are recalling from memory knew.
Nabokov, one of the 20th century's greatest author said he preferred =
English
to Russian because of it's expressiveness. Russian, the language of =
Pushkin,
Tolstoy, Turgenev, Dostoevsky! Granted Nabokov wasn't comparing it to a
Native American language, but somehow I think that he still would have
preferred English.
You suffered in English over philosophy translations from the German. I =
once
spent an ENTIRE YEAR pouring over a single chapter in Hegel's =
Phenomenology
in German for an article I was writing about Hegel and Dostoevsky. Do =
you
think it was because Hegel couldn't write well in German or that German =
is
not a good language for philosophy? These ideas are difficult. =
Undergrads
have a hard time with them, as do professors, which is why there are
teachers to help and why people spend entire lifetimes trying to =
understand
the ideas of a single philosopher.
As far as the Urban (Tundra) Legend of 40 words for snow goes, read =
Smila's
Sense of Snow, in the original if you can, I can't, but then in English, =
if
you want to see what that language can do when it comes to describing =
snow.
I am not engaging in linguistic chauvanism here. I know and love =
English,
German, Russian, and Spanish. I've read descriptive grammars of Polish,
Czech, Serbo-Croatian, Japanese, and Chinese, I've studied French and =
can
read it well. Every language in the world is capable of expressing =
virtually
everything that the speakers of that language want to express, period.
Please don't try to tell us that English can't beautifully, touchingly,
enchantingly, lovingly, mystically express the ideas of spiritualism and
feeling, "matters of beauty...inscrutible matters....universal notions =
and
states of being" as well as any other language in the world, just as =
these
languages can do the same thing as well as English.
Regards,
Martin
Lagunas de Bar=FA, Costa Rica
http://www.rice-family.org
Gavin Stairs on wed 11 sep 02
Martin Rice and Stephani Stephenson wrote:
>I just don't understand where these ideas about language come
>from. English is a precise language that great for going from A-B.
>"However English becomes notoriously inadequate when you try to speak
>about matters of spirit or matters of beauty...inscrutible
>matters....universal notions and states of being."
>You suffered in English over philosophy translations from the German. I
>once spent an ENTIRE YEAR pouring over a single chapter in Hegel's
>Phenomenology in German for an article I was writing about Hegel and
>Dostoevsky. Do you think it was because Hegel couldn't write well in
>German or that German is not a good language for philosophy? These ideas
>are difficult. Undergrads have a hard time with them, as do professors,
>which is why there are teachers to help and why people spend entire
>lifetimes trying to understand the ideas of a single philosopher.
There is a difference. It's in the culture and belief systems -- the
epistemology -- that underlies the two language systems you are discussing
here. The Native American/First Nations languages -- in fact, almost all
aboriginal or original people languages, and a few transition culture
languages like the early Vedic cultures/sanskrit -- have a system of
understanding which does not distinguish strongly between dream/vision and
material worlds, and in fact believes the dream/vision world is the
stronger/more real of the two. We of the modern, Eurocentric, western
rationalist cultures tend to differentiate strongly between these two
states. Some of us dismiss the dream state as being meaningless, and
vision as being delusional. This is in keeping with our scientific
methodology of partial analysis, but it cuts us off from a great deal of
human experience, including that of many of the great writers and
storytellers of our own traditions, for there are yet those who dream and
envision. The western philosophers persist in trying to fit round wholes
into square boxes, and it can be very hard sledding indeed. I more or less
gave up on them way back when, but I keep getting glimpses of what they
were trying to say, after having experienced the same reality by another
route. And having tried for some time to understand and translate other
systems into modern English, I must say that there are certainly culture
concepts from those other people which do not translate easily into
English. In fact, recourse is usually had to another English feature, the
borrowed word. Can't translate it? Haul it in and incorporate it. Never
mind that it will not be understood. It now stands for the
not-understandable.
A language per se is just a collection of words/ideas incorporated into a
structural schema called a grammar. It is how it is used/understood which
differentiates the languages most strongly. Words can be invented, or
borrowed. It happens all the time in all languages, including the so
called dead ones like Latin. So it is the connotational structure which is
the strongest difference among the languages/cultures.
Gavin
Martin Rice on wed 11 sep 02
Hi, Gavin and all:
Thanks for the letter, quite interesting. That a given society's culture and
its belief systems have a strong influence on it's language is beyond
arguing. I think I implied that when I said that every language is capable
of expressing what the speakers of that language want to express. Perhaps I
should have put in qualifying statements such as "almost everything" that
"almost all speakers" of that language want to express.
I don't, however, buy into the notion that I believe you're putting forth
that if we come across a concept that doesn't have a readily available
translation we just borrow the word and no one understands it. More often
that not, it might just take more words and then it's a done deal.
In a brilliant monograph on the Russian author Gogol', Nabokov talks about
the Russian concept of poshlost' which he says is untranslatable. Not so.
Poshlost' is self-satisfied complacency. That's simple enough to understand
and translate. (Of course you have to take Nabokov the right way. In a
preface he wrote to his English translation of Lermontov's Hero of our Time,
he said: "This is the first translation of this book into English. There
have been many paraphrases, but never a translation.")
As far as borrowing words, the people who need to borrow them do understand
them. There is that fantastic German word, Schadenfreude, which, like
poshlost', has no ready English translation. But it represents a human trait
that everyone is subject to -- ok, I'm sure there are some people who are
not subject to it, but it's eminently human: having a little thrill of joy
at the misfortune of others for whom it would be expected we would have
sympathy, such as our friends. Once this is explained to someone and he or
she recognizes the feeling, the word becomes a part of that person's
vocabulary.
But even without the word Schadenfreude in one's vocabulary, it can be
easily described in one's own words by a person who is experiencing it.
There is a long history of mystical and spiritual writing in virtually every
Western, non-aboriginal language, which, to some degree, expresses many of
the same thoughts and feelings as expressed and felt in those other
languages. Will a person raised in the 20th-century United States ever be
able to feel or understand "the dream time" the way an Australian aborigene
does? I would doubt it. But could that person from the US talk about it in
English to the degree that he or she understood it? Doubtlessly.
In most cases, the problem with statements such as "words can't even begin
to describe what I'm feeling," or "this is such a difficult feeling to
express," and many others of that type, are often due to the fact that the
person saying that is simply not as adept in his or her native language as
he or she thinks.
Another, even more common reason for this this type of statement is that the
person has not thought through the experience or feeling sufficiently to be
able to express it.
The same is true with the creating things (I wanted to say creating art, but
chickened out given recent threads). Until I married an outstanding artist,
I had no idea of the role of thought in art. She would spend weeks and weeks
thinking about what she was going to paint or build. And she taught me that
there is no art without thought.
The Italian aesthetician, Benedetto Croce (no relation to Jim, I think) said
that something which is poorly written is poorly thought. I'd modify it to
say something that is poorly written or said is poorly thought.
Given all of that, do I believe that we are all capable of understanding all
the thoughts, feelings, and belief systems of all peoples, regardless of how
far removed they are from us in these areas? Not for a minute. But I do
believe that those of us who want to know those things can devote ourselves
to them and to that degree that they penetrate our understanding, we can
express what we've learned in our native language. If we can't, then it
means that there wasn't any penetration.
Regards,
Martin
Lagunas de Barú, Costa Rica
http://www.rice-family.org
Martin Howard on wed 11 sep 02
I would love to find a group of Esperanto Potters, and then discuss the
practical side and the artistic points in that language.
English is not a suitable language for so many things, because it has so
many meanings of the same word. It's great for theatre, but it fails for
accuracy in science and legal matters, and fails for lack of vocabulary and
gradation of meanings in art, religion etc.
One day, hopefully, we will each learn Esperanto as a SECOND language, to be
used whenever we communicate outside our local environment. On Clayart, in
the UN, in the European Parliament etc)
Martin Howard
Webbs Cottage Pottery
Woolpits Road, Great Saling
BRAINTREE, Essex CM7 5DZ
01371 850 423
martin@webbscottage.co.uk
http://www.webbscottage.co.uk
Updated 6th July 2002
Gavin Stairs on wed 11 sep 02
Dear Martin,
We are seriously off topic, so I will limit myself to only a couple of remarks.
Most or all of your examples come from the same cultural group, namely the
Western European philosophical group. The allusions to others are without
examples. I will give you a couple. One is "metta", a Pali word often
translated as "compassion", but actually has a base in Bhuddist philosophy
which is founded on the notion of extinction (nibbana) as a spiritual
ideal. This is very similar to the ideas of the desert fathers regarding
absorption into the Godhead, but you will find it difficult to find
parallels in Western philosophy outside of the few mystics who have
bothered to write from the other side. They are persistently
misunderstood. The westerners who incorporate these ideas into their own
work usually do so at a considerable loss to the original meaning and
intent. And I would have to go on at considerable length to expound even
this simple term adequately. And, I hasten to add, no exegesis would
actually impart the meaning in the western understanding of that term. It
is an experienced truth, which comes out of practice. The sermon may seek
to enlighten, but the dharma discourse is under no such illusion: it is the
listener who enlightens him/her self. The discourse is merely a pointer on
the way.
And, I again hasten to add, these terms are much misunderstood even in the
cultures from which they arose, because their meaning is available not
through intellect, but through perception. This is a basic difference
between Western philosophy and these other systems I have chosen to
characterize by the idea of the reality of dream and vision. There are
many other ways to characterize this distinction, such as intellect vs.
intuition, etc.
Any attempt at bringing the intellectual west and the intuitive visionary
together has to have a basis in true or direct perception, which is only
available on rigorous eradication of the error which we call neurosis. In
a single, misleading phrase, one must forget everything one has learned,
expunge all attachment to concept.
I am saying things in black and white terms. Of course, this is not the
whole truth. There are grades and shades on all sides, and this is a
comment on a phase in the history of mind. But there are differences in
fundamental conceptual frames which lead to different understandings for
very similar ideas or language constructs. Some of them are very deeply
embedded in culture and philosophy. That's all I want to say on this topic
for the moment.
Gavin
At 12:30 PM 11/09/2002 -0600, Martin Rice wrote:
>Hi, Gavin and all:
>
>Thanks for the letter, quite interesting. ...
Martin Rice on wed 11 sep 02
Well, I guess I need to respond to this, too, as long as mel allows this to
go on. Nothing wrong in hoping for a universal second language, to be sure.
But I wouldn't hold my breath, Martin.
What I would like to know is the following: what natural languages are you
aware of that do not have words with multiple meanings? Why is English great
for theater? Are there other languages great for theater and others that are
not?
I'd be extremely interested in knowing how English fails for accuracy in
science, given the fact that the overwhelming majority of scientific papers
published and presented today are in English, regardless of the authors'
mother tongues? If you're right, the world is in big trouble.
Given that English probably has the largest vocabulary in the world, what do
you mean when you say it fails for lack of vocabulary?
Finally, could you give us an example of what graduations of meanings in
art, religion, etc. might be like in any language of your choice and then
explain to us what you've written and why it can't be done in English?
Thanks so much,
Martin
Lagunas de Barú, Costa Rica
http://www.rice-family.org
Martin Howard on thu 12 sep 02
Martin Rice asks me natural languages are you aware of that do not have words with multiple
meanings?
Why is English great for theater?
Are there other languages great for theater and others that are not?>
I only know of Esperanto being the only language without multiple meanings
for root words.
English is great for theatre because of its multiple meanings and nuances
which a playwright uses. My wife is one!
Probably all national languages are great for theatre, in their own context,
because they use the multiple meanings of words and the local theatre goers
warm to them and appreciate the art of the playwright and the actors.
But it is difficult to export that understanding. We in the UK have trouble
understanding and appreciating some American plays and films. Our own
home-grown stuff if much more appreciated.
Science, law, medicine etc need accurate language. The more double and
multiple meanings of words, the more misunderstandings are possible. It's as
simple as that.
The potting terms in Esperanto are on Edouard Bastarache's website
http://www.dinoclay.com/info/dict/index.html
with those of many other languages. It's an interesting place to compare
language.
I must say that I need to revise those Esperanto lists following discussion
at our last Esperanto Congress in Stoke on Trent.
I had a slot to explain my translations and some better solutions came up
from the experts gathered there. BUT they needed my explanation of just what
a method or material really meant, because the English term gave quite the
wrong impression to non potters! Throwing? Turning? plus many others!
Esperanto tries to translate the real action, the real material, rather than
copycat the terms which have come from our long historical past. It's not
easy, but worth the effort.
Martin Howard
Webbs Cottage Pottery
Woolpits Road, Great Saling
BRAINTREE, Essex CM7 5DZ
01371 850 423
martin@webbscottage.co.uk
http://www.webbscottage.co.uk
Updated 6th July 2002
Lee Love on thu 12 sep 02
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gavin Stairs"
To:
> examples. I will give you a couple. One is "metta", a Pali word often
> translated as "compassion",<... >
><...> It is an experienced truth, which comes out of practice.
Many aspects of art and craft were traditionally learned in this very
same way: Through practice beside someone who is "mature" in what you are
learning.
Maitri, (Loving Kindness: Metta and Maitri mean the same thing. Metta is Pali
and Maitri is Sanskrit. The Thervadin canon is in Pali while most of the
Mahayana is in Sanskrit. Maitri is also the same as the beginning of the name
of the future Buddha, Maitreya.)
--
Lee Love In Mashiko, JAPAN Ikiru@hachiko.com
"Clay is molded to make a vessel, but the utility of the vessel lies in the
space where there is nothing...Thus, taking advantage of what is, we recognize
the utility of what is not.". --Lao Tzu
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