Re: Listen to Languages

on 8/11/06 5:41 AM, Mark J. Reed at markjreed@MAIL.COM wrote:

On 8/10/06, Henrik Theiling <theiling@...> wrote:

 It is a religious site.

Well, thank (the) [Gg]od(s) for crazy religious people and their zeal to
spread their gospel.  A whole lot of linguistic work would never have gotten
done otherwise.  And we get nifty websites like that one. :)

   *snicker-snarlfle*
   I just hafta wonder how accurate the translations are since certain
worldviews are so vastly different from (Western) Civilized ones.
   I recall that one Amazonian tribe does not have words for "worship" and
"pray"... that the closest (and rather kludgey) equivalent is "wag one's
tail at the gods."


-- 
Hanuman Zhang


           "Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because,
           if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason,
           then that of blindfolded fear." - Thomas Jefferson

   "...divine chaos ...rumors of chaos have been known to enhance the mature
religious vision.... for the godhead manifests no more of its reality than
the limited grammar of each person's imagination and conceptual system can
handle. 

   "A second advantage is suggested by William James in _Varieties of
Religious Experience_. James affirms the possibilty of many gods, mostly
because he takes seriously his multiverse theory of personal monads, each
one of us experiencing a unique religious revelation.

   "An orderly monistic and monotheistic system, he fears, might succumb to
a craving for logical coherence, and trim away some of the mystery, rich
indeterminancy, and tragic ambiguity in a complete numinous experience.

   "For some temperaments, the ambivalent gentleness and savagery of fate
can be imagined effectively in a godhead split into personified attributes,
sometimes at war, sometimes in shifting alliance."
   - Vernon Ruland, _Eight Sacred Horizons: The Religious Imagination East
and West_