Re: basic vocab (long)
| From: | Jonathan Chang <zhang2323@...> |
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| Date: | Monday, September 18, 2000, 20:56 |
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In a message dated 2000:09:18 12:01:30 PM, wpii@SCS.HOWARD.EDU writes:
><SNiP>
>I think it is pretty apparent that these things make crucial differences in
the nature
>of a language's lexicon - even if those differences are not obvious upon
>casual observation. I find it nearly impossible to make good English
>translations of draqa and vice-versa.
>
>Anyway, sorry for the longwinds, but I hope it's been helpful...
I agree... A small, major part of why I am so keen (perhaps overzealous)
to conlang, is that I find myself wishing to overcome my English-language
restrictions. I find that concept-words I need do not exist in English or
that these words are appropriated from languages that do.
Also I find that I definitely have a different concept of the world than
what is expressible in English (or any Western European language)... probably
due to the fact that I think instinctively in a more "Asiatic" fashion
(specifically Taoist, Buddhist and - to some degree - primitivist and Hindu).
Even the "simple" concept of time can make a huge difference in cultures.
To me - ever since very little, time is neither linear nor perfectly
cyclical... it seemed to be more like an everchanging weave of countless
spirals that expanded and contracted, sometiming faster or slower. This was
based on my observations of the world around me as a little tyke: wow, things
happen in simultaneousnesses...
I could stare at a wall for minutes at a time and be perfectly content
being still in time. Teachers thought I was daydreaming. But I was slowing
the overwhelming shifting weave of time down to cope with the stress and
alienation of being in school...
I had the hardest time figuring out those bloody school history
time-line excercises! And the torture it was to learn how to cope with clocks
and digital time keeping, AiYaH!!! ... No wonder my more American-ized,
Christianized younger brother says that I am a "throwback to pagan, heathen
times."
My dad jokingly (& admiringly) complains I run on "Taoist time."
czHANg