Posts Tagged ‘Dostoevsky’
“A different language is a different vision of life”*…
Damián Blasi delves into historic and current efforts to catalog the planet’s 7,000-plus languages…
As a scientist who has researched language diversity for a decade and a half, I recently joined a team to work on a task that even some linguists think is “ultimately unobtainable”: helping catalog and count the world’s complex and ever-changing languages. I am part of an international team of experts assembled by UNESCO to create a World Atlas of Languages. This catalog will hopefully generate updated estimates of the number of active languages and information on how these languages are being used.
Typically, when I present research, one of my gimmicks is to begin with a rough estimate of the number of natural languages in use today: between 7,000 and 8,000. My point is to communicate that there are many languages and, therefore, an incredible diversity of ways humans think, reason, and feel. But pinpointing a more precise number opens the door to all sorts of problems.
For example, the Central African Republic hosts about 70 languages. The speakers of many of these languages live deep within roadless rainforests in villages that are very difficult for government representatives and other researchers to access. It’s hard to fathom how resource-intensive it would be to form an accurate linguistic picture of this country alone.
Of course, our project is far from the first to attempt to categorize and quantify languages. Many groups and individuals have done this in the past and continue to do so.
My task set me on a path to understanding the history and craft of counting languages. While I expected to read a dull sequence of estimates, I instead found a riveting tale involving Christian missionaries, post-war idealists, a colonialist opium agent, and more. I also gained even more appreciation for the potentially impossible task of counting languages…
A fascinating read: “Tackling the Impossibility—and Necessity—of Counting the World’s Languages,” from @blasi_lang and @WennerGrenOrg.
Apposite: “Disappearing languages“
* Federico Fellini
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As we total up tongues, we might spare a thought for Søren Kierkegaard; he died on this date in 1855. a Danish theologian, philosopher, poet, social critic, and religious author widely considered to be the first Christian existentialist philosopher, he wrote critical texts on organized religion, Christianity, morality, ethics, psychology, and the philosophy of religion, all displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony, and parables. Among his major works: Either/Or, Fear and Trembling, and The Sickness unto Death. It may come as no surprise that he was a major influence on Dostoevsky.
Kierkegaard wrote in Danish and the reception of his work was initially limited to Scandinavia, but by the turn of the 20th century his writings were translated into French, German, and other major European languages. By the mid-20th century, his thought exerted a substantial influence on philosophy, theology, and Western culture in general.
“If you want the truth — I know I presume — you must look into the technology of these matters”*…
The estimable Alan Jacobs on why we’re all going nuts online…
On January 6, 2021, Samuel Camargo posted a video on Instagram showing him struggling to break through a police barrier to get into the U.S. Capitol building. The next day he wrote on Facebook: “I’m sorry to all the people I’ve disappointed as this is not who I am nor what I stand for.”
A month after the riot, Jacob Chansley, the man widely known as the QAnon Shaman, wrote a letter from his jail cell in Virginia asking Americans to “be patient with me and other peaceful people who, like me, are having a very difficult time piecing together all that happened to us, around us, and by us.”
“This is not who I am,” “all that happened … by us” — it is commonplace to hear such statements as mere evasions of responsibility, and often they are. But what if they reflect genuine puzzlement, genuine difficulty understanding one’s behavior or even seeing it as one’s own, a genuine feeling of being driven, compelled, by something other than one’s own will?…
There follows a consideration of Augustine, Foucault, Pynchon, Paul, Dostoevsky, Zadie Smith, Dawkins, Auden, Joesph Heller, and others, on the topic of why we succumb to what Augustine called curiositas: “Something Happened By Us: A Demonology,” from @ayjay in @tnajournal. Eminently worth reading in full.
* Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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As we examine exorcism, we might recall that it was on this date in 1986 that Geraldo Rivera opened “Al Capone’s Vault”…
Notorious and “most wanted” gangster, Al Capone, began his life of crime in Chicago in 1919 and had his headquarters set up at the Lexington Hotel until his arrest in 1931. Years later, renovations were being made at the hotel when a team of workers discovered a shooting-range and series of connected tunnels that led to taverns and brothels making for an easy escape should there be a police raid. Rumors were spread that Capone had a secret vault hidden under the hotel as well. In 1985, news reporter Geraldo Rivera had been fired from ABC after he criticized the network for canceling his report made about an alleged relationship between John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe. It seemed like a good time for Rivera to scoop a new story to repair his reputation. It was on this day in 1986 that his live, two-hour, syndicated TV special, The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vault aired. After lots of backstory, the time finally came to reveal what was in that vault. It turned out to be empty. After the show, Rivera was quoted as saying “Seems like we struck out.”
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“Toast cannot be explained by any rational means”*…
Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” rendered on toast by @ClaireLarsson
Twitter is largely an echo chamber of gamers and white supremacists and white supremacist gamers, howling with the ceaselessness of a puppy chasing its tail. It wasn’t always like this. People used to have fun on the internet, according to the old tales.
For a few minutes today, you can return to a state of innocence. This week, a charming hashtag has sprung out of Germany: #KunstGeschichteAlsBrotbelag, which according to my expertise (Google Translate) comes out as “Art History as a sandwich.” The premise is pretty simple: classic works of art reinterpreted as pieces of toast. That’s it! And the people doing it are really very good…
Samples at “Enjoy these classic works of art reinterpreted as toast“; the thread is here.
* Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake
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As we take a bite, we might spare a thought for Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov; he died on this date in 1841. A writer, poet and painter, sometimes called “the poet of the Caucasus,” he was the most important Russian poet after Alexander Pushkin’s death in 1837 and the greatest figure in Russian Romanticism. His influence on later Russian literature is still felt in modern times, not only through his poetry, but also through his prose, which founded the tradition of the Russian psychological novel (and was, this hugely influential on Dostoevsky, among others).
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