lin·gua·phile

Kifah Shah (via myheadisbloodybutunbowed)

(Source: ear2ear, via euchroma)

Yes, America has more than its fair share of issues, and we didn’t invent freedom (in fact we did a really good job inventing a lot of things that look quite the opposite!) and I’ve seen enough of the dangers of patriotism gone too far in my lifetime alone, let alone in my studies of history

BUT

I think there’s something fascinating about the fact that the day we celebrate our nationhood isn’t the day when we achieved independence, but the day we declared it. It’s not the day Britain let us go but the day we told them exactly why we thought we deserved our freedom and the principles that gave us a right to fight them for it. As someone who works with words for a living, and is fascinated by the way that words make things happen, I find it weirdly admirable that — although I’m sure a ton of Americans couldn’t tell you this, or wouldn’t think of it like this — our national holiday essentially celebrates a couple of pieces of paper. Written words that made things happen.

Not all of them good things. Not all of them things we should be unthinkingly proud of. But the era of nationhood that begins, in many ways, with the Declaration of Independence (and continues through the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe as country after country engages in nationalistic revolutions) is one in which nations are linguistic constructs as much as they are topographical or ethnic ones. And the thing is, a nation constructed in language can be so much bigger than nations constructed in anything else. It can open itself up to so many more kinds of people. Obviously this isn’t the way these things tend to work, but it can be. The possibility is there after 1776 in a way that it sort of wasn’t before.

Charles Carroll Bombaugh, Gleanings for the Curious from the Harvest-Fields of Literature, 1890

…is it bad that my first assumption, when I saw this poem posted without an attribution, was that it was somehow written by Richard Silken inhabited by the spirit of George Herbert?

(Source: sheandherdarkness, via euchroma)

(Source: lovequotesrus, via damelola)

Jhumpa Lahiri, My Life’s Sentences (via azspot)

(via lost-in-a-good-book)

My new favorite job application letter, from 1934. He ended up winning an Oscar for screenwriting!

(via Letters of Note)

We like words too.

(via good)

(Source: megangreenwell, via dduane)

And the heart is hard to translate, 
It has a language of its own, 
It talks in tongues and quiet sighs and prayers and proclamations, 
In the grand deeds of great men and the smallest of gestures, 
In short shallow gasps.

But with all my education, I can’t seem to commend it, 
And the words are all escaping me, and coming back all damaged, 
And I would put them back in poetry if I only knew how, 
I can’t seem to understand it, 

And I would give all this and heaven too, 
I would give it all if only for a moment, 
That I could just understand the meaning of the word you see, 
‘Cause I’ve been scrawling it forever, 
But it never makes sense to me at all.

This is and will forever be my literary love song: the song that best expresses the way that I feel, not about that sort of love (at least not recently), but about my love of language, of literature, of the words that I work with on a daily basis, to which I have devoted my education; the words I love, and will never understand as well as I wish I could.

And all my stumbling phrases never amounted
To anything worth this feeling
Oh this heaven
Never could describe such a feeling as I feel, and
Words were never so useful
Til I was screaming out a language that I never knew existed before.

(Source: Spotify)

inventors-daughter:

1. Toska

Russian – Vladmir Nabokov describes it best: “No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”

2. Mamihlapinatapei

Yagan (indigenous language of Tierra del Fuego) – “the wordless, yet meaningful look shared by two people who both desire to initiate something but are both reluctant to start” (Altalang.com)

3. Jayus

Indonesian – “A joke so poorly told and so unfunny that one cannot help but laugh” (Altalang.com)

4. Iktsuarpok

Inuit – “To go outside to check if anyone is coming.” (Altalang.com)

5. Litost

Czech – Milan Kundera, author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, remarked that “As for the meaning of this word, I have looked in vain in other languages for an equivalent, though I find it difficult to imagine how anyone can understand the human soul without it.” The closest definition is a state of agony and torment created by the sudden sight of one’s own misery.

6. Kyoikumama

Japanese – “A mother who relentlessly pushes her children toward academic achievement” (Altalang.com)

7. Tartle

Scottish – The act of hestitating while introducing someone because you’ve forgotten their name. (Altalang.com)

8. Ilunga

Tshiluba (Southwest Congo) – A word famous for its untranslatability, most professional translators pinpoint it as the stature of a person “who is ready to forgive and forget any first abuse, tolerate it the second time, but never forgive nor tolerate on the third offense.” (Altalang.com)

9. Prozvonit

Czech – This word means to call a mobile phone and let it ring once so that the other person will call back, saving the first caller money. In Spanish, the phrase for this is “Dar un toque,” or, “To give a touch.” (Altalang.com)

10. Cafuné

Brazilian Portuguese – “The act of tenderly running one’s fingers through someone’s hair.” (Altalang.com)

11. Schadenfreude

German – Quite famous for its meaning that somehow other languages neglected to recognize, this refers to the feeling of pleasure derived by seeing another’s misfortune. I guess “America’s Funniest Moments of Schadenfreude” just didn’t have the same ring to it.

12. Torschlusspanik

German – Translated literally, this word means “gate-closing panic,” but its contextual meaning refers to “the fear of diminishing opportunities as one ages.” (Altalang.com)

13. Wabi-Sabi

Japanese – Much has been written on this Japanese concept, but in a sentence, one might be able to understand it as “a way of living that focuses on finding beauty within the imperfections of life and accepting peacefully the natural cycle of growth and decay.” (Altalang.com)

14. Dépaysement

French – The feeling that comes from not being in one’s home country.

15. Tingo

Pascuense (Easter Island) – Hopefully this isn’t a word you’d need often: “the act of taking objects one desires from the house of a friend by gradually borrowing all of them.” (Altalang.com)

16. Hyggelig

Danish – Its “literal” translation into English gives connotations of a warm, friendly, cozy demeanor, but it’s unlikely that these words truly capture the essence of a hyggelig; it’s likely something that must be experienced to be known. I think of good friends, cold beer, and a warm fire. (Altalang.com)

17. L’appel du vide

French – “The call of the void” is this French expression’s literal translation, but more significantly it’s used to describe the instinctive urge to jump from high places.

18. Ya’aburnee

Arabic – Both morbid and beautiful at once, this incantatory word means “You bury me,” a declaration of one’s hope that they’ll die before another person because of how difficult it would be to live without them.

19. Duende

Spanish – While originally used to describe a mythical, spritelike entity that possesses humans and creates the feeling of awe of one’s surroundings in nature, its meaning has transitioned into referring to “the mysterious power that a work of art has to deeply move a person.” There’s actually a nightclub in the town of La Linea de la Concepcion, where I teach, named after this word. (Altalang.com)

20. Saudade

Portuguese – One of the most beautiful of all words, translatable or not, this word “refers to the feeling of longing for something or someone that you love and which is lost.” Fado music, a type of mournful singing, relates to saudade. (Altalang.com)

For myself, the hardest part about learning a new language isn’t so much getting acquainted with the translations of vocabulary and different grammatical forms and bases, but developing an inner reflex that responds to words’ texture, not their translated “ingredients”. When you hear the word “criminal” you don’t think of “one who commits acts outside the law,” but rather the feeling and mental imagery that comes with that word.

Thus these words, while standing out due to our inability to find an equivalent word in out own language, should not be appreciated for our own words that we try to use to describe them, but for their own taste and texture. Understanding these words should be like eating the best slab of smoked barbequeued ribs: the enjoyment doesn’t come from knowing what the cook put in the sauce or the seasoning, but from the full experience that can only be created by time and emotion.

You guys, words are awesome. I love them so damn much. Sometimes I just want to run around using them in front of anyone who will listen, just for the sake of hearing them spoken. I have a compulsive joy in the cadences of verbal and written expression that would probably look a bit like madness in anyone not intending to spend the rest of her life reading and writing and talking about it all.

avatarsnowy:

word choice is serious business

Anyone who does not agree with this statement should preferably not be writing — or talking — where I can read or hear it. You have been warned.

The “something borrowed” at my wedding had better turn out to be a library book.