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Feb. 16th, 2014 09:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. This bit of News surprised me today :
Bitter single man buys every other movie ticket on Valentine’s Day so couples can’t sit together
Sometimes love is never having to say you’re sorry! A spurned man managed to get the tickets to ‘Beijing Love Story’ at a Shanghai movie theater— then unapologetically bragged online about his labor of love lost, ‘Want to see a movie on Valentine's Day? Sorry, you'll have to sit separately.’
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/single-man-buys-movie-ticket-thwarts-couples-valentine-day-article-1.1615378#ixzz2tXW5cOTn
So...you feel so disconnected and so miserable - you want to make others feel the same way? And are willing to do literally anything to make it happen? While this may be tempting - after all, misery loves company. You are making a lot of assumptions. Assuming that people who are couples...aren't disconnected in any way or want to sit together, or won't sit in the empty seats. In addition, if I've learned anything in life lashing out at others in fits of rage, solves nothing. It didn't for this man. He backed down and claimed it was just a joke. All it does is bring the rage back around again. You can't make yourself feel better by hurting someone else, no matter how tempting it is.
2. I read and listened to the podcast of last week's sermon - at my church - which I'd missed, just now. And made me rethink my attitudes towards language. I have no facility for language. Which I learned the hard way - when I sweated bullets attempting to learn to speak French. I fell in love with France, the French culture, and the language when I was 12-13 years of age. My parents chose to take my brother and I with them to Europe in 1980. We traveled as a family to Paris, then Berlin, and finally London. And in Paris, a family friend and business associate of my father's took us around the city. I fell in love with it.
Everything about it was magical. It was as if I walked into a fairy tale or fantasy. Even the language...which I yearned to speak. So I took French. Six years of it. Junior high through high school and one year in college. I barely passed. I even convinced my family to host a foreign exchange student from France (Natalie Regis) and corresponded with her. (I actually corresponded with two people in France and one in Turkey when I was in Junior High and High School. So live journal is a bit of an extension of that - and in some respects more rewarding or at least a whole lot faster.) Through school, we found an inexpensive French tutor to help me with my French ( I sucked at it) - so I could go spend two months in France over the summer. (Unfortunately the woman we found had a thing for Norman Vincent Peal and wanted to ram his teachings down my throat. I wanted to learn French, she wanted to convert me into a follower of Norman Vincent Peal). I did get my wish - I made it to France - actually Brittany, a small little fishing and beach side town, named Clohairs...I think it was Clohairs. And the family didn't speak English very well. Which would have helped me learn French, except for one tiny, eeny, weeny, problem...they spoke Bretagne. Or French with just a touch of Gallic. In short, it would be like learning text-book English then traveling to the Bronx or Scotland.
To this day, I can more or less understand written French, without thinking too hard about it, some spoken French - but do not ask me to write or speak it myself.
The oral part killed me. It also screwed up my English for a bit - I kept putting "e's" on the ends of certain words. Or I'd provide the word in French instead of the word in English.
Mainly because I preferred it.
At any rate...due to my inability to master foreign languages, I sort of wished everyone would just learn to speak English. This would make life so much easier for me. OTOH...I've gone out of my way to live in a place that has more different languages and versions of those languages than I can possibly list. And on a daily basis, I hear and deal with at least 50 of them. My grandmother didn't understand why I'd want to travel to countries or live in a city where 75% of the people - spoke a different language. And frankly, I never quite did either.
Then I read this sermon, which was in response to the conservative uproar over the multilingual singing of America the Beautiful in a Coco Cola commercial during the Superbowl.
When you have to press 1 for English, it relativizes your universe. If what you speak every day is just a language, one among many, then so too your worldview is just one among many; your religion, one among many; your sexual practices, one among many; your moral code, one among many; your lifestyle, just one among many. Your right to live your life exists alongside everyone else’s right to live theirs. On some deep level, pressing 1 for English triggers all these realizations. And this can either be deeply threatening or just appropriately humbling. It reminds us that we are all children of the Tower of Babel.
I learned to speak French when I was little at the same time as I learned to speak English. I was born in France, my parents were Francophiles and they wanted me to learn to speak French. The wonderful gift of this to me was not so much that I learned to speak French – I’ve basically forgotten everything – but the real gift was that I learned that whenever I spoke, I was speaking one language or the other. I grew up understanding that when I expressed myself, that expression always came through a filter of language. A filter of one color or another. There’s no such thing as no filter when it comes to language. That primordial meta-language is gone, if it ever existed. The language we speak is never neutral. It is always particular and it colors what we say and even how we think every moment of the day.
It is fairly common knowledge that a language can express a concept that simply can’t be expressed in another language. Some Native American language systems place little emphasis on time or verb tense; others make little differentiation between nouns and verbs. Can you even imagine a language that doesn’t distinguish between nouns and verbs? That in itself suggests a whole different way of understanding reality. And yet we destroy languages all the time. Most of the Native American languages are now endangered or extinct due to the destruction of the native communities by European colonists.
In my enhanced version of the Tower of Babel story, when God babbled the languages, that primordial meta-language was divided up like a pie, and each group of people got only a slice — a subset of the original. Each people was left with a language that could express only partial truths, that gave only partial understanding, each incomplete in itself and incomplete in its power. It was not simply that people couldn’t understand each other that made it impossible for them to finish the tower, it was that they couldn’t understand anything as well as they could before. Certain concepts, certain ways of thinking were suddenly unavailable to one group and only available to another group.
I believe that each culture with its language has a piece of that mythic original pie—that perfect, complete language. We will only come close to achieving true wisdom by assembling all the pieces — when we genuinely embrace all the rich diversity that humanity has to offer. When we can teach each other our languages and use many languages, many ways of seeing and knowing, as the building blocks of our tower.
We need those different ways of thinking. We need to be able to see the world through different lenses. Our survival as a species depends on it. We need every culture, every language, every insight, every philosophy that’s out there. We can’t spare a single one.
This reminded that even though it would be simpler if everyone spoke the same language, it would also be boring. I fell in love with NYC because of its diversity of cultures. It's amongst the few places that I've visited in the world in which I can walk three to four blocks and end up in another culture or another world. And part of that diversity is the ability to hear and interact with 50 different languages on a daily basis. From the Chinese at the laundry mat to the Arabic at the Bodega, Italian at the salon, French on the streets, to the Spanish at work. And yet somehow, we find ways to understand each other. Much as I did when I traveled to France by myself as a teen over 30 years ago. I don't want us to be limited to one language. Even if it is simpler on its surface.
Bitter single man buys every other movie ticket on Valentine’s Day so couples can’t sit together
Sometimes love is never having to say you’re sorry! A spurned man managed to get the tickets to ‘Beijing Love Story’ at a Shanghai movie theater— then unapologetically bragged online about his labor of love lost, ‘Want to see a movie on Valentine's Day? Sorry, you'll have to sit separately.’
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/single-man-buys-movie-ticket-thwarts-couples-valentine-day-article-1.1615378#ixzz2tXW5cOTn
So...you feel so disconnected and so miserable - you want to make others feel the same way? And are willing to do literally anything to make it happen? While this may be tempting - after all, misery loves company. You are making a lot of assumptions. Assuming that people who are couples...aren't disconnected in any way or want to sit together, or won't sit in the empty seats. In addition, if I've learned anything in life lashing out at others in fits of rage, solves nothing. It didn't for this man. He backed down and claimed it was just a joke. All it does is bring the rage back around again. You can't make yourself feel better by hurting someone else, no matter how tempting it is.
2. I read and listened to the podcast of last week's sermon - at my church - which I'd missed, just now. And made me rethink my attitudes towards language. I have no facility for language. Which I learned the hard way - when I sweated bullets attempting to learn to speak French. I fell in love with France, the French culture, and the language when I was 12-13 years of age. My parents chose to take my brother and I with them to Europe in 1980. We traveled as a family to Paris, then Berlin, and finally London. And in Paris, a family friend and business associate of my father's took us around the city. I fell in love with it.
Everything about it was magical. It was as if I walked into a fairy tale or fantasy. Even the language...which I yearned to speak. So I took French. Six years of it. Junior high through high school and one year in college. I barely passed. I even convinced my family to host a foreign exchange student from France (Natalie Regis) and corresponded with her. (I actually corresponded with two people in France and one in Turkey when I was in Junior High and High School. So live journal is a bit of an extension of that - and in some respects more rewarding or at least a whole lot faster.) Through school, we found an inexpensive French tutor to help me with my French ( I sucked at it) - so I could go spend two months in France over the summer. (Unfortunately the woman we found had a thing for Norman Vincent Peal and wanted to ram his teachings down my throat. I wanted to learn French, she wanted to convert me into a follower of Norman Vincent Peal). I did get my wish - I made it to France - actually Brittany, a small little fishing and beach side town, named Clohairs...I think it was Clohairs. And the family didn't speak English very well. Which would have helped me learn French, except for one tiny, eeny, weeny, problem...they spoke Bretagne. Or French with just a touch of Gallic. In short, it would be like learning text-book English then traveling to the Bronx or Scotland.
To this day, I can more or less understand written French, without thinking too hard about it, some spoken French - but do not ask me to write or speak it myself.
The oral part killed me. It also screwed up my English for a bit - I kept putting "e's" on the ends of certain words. Or I'd provide the word in French instead of the word in English.
Mainly because I preferred it.
At any rate...due to my inability to master foreign languages, I sort of wished everyone would just learn to speak English. This would make life so much easier for me. OTOH...I've gone out of my way to live in a place that has more different languages and versions of those languages than I can possibly list. And on a daily basis, I hear and deal with at least 50 of them. My grandmother didn't understand why I'd want to travel to countries or live in a city where 75% of the people - spoke a different language. And frankly, I never quite did either.
Then I read this sermon, which was in response to the conservative uproar over the multilingual singing of America the Beautiful in a Coco Cola commercial during the Superbowl.
When you have to press 1 for English, it relativizes your universe. If what you speak every day is just a language, one among many, then so too your worldview is just one among many; your religion, one among many; your sexual practices, one among many; your moral code, one among many; your lifestyle, just one among many. Your right to live your life exists alongside everyone else’s right to live theirs. On some deep level, pressing 1 for English triggers all these realizations. And this can either be deeply threatening or just appropriately humbling. It reminds us that we are all children of the Tower of Babel.
I learned to speak French when I was little at the same time as I learned to speak English. I was born in France, my parents were Francophiles and they wanted me to learn to speak French. The wonderful gift of this to me was not so much that I learned to speak French – I’ve basically forgotten everything – but the real gift was that I learned that whenever I spoke, I was speaking one language or the other. I grew up understanding that when I expressed myself, that expression always came through a filter of language. A filter of one color or another. There’s no such thing as no filter when it comes to language. That primordial meta-language is gone, if it ever existed. The language we speak is never neutral. It is always particular and it colors what we say and even how we think every moment of the day.
It is fairly common knowledge that a language can express a concept that simply can’t be expressed in another language. Some Native American language systems place little emphasis on time or verb tense; others make little differentiation between nouns and verbs. Can you even imagine a language that doesn’t distinguish between nouns and verbs? That in itself suggests a whole different way of understanding reality. And yet we destroy languages all the time. Most of the Native American languages are now endangered or extinct due to the destruction of the native communities by European colonists.
In my enhanced version of the Tower of Babel story, when God babbled the languages, that primordial meta-language was divided up like a pie, and each group of people got only a slice — a subset of the original. Each people was left with a language that could express only partial truths, that gave only partial understanding, each incomplete in itself and incomplete in its power. It was not simply that people couldn’t understand each other that made it impossible for them to finish the tower, it was that they couldn’t understand anything as well as they could before. Certain concepts, certain ways of thinking were suddenly unavailable to one group and only available to another group.
I believe that each culture with its language has a piece of that mythic original pie—that perfect, complete language. We will only come close to achieving true wisdom by assembling all the pieces — when we genuinely embrace all the rich diversity that humanity has to offer. When we can teach each other our languages and use many languages, many ways of seeing and knowing, as the building blocks of our tower.
We need those different ways of thinking. We need to be able to see the world through different lenses. Our survival as a species depends on it. We need every culture, every language, every insight, every philosophy that’s out there. We can’t spare a single one.
This reminded that even though it would be simpler if everyone spoke the same language, it would also be boring. I fell in love with NYC because of its diversity of cultures. It's amongst the few places that I've visited in the world in which I can walk three to four blocks and end up in another culture or another world. And part of that diversity is the ability to hear and interact with 50 different languages on a daily basis. From the Chinese at the laundry mat to the Arabic at the Bodega, Italian at the salon, French on the streets, to the Spanish at work. And yet somehow, we find ways to understand each other. Much as I did when I traveled to France by myself as a teen over 30 years ago. I don't want us to be limited to one language. Even if it is simpler on its surface.
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no subject
Date: 2014-02-17 02:40 pm (UTC)It’s not about convenience; it’s not the survival of English. It’s about power.
I wonder if she's a Buffy fan? ;)
no subject
Date: 2014-02-17 09:19 pm (UTC)I know the former junior minister was - he referenced it once or twice in his sermons.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-17 02:58 pm (UTC)I'm all for diversity. I hear all kinds of different languages from all over the world in my local grocery store, and that's not counting all the languages I can't even differentiate at the nearby Asian supermarket. I like having good Spanish language radio stations to choose from here.
I loved the old, "I'd like to buy the world a coke and keep it company" ad campaign. But "America the Beautiful" is a nice English poem. Having people sing it in various languages is a bit off base in my book and faintly jingoistic (America is so wonderful everybody in the world should sing its praises).
no subject
Date: 2014-02-17 10:34 pm (UTC)The song "America the Beautiful" is admittedly a controversial one. For one thing, a lot of countries in the Americas...don't particularly like the fact that the US has decided to co-opt the name America. (Honestly, I've never understood this - since Amerigo Vespuci did not discover the continent, and why everyone wants his name attached to them is beyond me. It's an okay enough name I guess. And two - what do they expect the US to call itself? The states? Statians? USAins? Let's be reasonable here.) The other reason is well, it is a patriotic song. Although what country doesn't have one?
But, I do see your point in regards to some things not necessarily being translatable. Which ironically is stated in the sermon above - that some ideas can't be translated from one language to another. For instance? My niece's middle name is Kamama (http://cherokeewotd.tumblr.com/post/20065237423/butterfly-elephant") - and while people do translate it - it isn't really translatable. It means two things - butterfly and elephant. And the French National Anthem...which I adore, I'd never try to sing in English, it lacks poetry.
It's odd - this reminds me of a discussion I had with our church organist/music director - he has problems with some of the Unitarian Universalist hymns. The reason is that the Unitarians will take songs with the word "God" in it or "Jesus" and remove those words and replace them with trees, flowers, the world, etc. And it just doesn't quite work. The words feel off. They've attempted to translate it to fit their needs, as opposed to coming up with a new song that would do so. As artists, we both agreed that there was something about that - which just did not work for us.
OTOH, I get Coco Cola's point - they wanted to show the universality of America, the multiculturalism and multilingual community and include all races under its umbrella - which is actually quite beautiful, but perhaps they could have found another way of achieving it - that would have been clearer?
no subject
Date: 2014-02-17 05:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-17 09:16 pm (UTC)But, when I read this took place in Shang-Hai, it made a lot more sense. I originally thought it happened in NYC and I kept thinking - but how can you control where people sit?