Mors linguae
Yesterday my friend was wearing a T-shirt that said “ I blog therefore I am”. I wondered idly how one would translate it in Latin. Would it be “ Blogito ergo sum”? Rhyming with the original Descartian motto? Or simply “Blogo ergo sum”? If Latin were a living language, what would be the verb for blogging? “Blogitare” or “blogare”? and that got me wondering on the subject of ancient languages, and why they and how they became crystallized into “dead” languages, preserved carefully like the bones of dinosaurs but never used…
Why are all the classical languages “dead”? Is it because at some point of time every language loses its ability to incorporate newer concepts and ideas and phenomena? Is it because language is after all a human invention and can’t really keep pace with human progress? call it transmutation of the human race if you have a problem with the word "progress". The languages we speak today- will they too become dead and fossilized one day? Exhausted of all possibilities of further development, tired of trying to cope up with the incessant and ever increasing demand of naming newer and newer things? Sucked dry of all hope, convoluted and contorted to such an extent that it is no longer practicable to use such a language in daily affairs of communication. If every word is merely a signifier (I use the word as a layman, I don’t know much of linguistics) of a thing, or an idea, or an emotion, then the total number of such things must be infinitely greater than the number of such symbols, or combinations of symbols, the human mind can ever come up with…
Not everybody in Classical Greece and Rome spoke classical Greek and Latin surely? Not every body in India even in ancient times spoke Sanskrit? Of course I know there were languages like Pali in vogue even before the modern vernaculars came into existence. The people in their daily lives must have spoken corrupt or bastard forms of the language… very much like our own vernacular which has more than a dozen distinct dialects today..so may be those people, just got sick of the declensions and conjugations and the rules of syntax (which of course became more and more complicated with the passage of time) and decided to chuck it altogether and switch to a more flexible version derived from the parent language…maybe the influence of foreign languages caused the language to mutate and modify into a different language…maybe…
I remember when I read 1984, what terrified me most was neither the Thought Police, nor O Brien’s torture , nor the Anti-Sex Squad , nor even Big Brother himself, but Newspeak. The language, which was constantly progressing by shrinking, contracting, turning upon itself and consuming itself. And its champions dreamt of the day when the entire language would consist of one word only. The greatest marker of this nightmarishly dystopic society was the death of language, the cessation of words. Till date I find this reduction of language frightening. Languages have an organic life of their own, they grow and when they outlast their capacity for further growth or expansion they simply become outdated. They are preserved in that state of stasis, embalmed like the bodies of erstwhile monarchs, because in the history of a language, the history of human civilization is encoded.
One day I shall write a blog in Latin, I promise….
Why are all the classical languages “dead”? Is it because at some point of time every language loses its ability to incorporate newer concepts and ideas and phenomena? Is it because language is after all a human invention and can’t really keep pace with human progress? call it transmutation of the human race if you have a problem with the word "progress". The languages we speak today- will they too become dead and fossilized one day? Exhausted of all possibilities of further development, tired of trying to cope up with the incessant and ever increasing demand of naming newer and newer things? Sucked dry of all hope, convoluted and contorted to such an extent that it is no longer practicable to use such a language in daily affairs of communication. If every word is merely a signifier (I use the word as a layman, I don’t know much of linguistics) of a thing, or an idea, or an emotion, then the total number of such things must be infinitely greater than the number of such symbols, or combinations of symbols, the human mind can ever come up with…
Not everybody in Classical Greece and Rome spoke classical Greek and Latin surely? Not every body in India even in ancient times spoke Sanskrit? Of course I know there were languages like Pali in vogue even before the modern vernaculars came into existence. The people in their daily lives must have spoken corrupt or bastard forms of the language… very much like our own vernacular which has more than a dozen distinct dialects today..so may be those people, just got sick of the declensions and conjugations and the rules of syntax (which of course became more and more complicated with the passage of time) and decided to chuck it altogether and switch to a more flexible version derived from the parent language…maybe the influence of foreign languages caused the language to mutate and modify into a different language…maybe…
I remember when I read 1984, what terrified me most was neither the Thought Police, nor O Brien’s torture , nor the Anti-Sex Squad , nor even Big Brother himself, but Newspeak. The language, which was constantly progressing by shrinking, contracting, turning upon itself and consuming itself. And its champions dreamt of the day when the entire language would consist of one word only. The greatest marker of this nightmarishly dystopic society was the death of language, the cessation of words. Till date I find this reduction of language frightening. Languages have an organic life of their own, they grow and when they outlast their capacity for further growth or expansion they simply become outdated. They are preserved in that state of stasis, embalmed like the bodies of erstwhile monarchs, because in the history of a language, the history of human civilization is encoded.
One day I shall write a blog in Latin, I promise….
posted by mojo at 1:53 AM
43 Comments:
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This comment has been removed by the author.
uffffff...no...it was a serious thought!! utna bhi one track mind nahi hai....
ki learned shala. :P
Blogging in Latin!
*shudders*
(Ami ki na dropout)
Kintu you be right, bon. Languages do expire. What we write, what we say changes with the passage of time. Shob e maya.
Ei jemon amra Be Language ay kotha boli, etao kintu bhabbar bishoy. :D
I think we can find historical and cultural reasons behind why many of these languages became extinct. I don't claim to know much about the history of languages either, but it seems more logical that, rather than the languages failing to cope with the changing world, or failings on the part of the languages themselves leading to an inability to capture reality, the cultures and races which propagated the languages either died out, or intermingled with other races, thereby forcing their language to change with them. English, for instance, would presumably have retained more Germanic features than it does now, had it not been for the Norman invasion of England.
Another frightening thing your post made me realize, when you mentioned 1984, is that more and more languages are becoming extinct with the passage of time. One might even blame it on the way the English language has colonized the world. It seeks to, or perhaps even *has*, become the universal language. Undoubtedly, there are thousands of other languages actively used in the world still, but don't you think that with the passage of time, and by that I mean several thousands of years, it might become the only existing language?
Dhur. Somosto political and cultural karon. Eta toh class ei kotobaar lokjon boleche.
Ebong nishchoi one-track mind. :P
@oshtorombha: i was in fact thinking of be language, when i was talking about chucking the rules of grammar and opting for a freer language..
@prayag:hnya, of course, thats there...languages mutate because of people and because of the interpenetration of languages, but in case of hte indo-iranian classical languages at least, we see that the newer languages that are derived from older ones are almost invariably, infinitely more adaptable, flexible, with fewer rules and sometimes greater capacity for assimilation---may be thats a survival technique...the romans borrowed much of their words from the greeks, and subsequent european languages from the romans, and then from each other, and so forth.
and as for your second point,well, yes, that is rather scary.
@bimbo:i was thinking of more imaginative reasons. class e je ja bole sheta shobshomoy face value te nite nei.
VERY interesting.
Aha, you've hit the nail on the head. You're probably right. Older languages seem to have more rules and are less adaptable. That said though, isn't it odd that English should be the most widely used language in the world, considering its many freaky and logic defying rules?
Or, wait a second. Maybe the reason English has so many strange rules is that, when it met with change, instead of resorting to existing norms, it just made new ones. That's why there's such a long list of exceptions to every grammatical rule in English, perhaps?
Also, have you noticed how languages are characteristic of people and races? I find Bangla to be a much more rosh-bhora language than English, for instance. It has far more capacity to be poetic, or rather, it is more naturally poetic. Which is somewhat like Bengali people themselves. English is more cut and dry. Something of a cynical tone in the very nature of the language, I feel. The way it encapsulates reality is kinda.. formatted. Less rosh than Bangla.
ok...prayag..."rosh" is frankly obscene...!!!
I believe that the ancients knew as much as the moderns about the uses and abuses of language. Language has always been the bastion of the powerful, then as much as now. Those who knew Latin and Sankrit were more privileged than the rest, those who improvised on grammar and such were the creme de la creme. The idea of the classical is part of the canonizing process, nest ce pas? How many pundits actually spoke to their wives in Sanskrit? How many monks spoke to hoi polloi in beautiful Latin? But they could, and that was what made them special.It was necessary to them, and in that sense, we could call it essential.
Yet the centre never holds, and living languages crop up and mould themselves into something as beautiful as that regal unchanged. Witness the birth of Bengali, the most beautiful language in the world. And one reason why it so beautiful is because it has words from so many other languages. Ditto English. I rubbish your statement Prayag, forget not the basic philology lessons.
I think the concept of a static classical language is a manifestation of the modern spirit. For modernity desires to revisit.It dwells in the nostalgic,in a desire for an unchanged essence. Thus crops in (another) essential, one that never changes....Call it what you will; power, politics, language, modernity...
And of course,the cases of Greek/Latin and Sanskrit are different.
@ahona: i am afraid i didn't get your point.
and of course the cases of greek, latin and sanskrit are different. i lumped them together because these are the only three classical languages i am even remotely familiar with (well not greek really). and also they belong to the same group of languages. indo-aryan or indo-iranian.
It was a pun on 'essential', and weren't languages like A classical Greek/Latin come emerge into being during the early modern period? Ditto Sanskrit with the Enlightenment?
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It is nice to see people talking about lives of languages in their blog-exchanges. However, several concepts have been invoked and used quite loosely here. If the excuse for such usage is informality, then I must observe that informality cannot and must not entail conceptual imprecision.
First of all, the concepts of the "classical" and the "dead" were born in a certain cultural setting. To invoke and then apply them is therefore to appeal to the assumptions of that cultural background. I think the idea of the "classical" was constructed and codified in the early modern age, as Ahona correctly says. Secondly, the notion of the "death" of languages again was a coinage of post-Renaissance thinkers who moved away from both classical and Christian latin to discuss ideas in native tongues. See Locke's ideas on this.
So to apply the same concepts to a completely different context like that of India could involve a fallacy. For Sanskrit is not "classical" per se. Perhaps, the only notion that goes closest to "classicality" is "sanaatanatva". There have been several occasions on which that idea has been used to describe Sanskrit, especially by revivalistic movements in ancient and modern India. But I can assure you that, in the mainstream of Indian thought, and even now mong philosophers and grammarians who discuss Sanskrit, no such idea of "sanaatanatva" is ever invoked. Of course, the assumptions of superiority and power are associated with Sanskrit. But there is no temporal or cultural specification of classicality. In fact, Kalidasa who liberally uses the native spoken languages of his time in his plays, incorporates them to an extent and with such beauty that overshadows Sanskrit at times.
Secondly, I must address the issue of "death" of Sanskrit. If, by death of a language, we mean the lack of use in ordinary life, then Sanskrit is surely dead: it has been dead for more than at least 2000 years. In fact, one should say that it never actually lived. For if we conceive Saskrit as it was used in texts of literature, philosophy, etc., governed by rules of Panini, it was never used by the masses. It was not. Panini adopted a commonly used language and encoded rules to make it consistent. The Sanskrit of Panini was a formal language, suited to specific uses,born from a conscious act of formalization, and not a natural language. You know Panini is called a "God" (Bhagavaan): it is primarily because he "created" something. In that, his linguistic insight matched the metaphysical insight of God. Thus, Sanskrit could not be a natural language. So, to invoke Sanskrit and preach its death as a natural language, is to make a gross category mistake. We must ask: Is Sanskrit dead as a formal language? No, it is note. People still philosophize in Sanskrit. They still write books. They organize seminars and present papers in Sanskrit. However, the case of Greek and Latin is different. In imperial Rome, Latin was used by common people. But there were philosophers like Epictetus who still preferred to speak Koine Greek when they philosophized. The formal nature of the language, its semantic precision in certain contexts, (perhaps also its beauty) made it a favourite among theorists. Thus, we see Cicero, at the beginning of the Tusculan Disputations, emphasizing that Latin perhaps could be used like Greek for purposes of theorizing, for discussing noble things. After a point in Europe, Latin faced the same fate as Greek. But when theoretical practices began in the vernaculars, these languages too went out of use. They were only read. So to class Sanskrit together with Latin and Greek is again another category mistake.
There is another point I would like to argue against.
The idea of freedom in a language is not clear. The author seems to conflate two kinds of freedom, syntactic and semantic. I do not believe the argument from the desire for semantic freedom can justify the death of languages. Because it simply begs the question. If the languages were living before the need for semantic freedom was felt, then as a living creature it could simply adapt itself to the need. Now, you could say the situation was so radically hostile to the language that it had to die out, then it could not surely be an "ordinary life" situation: it has to be a situation of utmost sociopolitical turmoil, which made people realize that their social existence could only sustained through the modification (or even death) of their language. Even then, how would that modification be possible? The need for that modification has to be realized by the users of the language and thus has to be formulated in the language itself. If the need can be formulated in the language, then the need is resolved: for to describe a need we must spell out its object, due to the very intentionality of a need. Then if the object of a need is articulated in a language, the language has accomodated the object within itself. So, it has already achieved the semantic goal which it would have to achieve in the first place. How the modification at all possible?
I am sorry for being polemical and didactic, if I at all have been so, in the above comment. It was not a conscious decision.
@nilanjan: tor comment ta prothom baar porte giye ami ghumiye porlum. onek koshte porlam. prothomoto, tui shohoj, shubodhyo, praanjol bhasha e kotha bolaa-r cheshta kore dekhte paarish, i assure you toke keu kom buddhimaan baa gyani bhaabbe na.
dwitiyo, if after a comment like that you say something like "I am sorry for being polemical and didactic, if I at all have been so, in the above comment. It was not a conscious decision"- taahole oboshyo toke shompurno nirbodh bhaabtei paare. taader dosh dewa jayena.
tritiyo, ami author noi, ami maamuli blogger. egulo amar tuchchho ebong shombhoboto shompurno bhul bhaal dhaarona, this is not a goddamn answer script i have submitted to you, which you have to correct.
so my dear friend, believe me when i tell you, i will use as many loose concepts as i like, i will not see locke's ideas, and i will jolly well write whatever i want to on my blog. the world is not your bloody lecture hall. while i fully acknowledge your right to express your opinions about my opinions (since i have posted them on a public forum and have left the comments section open) i feel duty bound, out of common decency, to inform you cordially that i care not two figs for them. however, i salute your superior knowledge. i am sure whatever you have taken pains to point out in your never ending comment, is absolutely, indisputably, and indubitably correct. Vale.
@Baudolino:
in case you haven't noticed, this is a BLOG! and it merely contains the blogger's random thoughts. i'm sure she would've considered all the wonderful things you just pointed out if she wanted it to be an academic paper, but it isn't. it's not a discourse, it's not politically correct, because...*surprise, surprise*it's just a blog.
while i have a great deal of respect for your intelligence, i'd strongly advise you to
go out and get a life...may be even a drink?
Cheers!
@ahona: i know the word "classical" like all labels, is a retrospective one. i know that the antiquity became antiquity only during the renaissance. that has got nothing to do with what i was trying to talk about. bunk it. its too tedious.
If the excuse for such usage is informality, then I must observe that informality cannot and must not entail conceptual imprecision.
Just out of curiosity, tui ki random adda marar somoy-o somosto facts cross-check kore nish? I mean, I am sure that whatever you have said is absolutely correct. Kintu nehat goppo korar somoy proti podey bhul dhorle it does get annoying after a point of time.
Pardon me if I am hogging too much of comment-space. Kintu for some reason, ei podyoti khali mone porche.
"Ek je raja" - "thaam na dada,
Raja noy se, raj peyada".
"Tar je matul" - "matul ki se?
Sobai jaane se taar pishe".
"Taar chhilo ek chhagol chhana" -
"Chhagoler ki gojay dana"?
"Ekdin taar chhater pore" -
"Chhat kotha hey tin er ghore?"
"Baganer ek urey maali" -
"Maali noy toh? Meher Ali" -
"Moner sadhe gaichhe behag" -
"Behag toh noy, bosonto raag..."
Ittadi, ittadi.
I would quote further, but I am sure you know how this ends. :P
I know YOU know. How can we not? It's been hammered into us 'nuff times, by now, by our professors. Dur! That was an observation..Bunkum Uttam Madhyam Adwitiyam. Maane woddever. Ki re baap!keno eto chaap?
I think it's brilliant that Nilanjan always upholds the integrity of knowledge. Certainly on a blog one may write rubbish, as I myself often do, but if it masquerades as a semi-serious post on philology and history, it is unfair to criticize someone for giving an equally earnest, if slightly more pedantic opinion. We should all just admit that he knows way more than us. I myself feel terribly inferior when discussing anything academic with him, but I still hear him out and make an attempt to understand what he's saying. I invariably end up learning something. Certainly, in everyday conversations about random things it may be irritating to have Locke and Panini flung at you, but this was not an everyday-events, random kind of blog post, was it?
*prepares for the very likely angry backlash*
Quite predictably, on this blog, I have discovered three referents of the predicate "mediocre." I must fart with delight.
@prayag: dude i have no issues with him being brilliant.okay? of course he is...and of course as he says we are all mediocre compared to him...i have no pretensions of being otherwise...but this wasn't about philology. taahole i would have taken care to look up a few more facts really. if you read it carefully you see the question marks and the 'maybe's..i was idly wondering, it was entirely random. i was not postulating any theory. and had i understood half the words he uses,i am certain i would have learnt a lot as well. but learning thrust down your throat, against your wish, is distinctly unpleasant. i wasn't looking for learning. whatever he says can be found in any book had i cared to look them up. as i told bimbo, i was looking for more imaginative reasons...whatever...his pedantry is also welcome, if thats the best he can do.
@nilanjan: amice
fart away
ooo that rhymes!!!
There's just one thing I'd like to say. I understand that Nilanjan's 'pedantry' as you choose it call it can be galling/irritating/annoying. But to hit below the belt by asking him to go out and get a life/get a drink is unpardonable.If one cannot answer in like, then one might not answer at all.You could just courteously ask him to piss off. Ask him to bugger off. Whether he chooses to go out for a drink is completely his decision.
Thank you very much though for the suggestion. It has been noted.One final point, a blog is in the public domain. If he has chosen to comment in this fashion, it is because he reads this blog and contributed to a public discussion. That he fails to do it pleasantly is a shortcoming. It has nothing to do with going out for a drink. That's all.
why is asking someone to get a drink below the belt? a drink is a drink, it need not be an alcoholic one, though she meant it to be n alcoholic one...that i grant. it usually helps people loosen up...its not something blasphemous to suggest a drink to someone. of course its up to him whether or not he chooses to get a drink. nobody is forcing it down his throat.
Nilanjan: You have no right to call people mediocre. You might be mediocre compared to someone. As a friend once said, he could talk of cranes and boilers and you would be mediocre to him. You definitely know more than me about certain things, as I know more about certain things than you. X doesn't know everything. There is always a Y who knows more than X and a Z who knows more than Y. If you are someone, who, in Prayag's words, 'upholds the integrity of knowledge', you should not compare. It is a public domain and you can jolly well say what you like, but that doesn't mean you come up with retorts and call people mediocre in an irritatingly condescending manner.
Ahona: I cannot believe that you think asking someone to go out and have a drink is hitting below the belt. If Nilanjan can ask people to see Locke's ideas, Suchismita can jolly well ask him to go and have a drink.
Doyeeta: Let us have a drink.
let us...bon, let us...we need one..or two, or maybe half a dozen..
One last comment on a few points of misconstrual. Mediocrity lies not in one's store of knowledge, but in one's attitude towards knowledge. Secondly, the sentence "See Locke's ideas on this" was never to be interpreted as an imperative. For God's sake, who am I to dictate terms to Doyeeta! The sentence was rather used as perhaps a misplaced imitation of a footnote, the way one writer refers to other writers. So, no offence was ever meant there. Thirdly, Doyeeta unfortunately seems to take my remarks about the loose use of ideas as a personal attack. It was never so; it was a remark directed at words, not their speaker. My respect for her as a human being is undiminished. Fourth, under no circumstance, must this comment be regarded as an apology. It is just an attempt to end a meaningless exchange.
half a dozen. bon. half a dozen. Also dance and thirak thirak and all the good things in life with Madmad. Also NKC. And sparrow.
I agree with you on the point that mediocrity lies in one's attitude to knowledge.
However, you mentioned the predicate mediocre, and not mediocrity. Pray, choose your words carefully.
Nandita, according to first order predicate logic, a predicate F expresses the property F-ness. So, "mediocre" will express mediocre-ness, that is, mediocrity.
When you are talking about the predicate mediocre, you are attributing the property of mediocre-ness to the subject. Very well. The property of mediocre-ness here is applied to the three referents you mention, and not to their attitudes towards knowledge. Therein lies my problem.
Had you clarified this earlier (that you are referring to the attitude and not the subjects themselves), things would have been better. I repeat, choose your words carefully.
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shon nandita, the attitudes embody mediocrity, by virtue of which the subjects are mediocre. let's quit having this banal metaphysical debate.
Yes, let us. It is banal, indeed.
@nandita: fuck it man, don't waste your time. think about rum, study marvell..go listen to shaam-e-firaq.i am....
and also go read this:
http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-05-25-chakravorty-en.html
will make you happy.suchismita, you too.
Gah, after spending 3 hours trying to come to a solid conclusion about Prufrock, I have given up, and also joined the party of those who want a drink (or 3) and the pleasant revelry that follows. After a point academics make me feel constipated, though I fully understand that there could be people to whom it is a laxative. To each, his own kind of Vodka! Cheers!
Oh, I forget. I have a test tomorrow. Fucking hell.
jah! late hoye galo! khel khatam hoye gache already.
however, sukumar ray ke mediocre bolli dada? :(
( and no, this is NOT hitting below the belt. and no, i DID get you did not call him mediocre. and yes, this was a completely flippant remark. ooff, the whole point of sarcasm is lost when you have to carefully explain and be politically correct. gah.)
bondhugon..tomra dekhchi besh ekta juddho arrombho korecho...tai amaar suggestion ei shob chere tomader pora uchit
"How to produce microwaves using klystron tubes?"
eta dekhle tomra bujhte paarbe je bhasha beparta koto chaaper, kaaron eita porte gele tomader ekta kothin combination of greek and english language ke encounter korte hobe...
an example
λ = β/v*r
ω = λ *1/r*(δφ/δt)*B*e/m
eta duto equation er example matro.....
dead??
HA!!
Hehehe. I like Guitar George. Look at us English Honours types having a blog war as we love to do, about things we can still somewhat understand, while poor foggies studying science are getting anally raped by equations and complicated things! Shantih shantih shantih. God bless our maths-less existence!
sure...port na port wine??
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