The English language is unlike most other languages in the world today. Most languages are used primarily for communication. English, though, is geared more toward solitary thinking and philosophizing. Most languages can handle both functions, of course, but English is much more suited to thought processing than most.
Other languages have a more social or environmental focus. There is an eye towards harmony, most easily seen for some in the use of masculine and feminine nouns and adjectives. The tendency in discussion is not to rationalize but to converse while realizing all-at-once how one fits in with everything else, the duality of perception. This is only a tendency, though, based on the structure of the languages and the cultures the languages encompass. They lean participants in that direction whether they're involved in thought or discussion.
English and other similar languages are structured for a more analytical purpose. They are relatively sterile in comparison, with only basic gender indentification and no verb conjugations for subject emphasis. This serves to create a mental environment ideally suited for the nitty-gritty of science and philosophy. All of this, of course, is also only a tendency. An English-speaking individual could easily think up colorful environments and situations if so inclined, but the communication of those thoughts would be somewhat less poetic in comparison to other languages.
The main thing to notice when it comes to languages is the difference between a thought-focus and an environmental/communicative-focus. We're all familiar with thought, but the social/environmental aspect of ourselves escapes our attention most of the time in the realm of philosophy and science. It's usually relegated to the liberal arts, but not because philosophic science is incapable of understanding it or helping to understand it. As I see it, there needs to be more of a mergence of the two; a unified operation to realize the mysteries of ourselves and the world.
Language: Thinking and Communicating
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divine focus
- Posts: 611
- Joined: Sun Sep 16, 2007 1:48 pm
Language: Thinking and Communicating
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Ryan Rudolph
- Posts: 2490
- Joined: Sun Jan 29, 2006 10:32 am
- Location: British Columbia, Canada
Re: Language: Thinking and Communicating
Divine Focus,
I was recently discussing the topic of the English language on another post, so I thought I’d post some of that conversation here -
I wrote this to Iolaus, who suggested that tribal languages are just as favorable to enlightenment as western languages such as English -
I would say out of the remaining 6000 languages, English is far superior to over 90% of them, this is largely due to the fact that English has been the universal standard for much of civilization's scientific progress, and countless philosophical bodies of work have been written or translated in English. I would say there are less than a dozen languages that can even compare to the scope of its perception. This is why a language is going extinct every two weeks, it is survival of the fittest. And guess what? The languages that are going extinct are usually tribal languages, what does that tell you?
And I wrote this to Kaidara, who was trying to suggest that the quality of a language cannot be measured.
The quality of a language can be measured by the scope of what it is able to describe. Generally speaking, the more words in a language indicate that it has more descriptive power than a language with fewer words. For instance: English has hundreds of thousands of words, which can effectively describe anything from the shape of a galaxy to the inner working of a human cell, whereas many tribal languages have less than 1000 words, which mainly revolve around their basic survival, and tend not to describe anything outside their immediate living environment. So in this sense, English is far superior to most minority languages spoken in isolated pockets around the world. And it is beneficial to the species as a whole that these inferior languages are slowly dying off.
And Divine Focus wrote:
Here is a love Duet, which illustrates the feminine power of Spanish.
I was recently discussing the topic of the English language on another post, so I thought I’d post some of that conversation here -
I wrote this to Iolaus, who suggested that tribal languages are just as favorable to enlightenment as western languages such as English -
I would say out of the remaining 6000 languages, English is far superior to over 90% of them, this is largely due to the fact that English has been the universal standard for much of civilization's scientific progress, and countless philosophical bodies of work have been written or translated in English. I would say there are less than a dozen languages that can even compare to the scope of its perception. This is why a language is going extinct every two weeks, it is survival of the fittest. And guess what? The languages that are going extinct are usually tribal languages, what does that tell you?
And I wrote this to Kaidara, who was trying to suggest that the quality of a language cannot be measured.
The quality of a language can be measured by the scope of what it is able to describe. Generally speaking, the more words in a language indicate that it has more descriptive power than a language with fewer words. For instance: English has hundreds of thousands of words, which can effectively describe anything from the shape of a galaxy to the inner working of a human cell, whereas many tribal languages have less than 1000 words, which mainly revolve around their basic survival, and tend not to describe anything outside their immediate living environment. So in this sense, English is far superior to most minority languages spoken in isolated pockets around the world. And it is beneficial to the species as a whole that these inferior languages are slowly dying off.
And Divine Focus wrote:
Spanish is a good example - I find the structure of the language supports a certain excessive social enjoyment. Just the way the words run and flow together make it much more enjoyable to weld. It is a very seductive and feminine language compared to English.An English-speaking individual could easily think up colorful environments and situations if so inclined, but the communication of those thoughts would be somewhat less poetic in comparison to other languages.
Here is a love Duet, which illustrates the feminine power of Spanish.
Re: Language: Thinking and Communicating
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Pretty good thoughts, d-f.
thanks...
Tomas
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divine focus - The English language is unlike most other languages in the world today. Most languages are used primarily for communication. English, though, is geared more toward solitary thinking and philosophizing. Most languages can handle both functions, of course, but English is much more suited to thought processing than most.
Other languages have a more social or environmental focus. There is an eye towards harmony, most easily seen for some in the use of masculine and feminine nouns and adjectives. The tendency in discussion is not to rationalize but to converse while realizing all-at-once how one fits in with everything else, the duality of perception. This is only a tendency, though, based on the structure of the languages and the cultures the languages encompass. They lean participants in that direction whether they're involved in thought or discussion.
English and other similar languages are structured for a more analytical purpose. They are relatively sterile in comparison, with only basic gender indentification and no verb conjugations for subject emphasis. This serves to create a mental environment ideally suited for the nitty-gritty of science and philosophy. All of this, of course, is also only a tendency. An English-speaking individual could easily think up colorful environments and situations if so inclined, but the communication of those thoughts would be somewhat less poetic in comparison to other languages.
The main thing to notice when it comes to languages is the difference between a thought-focus and an environmental/communicative-focus. We're all familiar with thought, but the social/environmental aspect of ourselves escapes our attention most of the time in the realm of philosophy and science. It's usually relegated to the liberal arts, but not because philosophic science is incapable of understanding it or helping to understand it. As I see it, there needs to be more of a mergence of the two; a unified operation to realize the mysteries of ourselves and the world.
.
Pretty good thoughts, d-f.
thanks...
Tomas
..........
divine focus - The English language is unlike most other languages in the world today. Most languages are used primarily for communication. English, though, is geared more toward solitary thinking and philosophizing. Most languages can handle both functions, of course, but English is much more suited to thought processing than most.
Other languages have a more social or environmental focus. There is an eye towards harmony, most easily seen for some in the use of masculine and feminine nouns and adjectives. The tendency in discussion is not to rationalize but to converse while realizing all-at-once how one fits in with everything else, the duality of perception. This is only a tendency, though, based on the structure of the languages and the cultures the languages encompass. They lean participants in that direction whether they're involved in thought or discussion.
English and other similar languages are structured for a more analytical purpose. They are relatively sterile in comparison, with only basic gender indentification and no verb conjugations for subject emphasis. This serves to create a mental environment ideally suited for the nitty-gritty of science and philosophy. All of this, of course, is also only a tendency. An English-speaking individual could easily think up colorful environments and situations if so inclined, but the communication of those thoughts would be somewhat less poetic in comparison to other languages.
The main thing to notice when it comes to languages is the difference between a thought-focus and an environmental/communicative-focus. We're all familiar with thought, but the social/environmental aspect of ourselves escapes our attention most of the time in the realm of philosophy and science. It's usually relegated to the liberal arts, but not because philosophic science is incapable of understanding it or helping to understand it. As I see it, there needs to be more of a mergence of the two; a unified operation to realize the mysteries of ourselves and the world.
.
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Steven Coyle
Re: Language: Thinking and Communicating
If one is able, any abstract symbol structure can be an associative/dissociative tool. One may effectively program the mind to think in numeric code, assigning meaning which can fragment thought, causing newer connections (speaking in 'number tongues' - 8,11,17,5,1). The same can be said for creating a system of 'hieroglyphic inspired symbolic mythology' - embedding into the subconscious (and potentially uploading to the 'psionic' pineal gland) a series of creative hyperlinks... One could also reform words into feeling-abstractions, thus creating entirely new languages, which would, in context reregister as normalized language.