in a foreign language
Useless to learn an alien alphabet
Master its difficult phonetics
Sketch characters, illegible at first
Rehearse declensions, conjugations. Next,
Parse intractable syntax,
Appraise its context, try to gauge its sense
Yet, when translated, all that’s left:
A palimpsest, imperfectly erased, at best.
4 comments:
This I love.
In fact, I've been meaning to write for some time now that I am so happy that there's someone out there who finds language as fascinating as I do.
Did I ever mention how much I adored learning Latin when I was a kid? It wasn't cool to admit it, but hell. I thought the declensions were so interesting. I think studying Latin for so long played a large role in my wanting to be a writer, and in my writing ability. I loved the idea of different forms of nouns depending on context -- genitive for expressing the possessive, etc. (I'm sure I'm remembering it all incorrectly, but there it is.)
Fun stuff.
i loved this too.
i actually enjoy trying to learn alien alphabets - Korean delighted me - but i never get around to the useful part of learning to speak the language. i just want to read, make sounds come to life.
Niobe, you were in my Attic Greek class too? I just loved it! We learned how to say very useful things such as: I loosed his fetters, I launched a trireme, the hoplites were manly. And all of it is gone... except my $90 lexicon.
Monica: I only wish I knew Greek. My French is perfectly adequate -- though I'm far from fluent -- and I took a few years of German and Latin, which, like Slouching Mom, I adored.
I admire bon for tackling Korean, but I'm afraid that the only other language I know is a tiny bit of Danish, strictly the written form, since I'm sure I couldn't pronounce and would have a great deal of trouble understanding even the simplest sentence.
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