Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets
and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from
various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with
straight regular streets and uniform houses.
---Wittgenstein.
I was just saying to little r the other day: you really ought to visit America; Americans love people who talk a lot.
She's in a "but why?" phase where everything is a question (is this a girl thing?). "But why do Americans say 'tumatoes' and not too-ma-toes..tell them..."
In America you've got the grid, the chessboard...East 35th Street...6th avenue. If you know the co-ordinates, that's where we'll meet; 'X' marks the spot. No names (or not many, anyway); no funny historical figures whose greatness no-one can really remember anyway.
Too many words? Have you ever wondered whether each person just saying a word, in their own way (borrowing the rules and inflection from generations from time out of mind), somehow adds something to the world?
---Wittgenstein.
I was just saying to little r the other day: you really ought to visit America; Americans love people who talk a lot.
She's in a "but why?" phase where everything is a question (is this a girl thing?). "But why do Americans say 'tumatoes' and not too-ma-toes..tell them..."
In America you've got the grid, the chessboard...East 35th Street...6th avenue. If you know the co-ordinates, that's where we'll meet; 'X' marks the spot. No names (or not many, anyway); no funny historical figures whose greatness no-one can really remember anyway.
Too many words? Have you ever wondered whether each person just saying a word, in their own way (borrowing the rules and inflection from generations from time out of mind), somehow adds something to the world?
3 comments:
yes, i have wondered about that - and there is the paradox, isn't it? one adds something new, with each word, said in their own way, and yet it is a word and the saying of it, itself, which has happened a million of times before, countless times... it is beautiful and frightening at the same time...
hi, b :-)
not related, or perhaps it is (and i know your interest for this kind of drawings):
http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=59395#.UMKF5Gfvjnd
why do you say it's frightening, roxana?
thanks for the picture! :-)
I was expecting something else.
Keep well,
b.
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