Ravenscroft
Banned
My first lover was a German major, & I was working on a minor in Spanish. We found that concepts in our heads were often easier to express using languages other than English, & learned a lot about each other & ourselves by this route.
Years later, when I was in the semi-closed triad, my wife was a DLI-trained Russian interrogator, who we once found knew at least one phrase in 28 different languages. Our partner was fluent in French & ASL, wrote in Elvish, & could carry on a basic conversation in Mandarin. Again, there was much cross-pollination as we brought all sorts of terms & concepts into our conversations.
Last week, I decided to dig into Wikipedia, to round up articles on polyamory, which I don't think has yet been done here. Officially, there are 291, with 280 active under the Wikimedia Foundation:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias
This in itself is interesting, such as finding that the third-highest article count is in Cebuano, & Winaray is #8. Some are quite colorful (& surprisingly easy for me to understand!), like Anglo-Saxon:
https://ang.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hēafodtramet
Naturally, I got sidetracked into cultural differences. In an unrelated Bing search for "qat" (looking up a particular cartoon by B. Kliban), I was presented with the Catalan entry for Catha edulis, a boring little plant known only for the stimulant properties of its leaves, chewed much as coca or betel nut.
https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catha_edulis
I got curious as to how this would look in English, & the differences surprised me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khat
Where in Catalan it's deemed most important to discuss the plant & where it grows, in English we're launched straight into its danger as a drug & how it's regulated around the world.
I felt as though I'm in a culture of Chicken Littles.
For those who need more frightening-up, you can scroll down to an extensive bullet-point list of the effects, as well as a big scary chart of Dependence vs. Physical Harm... which rather boringly indicates that khat is really low on both indices (shouldn't coffee & Red Bull be on there somewhere?), with alcohol well past LSD & Ecstasy, & even marijuana. This really made me wonder at the reason for the somewhat dire opening paragraphs.
Well, anyhow, maybe I'll get back to a complete list of those Polyamory entries next week.
Meantime, I'm now curious as to whether there's any other language geeks around here?
Years later, when I was in the semi-closed triad, my wife was a DLI-trained Russian interrogator, who we once found knew at least one phrase in 28 different languages. Our partner was fluent in French & ASL, wrote in Elvish, & could carry on a basic conversation in Mandarin. Again, there was much cross-pollination as we brought all sorts of terms & concepts into our conversations.
Last week, I decided to dig into Wikipedia, to round up articles on polyamory, which I don't think has yet been done here. Officially, there are 291, with 280 active under the Wikimedia Foundation:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias
This in itself is interesting, such as finding that the third-highest article count is in Cebuano, & Winaray is #8. Some are quite colorful (& surprisingly easy for me to understand!), like Anglo-Saxon:
https://ang.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hēafodtramet
Naturally, I got sidetracked into cultural differences. In an unrelated Bing search for "qat" (looking up a particular cartoon by B. Kliban), I was presented with the Catalan entry for Catha edulis, a boring little plant known only for the stimulant properties of its leaves, chewed much as coca or betel nut.
https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catha_edulis
I got curious as to how this would look in English, & the differences surprised me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khat
Where in Catalan it's deemed most important to discuss the plant & where it grows, in English we're launched straight into its danger as a drug & how it's regulated around the world.
I felt as though I'm in a culture of Chicken Littles.
For those who need more frightening-up, you can scroll down to an extensive bullet-point list of the effects, as well as a big scary chart of Dependence vs. Physical Harm... which rather boringly indicates that khat is really low on both indices (shouldn't coffee & Red Bull be on there somewhere?), with alcohol well past LSD & Ecstasy, & even marijuana. This really made me wonder at the reason for the somewhat dire opening paragraphs.
Well, anyhow, maybe I'll get back to a complete list of those Polyamory entries next week.
Meantime, I'm now curious as to whether there's any other language geeks around here?
