#music as language

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Music is the language of feeling and passion, just as words are the language of reason.

- Arthur Schopenhauer

[postorbital]

They'd never managed to form a common language with the aliens, so the chief diplomat relied heavily on puppeteers and musicians.

[pencildragons]

bro i LOVE indigenous fusion music i love it when indigenous people take traditional practices and language and apply them in new cool ways i love the slow decay and decolonisation of the modern music industry

[liesandnights]

My version of flirting is looking at someone I find attractive multiple times and hoping they're braver than me.

[soul-from-another-era]

Sharing music is a huge love language for me 🤍.

[boltlightning]

do allow me, will you? ➢ THE SOUND OF MUSIC (1965)

[incognitopolls]

We ask your questions so you don’t have to! Submit your questions to have them posted anonymously as polls.

[jay-birds-fly]

A candid image of me cleverly tricking my unsuspecting friends into sharing an interest with me so I have someone to infodump to

[murmuringbug]

Every single frame of this show could be put in a museum

[heavenlydolly]

If you want, you can let me know the language(s) in the tags, and whether or not you speak it fluently!

[esyson]

i really think learning languages is like. good for your soul. net positive.

[thesevenstarfoxes]

"Odysseus could have raised Astyanax as his own son! He shouldn't have killed him! Zeus is just an idiot who doesn't understand anything about children!"

Imagine you are Astyanx. Imagine that one day, you discover that your father, the man you thought was your father, is actually the murderer of your real father, who stole you from your cradle. Imagine that for years, you see your father lying to everyone, but the thought never crossed your mind that he might be lying to you. How do you know he didn't take you to ensure Troy would have no heir to the crown? That he took you to one day make you a puppet king in Troy for him? He's such a good liar, how do you know he wasn't lying when he looked you in the eye and said, "I love you, my son."

You know that your father—no, he's not your father, never was—did terrible things, but it never crossed your mind that you were one of the terrible things he did. You are a Trojan prince. You are Hector's son. You are not a little orphan from the battlefield that Odysseus took pity on. Odysseus destroyed your city. Odysseus lied to you. Odysseus has manipulated you. And Odysseus will PAY.

So many Greek tragedies tell about exactly this - about the attempt to prevent a tragedy, and about how the attempt failed, just as the gods and prophets had warned. If Astyanax had stayed alive, he would have murdered Odysseus' family no matter what Odysseus did, because that's how Greek tragedies work.

and yes, zeus suck.

[scribefindegil]

As much as I adore conlangs, I really like how the Imperial Radch books handle language. The book is entirely in English but you're constantly aware that you're reading a "translation," both of the Radchaai language Breq speaks as default, and also the various other languages she encounters. We don't hear the words but we hear her fretting about terms of address (the beloathed gendering on Nilt) and concepts that do or don't translate (Awn switching out of Radchaai when she needs a language where "citizen," "civilized," and "Radchaai person" aren't all the same word) and noting people's registers and accents. The snatches of lyrics we hear don't scan or rhyme--even, and this is what sells it to me, the real-world songs with English lyrics, which get the same "literal translation" style as everything else--because we aren't hearing the actual words, we're hearing Breq's understanding of what they mean. I think it's a cool way to acknowledge linguistic complexity and some of the difficulties of multilingual/multicultural communication, which of course becomes a larger theme when we get to the plot with the Presgar Translators.

[ironcladrhombus]

I have some very specific thoughts about the Wisdom Saga to share:

On the very first listen I was like "hm idk about this, it's different and idk how I feel about it yet" bc quite frankly it's not just new, it's modern. The addition of video game mechanics in Little Wolf, the use of the words "tramp" and "champ" in Legendary, "Splendid" in We'll be Fine- it's all closer to the way we speak than Odysseus.

But here's why I think this choice is so interesting; there was a study I read about people who leave their home country and live somewhere that doesn't speak their home language. The results showed that for those people, their language and vocabulary is sort of stuck in the time that they left. They don't develop variations, or the new slang that gets incorporated, and so people who move home after many years away are then seen as speaking sort of archaically.

This means that Odysseus for the past TWENTY YEARS has only had the same linguistic patterns between him and his men, whereas Telemachus has been developing his language along with his country his whole life. Twenty years is a long time, especially where technology and language is concerned (video game mechanics and "that is so sick!") which is why it felt so different on the first listen.

[vincentvangoghs-world]

Sunflowers x starry night