#this is because our names carry a lot of vowels so its easier

[itachikun]

i find it interesting that in english if you address someone on a first name basis it means you are somewhat close/comfortable w each other but in latam it v possibly might come off as distant. instead, "long" first names (5+ letters) almost always have a nickname to them and short names get turned into diminutive

[pomrania]

I'm going to start this off by saying that I am extremely bad with keeping characters straight, and one time I was reading a book where there was a character named "Jack" and a character named "Jake", and I legitimately did not realize they were two separate characters until one of them died and the other attended the funeral.

That out of the way: with how our brains process language (spoiler: language is EXTREMELY complicated, and a good chunk of the whole thing is just your brain trying to simplify it by any means available, so it doesn't take you an hour to parse a basic sentence), if you're not familiar with a word, you won't be able to remember it easily, because there's no "meaning" attached to it. That applies to names as well, even those without literal meanings in English (or whatever your native language is), because their "meaning" is an aggregate of everyone you've ever met or read or heard about with that name. And when you don't have that background for a name, because it's foreign to you, then it just becomes another 'nonsense' word, at least as far as your brain is concerned.

I want to take a moment here to note that this doesn't just apply to names of an unfamiliar but real-world background, but also to fantasy names. One of the (many) reasons that The Silmarillion (Tolkien) is so hard to read and follow, is that there are a lot of characters in it, and none of them have names that feel like they come from the real world, thus they all read as 'nonsense words', at least until you've become immersed in the setting and language. And also Tolkien had a lot of characters share elements in their names, which makes complete sense from a worldbuilding perspective, but also means that you can't remember, say, a particular dwarf name as "the one that starts with D and ends in N", because that describes a lot of them. (That last point is important because your brain can still remember 'major features' of a 'nonsense word', so even if you don't remember exactly what it was, you can still distinguish between a short and a long word, or "it started with R and had a lot of vowels" and "it started with a K or G and looked like a keysmash", for example.)

I've been saying 'nonsense word' a lot here. That's not a value judgement, it's how I'm describing a word that your brain doesn't have any meaning attached to. This could be a foreign word, it could be a made-up word, it could be a keysmash, it could be an obscure or technical word in your native language that you just don't know.

The thing is, your brain craves meaning, especially when it comes to something that might possibly be language. You can use this. For foreign words/names (or made-up names, if the writer was Tolkien), maybe look up the literal meaning of its components; if you don't know any Japanese, it's easier to remember "this translates to 'far mountain'" than it is to remember "Touyama", and you might still get it confused with say "Toriyama" but at least you'll have something to build off of. You can create your own mnemonic, but this carries the risk that you'll forever remember that mnemonic and sometimes that'll mess with the mood (example, a tragic scene with a character whose name you remembered as "honk honk meow").

Beyond that, continued exposure to a character, and their name, will build its own meaning. If you stick with it, and maybe check back at a list of who's-who whenever needed, eventually it won't be a "nonsense word" to you, it'll be "this character's name".

...which might be INCREDIBLY confusing later on, if that name is a common enough one in the culture it's from. For example, "Sasuke". Apparently it's a rather generic name for a ninja, in Japanese, but it will ABSOLUTELY not feel that way if you ever read or watched Naruto.

[haberdashing]

Under And Over

Irene’s investigation of the dirt monster leads her to unexpected places. A Mabel/Heart of Ether crossover, and spiritual sequel to Birds of a Feather, though it should be readable without having read that first.

on AO3

Irene knew that going back into the forest alone (not counting the phone in her hand, cracked but still recording just fine) was probably- no, definitely a terrible idea.

But Irene also knew that there had been more to that living pile of dirt and branches than a family of rabbits, no matter what Aden thought, and she wanted to prove it, to learn the truth of what lay within the forest.

She had her phone, she had her radio, she would be fine. Probably. Hopefully.

“So, my big monster-hunting trek with Aden yesterday was... kind of a bust.” Irene laughed a little to herself at that understatement. Aden probably thought she was crazy before, if he hadn’t already come to that conclusion. “Maybe the problem was that two of us were there, and it didn’t want to show itself to both of us at once--strength in numbers and all that. Maybe I have to be alone to see it.”

Irene clutched her phone tightly as she added, “Well, I’m not entirely alone, am I? I have you, Rose. I’m recording this for you, after all, even if... if you’ll probably never hear it.”

A soft sigh emerged from Irene’s lips as she approached the spot where she’d seen the monster before. “The pile is still there, same as before. Doesn’t look like much right now, not when it’s standing still. I can see how Aden thought it was just a rabbit’s warren, though I still think... well, this should help me figure out the truth, one way or another.”

Irene looked at the pile of dirt and branches for a moment before turning around, making a point of looking away from it. “Aden was right about one thing, though, staring at it probably isn’t going to help. I was looking away when it started moving before, so...”

Irene waited for a moment, watching the trees shake in the breeze. The branches behind her rustled, the noise growing as she hesitated to look back.

“Okay, let’s see. If it really is just a bunch of rabbits living in there, I swear-”

Irene never got the chance to finish that sentence.

The ground underneath the branches moved and swelled, and Irene had to suppress her initial instinct to run away--she’d done that already, and it hadn’t gotten her any answers, only a series of new questions that remained unanswered. Instead, she watched the mass of dirt rise and writhe, moving slowly but steadily in her direction-

Until its movement suddenly because fast and steady, faster than Irene could manage to outrun (especially with her ankle still aching from the previous day’s fall), and this time, when the chase was over, Irene wasn’t the victor.

Her phone flew out of her hand, falling unceremoniously to the forest floor and shattering; Irene winced at the sight of it, even as the ground pulled her under. Aden was right, she should have backed up all of her recordings, but, well, it was too late now.

The earth engulfed her, and soon Irene was falling and falling and falling, with thickly-packed dirt on all sides of her, no sign of when her fall was going to end-

Until it suddenly did, leaving her on... was that a wood floor?

The landing wasn’t as bad as Irene had feared, but then, that wasn’t saying much. At least she was still conscious at the end of it all. At least she was able to get up afterwards, even if it made her muscles groan.

“I... I don’t know where I am now. Under the dirt, somewhere, it pulled me in, but it- it looks just like someone’s house, with light streaming through all the cracks in the walls. And symbols. Lots of weird symbols all over the walls... maybe Valencia would recognize them all, but I sure don’t.” Irene laughed at that, a sharp ugly laugh.

“I don’t know why I’m still talking to you. Even if my phone’s still working somewhere, there’s no way it could hear me from down here... it won’t have any of this, it’ll just seem like I... disappeared.”

Irene paused for a moment as the words sank in.

“Is that what happened to you, Rose? One mishap, one run-in with the wrong monster, and then you’re gone forever? Do they even have monsters like that in Seattle?” Irene made herself laugh, though she wasn’t feeling it.

“I don’t know what these symbols mean, I was kind of hoping one of them would look like a rose, that I could take that as some sort of- of cosmic sign or whatever, but no such luck. There is a rabbit, though, made of white light, shining through the wood. Follow the white rabbit, right? Like in Alice in Wonderland? It’s as good a plan as any, I figure.”

The rabbit symbols were all facing the same way, so Irene wandered in that direction, examining the area around her as she walked. The walls looked like those of an old wooden house, but some of them were leaking water through the seams, while others had--was that a deer there, hiding in the walls?

Whatever this was, it was definitely not a normal house, even if it might have looked that way at a glance.

The first door is the door of stone.

Out of nowhere, a wall of stone appeared in front of Irene--a wall of stone that, upon closer examination, she recognized.

“Oh, it’s--remember that park by our house that closed after sunset, or said it did, with the gate and those big stone walls? I can- I can see the mark you made here, Rose, from that time you stepped wrong when we were breaking in, and that one chunk of rock came off, and you sprained your ankle getting down after... what is that doing here?”

Irene shook her head. “Doesn’t matter, I suppose. What matters is, there’s something engraved on it now, and I know that wasn’t there before. It says...”

“My first is in fire, in frenzy and fame,

My last is in knowledge, in kindness, in knack.

A silence is central to knowing my name,

An absence once heard within learning or lack.

My whole is a term used for calling one’s kin,

And calling us, too, if you dare to begin.”

Irene let out a long sigh. “Christ, it’s a riddle. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t a goddamned riddle-”

A deep breath, slowly exhaled, then another. “It’s fine, I can do this, I can handle this. Let’s see. Fire, frenzy, fame--all start with F, so it must be a word starting with that... and ending with K, then? Though two of those are silent Ks, good thing this was written out so I could see them... maybe that’s what that whole ‘silence is central’ thing is about, a, a silent letter in the center of the word?”

Irene started pacing back and forth, though her eyes remained fixed on the wall. “Starts with F, ends in K, silent letter somewhere in there probably... unless it’s a word that means silence or something instead... ‘an absence once heard within learning or lack’... a silent L, maybe, or, or they’ve both got the letter A too I guess? ‘Calling one’s kin’... ‘calling us too’... it’d be a lot easier if I knew who this ‘us’ was in the first place...”

Irene ran one finger against the cold stone of the wall as she paced. “F, L, K... throw a vowel in there, you get falk, felk, filk, folk, fulk... Folk, is that it? Calling one’s kin, like, folks... or, or maybe the ‘us’ is supposed to be the fair folk, from old-timey folklore, or something?”

The door rumbled before disappearing as abruptly as it had appeared in the first place, and Irene stepped forward into the space it had been occupying, continuing to head in the direction that the rabbit symbols were facing.

“Okay. See, I said I could handle it, right? There you go. Riddle: handled.”

Not long after, though, another wall appeared, this one made of darkened brick.

“...I jinxed it, didn’t I? Of course. Of course we weren’t done with the riddles. That’d be too easy. Alright, what do we have here...”

“My first is a pronoun, assumed when untold,

That rhymes with another that’s hidden behind.

My second is beauty man coaxed to unfold,

A thing once created for others to find.

I live in your insides, in shadow and bone,

Yet I carry tidings of love when I’m shown.”

Another deep sigh. “Alright, uh. pronouns. We’ve got I, me, you, he, she, they... ‘assumed when untold’ could be a lot of those, really... But rhyming you’ve just got he, she, me... I guess some people use he as the default? Unless it’s not a pronouns it’s rhyming with, but I’m not sure what else ‘another that’s hidden behind’ could be... so, starting with he, maybe?”

“‘Beauty man coaxed to unfold’... nope, not getting that bit, though I’m guessing it’s another word. So, two words, first one is he... ‘I live in your insides’, ick... wait, ‘tidings of love’... hearts are inside of us, but they’re symbols of love... He, art- art is beauty... Is that it? Heart?”

Again, the wall rumbled and fell away, and Irene walked forward.

This time, though, the corridor ended not in front of another wall, but in front of a door.

The third door is the door of nature.

“Is that my office door? Sure looks the part, though it’s a pretty generic-looking door I guess, just plain wood... and, yup, we’ve got another riddle:”

“I once went above, heading towards the sky,

But also am found growing close to the ground.

As past becomes present, no longer I fly,

And much has been made of my name’s simple sound.

One lost but not found, one here and yet far,

I know that you seek me, wherever you are.”

“These just keep getting tougher, don’t they?” Irene shook her head with a shaky laugh. “‘Past becomes present’... so it, it used to fly, to go upwards, but it doesn’t anymore? And now it’s near the ground? ‘Simple sound’, so probably a short word...”

Irene leaned against the wooden door, letting out a long breath as she looked at the carved letters. “I bet you’re better at riddles than I am, Rose. You always did like wordplay and such, you’d probably have this figured out in a heartbeat...”

A beat, and then it clicked. “Wait- Rose. Rose as in rising, but past tense, grows near the ground, ‘a rose by any other name’... ‘One lost but not found, one here and yet far’... I am seeking you, Rose. I always will. Is that you, Rose? Are you the answer?”

The door squeaked open, and Irene saw a chaotic scene unfolding behind it.

It looked like there was a party of some sort going on there. Music, lights, all the stops pulled out. But a lot of the guests looked far from your usual party-goers, and some of them didn’t even look human...

Irene took a few tentative steps forward, but she didn’t even notice the door closing behind her.

No, what she noticed was a familiar face chatting with two extravagantly-dressed woman Irene didn’t know, a face that made Irene’s heart ache and yet also made it whole again.

“Rose?”

“Irene!”

Rose’s embrace was warm and firm and right, and Irene never wanted it to end.

[universal-translation-services]

Can Arabic Be Romanized?

Humans are stubborn by nature, which is why they think that every problem can be solved. They fail to see that some issues are not problems at all, which is why they cannot be solved. Our inability to see things different from our culture as normal is what keeps us busy with useless wars. Just because something doesn’t make sense to us doesn’t mean that it is unimportant. We have always tried to make things easier for ourselves, but there are some aspects of life that can’t be tampered with. If we try to change them, we will affect their meaning.

The Arabic Language:

Named after the Arabs, this language has its origin sometime between the 1st and 4th centuries CE. It has come a long way since then and has been changed into a simplified form. It is the liturgical language of Muslims because both the Quran and Hadith are written in it. It is also the official language of all Arab countries. This makes it the lingua franca of the Arab world. Although the modern variety is different from the classical version, the types spoken in all the Arab countries today are more or less the same. This is why people from the region can communicate with each other so easily. During the Middle Ages, Muslim scientists and philosophers were making all kinds of discoveries and introducing new concepts. Due to this, their language gained popularity in Europe, and plenty of its words ended up being a part of the regional tongues. During the Muslim rule of the Iberian Peninsula, Spanish came in close contact with Arabic. It was during that time that Spanish borrowed from its vocabulary heavily. Over the course of centuries, Arabic has influenced various languages throughout the world. Some of these are Urdu, Kashmiri, Persian, Pashto, Hindi, Punjabi, Malay, and Bengali.

What is the Romanization of Languages?

Roman or Latin script is the name of a writing system. The conversion of a writing system into Latin script is known as romanization. Many processes are part of romanization. In some instances, it helps in reading a foreign language. But generally, it is used to simplify a vernacular. It helps those who speak a Latin-based language understand other tongues. It is also useful for those learning a new vernacular because it makes pronouncing words easier.

Can Arabic be Romanized?

There are many different vernaculars with a vowel system similar to the one used in Latin-based languages. But Arabic is a bit different, which is why it’s impossible to carry out its romanization properly. There is also the confusion between transliteration and romanization when it comes to Arabic. Some people think that the former will do the job of explaining the pronunciation of Arabic, but that isn’t correct. Transliteration, in most cases, is the direct representation of Arabic letters. What we need is the transcription of the language to be able to understand it properly. Despite the uses of various systems and strategies to make the romanization of Arabic possible, there are still many problems that keep it from happening. For instance, there aren’t similar phonemes in English and other European languages that could properly represent Arabic sounds. There are also definite articles that are written the same way but pronounced each time differently in Arabic. There is no way to represent them in Latin script. All of these problems don’t mean that the linguistic experts haven’t tried their hands at Romanizing this vernacular. In fact, there are various examples of the tongue being written in the Latin script. However, the rendition isn’t correct and can create confusion for non-native speakers. Only native speakers can understand the romanization of Arabic properly.

Where Does it Work?

Despite the problems, there are a few examples where the romanization seems to work properly. For instance, the names of Arabic countries are made easier by writing them in the Latin script. If the method of transliteration had been used, it wouldn’t have made any sense to non-native speakers. They will not have been able to pronounce the words at all. But Arabic is a complicated language. Like every other vernacular, names are different than the rest of the vocabulary, which is why it is easier to write them in Latin script. There is a chance that linguists can come up with a better system in the future and write this vernacular in a way that will be understandable for everybody. But for now, it is not suitable to use the romanization in everyday writings. It will raise more questions than provide answers. The vernacular is quite complicated as it is, but adding this additional factor will make it more difficult. For the students of Arabic, it is better to learn the script as well. They can learn to read and pronounce it with the help of its original script in a lot better way. It is also worth remembering that the current script is a lot simpler than the previous one. In our quest to make the world easier, sometimes we can make mistakes too. If we realize those mistakes in time and don’t repeat them in the future, we will be able to save ourselves from confusion. All the languages are unique and have different structures. Although some of them can be compared with each other, there are also those who have a unique identity. It is better to let those vernaculars be. Read the full article

[congregamus]

Wednesday 26 April 2016 The Abbey-Asylum of St. Hildegard and All Sapphists beginning 3:30 PM

I spent this morning in a Facebook workshop. A decent amount of my work time passes in that arena, and I’m fluent in both its syntax and vocabulary, but worthless at communicating there. Perhaps in most other places as well. Maybe I communicate; maybe I don’t. It’s probably better to say that I often fail to connect. So these classes are an opportunity to observe my biases and typical reactions, excitement, and dejection over the situation at hand: namely, th’abyss between what I perceive as myself and the Other. 

To me, the Other is not irreconcilable to the self, so such is my double tragedy, this failure to reconcile th’ancient, internal breach: my most consistent “failure” within the context of desire and effort. I want to do it. But I have not consistently succeeded yet.

Perhaps it has something to do with the essential nature of the language tool, itself subject to time, and thus unable to carry das Ding an sich across the threshold of our experience as a totality, and if we don’t have the word for something it might as well not exist. There are lands hidden from the flesh and from language, but they are very real indeed; indescribable and unable to be shared, but real as yourself.

I yet insist on language. It isn’t a bad tool. It’s the best one we’ve got. But it’s still a steam engine, and lots of us are ready to take long voyages where we’ll need a better fuel (way of organizing the information into meaningful chunks that don’t insist of tense, gender, or stasis). Poetry, a map that feels its way north instead of orients directionally, is obviously a better tool for getting farther in these first internal voyages we’ve made. 

Yesterday Scottella and I enjoyed a long Tea and Kiki. We embarqued on a campaign towards Epiphany’s peak, and it inspired this message I sent him this morning, which I will post behind the break, having taxed even my most sincere of readers beyond necessary.

Since we parted company yesterday, I continue to think about the conversation that we had. (It wasn't just for you of course!) The question that I asked you yesterday about basic trust of the inner (whole) self to guide the external experience has been tickling my brain. Issues of trust are major, wherever trust has been damaged, that trauma gets reinterpreted into the personal story in complex and difficult-to-predict ways. 

The primary idea that captured my attention, though, was the idea of the “the Acorn”, the “seed of oneself”, the “individual spark” as the authentic v. the “mature version” being in some way diminished.  I think this plays in part into our narrative of a person as having an "arc of power" as we see made manifest in the wheel of the year. (If someone is in the "[insert season] of their lives" then we associate certain characteristics with that (Spring=vitality; winter=senescence) in a way that doesn't necessarily follow. The seasons are metaphors for processes, and while it is in some ways appropriate to transpose that metaphor on the aging experience, the underlying sense of LIFE even in winter gets lots in that analog.)

Anyway--Acorn, youth, recklessness, transformation, caution, isolation, existential crisis, stasis, mud, decay, death, being forgotten, right?

In the same way that in voice we ask, "What is it about my favorite vowel to sing that makes it easier that I can use to help this more difficult situation easier to execute?", we should look at the times where processes have seemed easier and see if there's any help we can gain. Maybe not, maybe a false metaphor, but also maybe, and maybe just the right image.

There are certain illusions that are incredibly beneficial for functioning, among them the illusion of Father and Mother as being the source of all information and being able to protect us from any kind of trouble. (Having abandoned this illusion, and having been profoundly hurt by its realization in adolescence, most of us tossed away the pearl that was in there in favor of what we perceived as the cold, hard truth: There is No God, and We Are Alone. Never mind the deep reality that our parents knew a great deal more than we did and were able to protect us from all kinds of trouble. Typical "dualist" all-or-nothing human thought patterns.)  When the Acorn was at its zestiest, two fields of activity were at play, and they bounce back and forth between +/- 5 degrees on either side of equilibrium: the sense of safety derived from the presence of the parent, and the budding personality (subjectively enjoyed characteristic bundles) having as yet no sense of its own mortality with a strong need to assert itself.

I asked myself, when did I stop feeling that flow from center connection as a majority experience and transition into self-doubt, -criticism, and -sabatoge? While I can't pin it on a single event, I can say for certainty that it had to do with when the Approval Junkie stopped getting his fix. At a certain point, the flow of positive reinforcement regarding learning just stops, and we start parenting ourselves. The function of information changes from curiosity/joy-in-discovery into paranoia/how-is-this-a-threat. In a different time flow, we would be putting this energy in a slightly more appropriate place (i.e., on tiny people who are constantly in the process of committing blissed-out, unwitting suicide). As it is, it seems like the role of Father is one that we insist on acting out--on our boyfriends when it gets too close to home and we have to project it; otherwise, on ourselves through vigilant self-monitoring.

So the question of "Do I Trust Myself" really means to ask, "Do I trust that my parents did a good enough job parenting me that I'm not going to kill myself accidentally". If you can answer affirmatively, then you can give your inner critic a rest and get back to the process of joy-in-discovery and start to let your child play some more. You'll keep a good eye on them, because you learned well from the ones who taught you. And hopefully that child will remember the deep inner truth of security: that we are cared for, even if we don't understand the pattern. Hopefully, ourselves within the illusion of maturation in this body (having begun again a springtime of discovery with the child we left) can forgive the Divine Parent for not being perfect, the beginning of which is forgiveness for ourselves for abandoning that child to the harsh outer world. I'm not sure yet that this can ever be totally healed, but we can have a grown-up relationship with that inner reality and affirm that the process will never stop; that learning will always make us children; that there will always be Self to recover and unearth; that we are gorgeously and wonderfully made; and that our exploration of that totality is our right by birth.

Thanks again for the conversation, GP