Venting

Not long ago I created a list of all the languages I’ve ever been interested in and tried to classify them according to whether I’d put them aside, I’d always keep them around, etc. Big fail. I just can’t handle them in such an organised, systematic way, even though I like arranging and classifying such things about my life.

My thing with languages is that they’re a source of personal pleasure. And that’s all about it. There are no job or academic needs, no travelling or moving to a foreign country, no interacting with foreign speakers on a daily basis – I study the languages I study because I take pleasure in doing so, and even that is relative. I may feel extremely satisfied about myself with learning how to read a different script, or understanding how a verbal system works, or even going through the frustration of fighting my own vocal organs in trying to learn an alien set of sounds.

Because of that, there’s a certain fluidity that comes with it that some people may feel surprisingly entitled to judge – because I’ve changed my languages of interest, because I haven’t progressed how I was apparently supposed to, how this or that amount of time has passed and I haven’t achieved some subjective, random level or goal…

I’ve learnt to shake that kind of people and attitude off, but, at the same time, it also means having far fewer people to talk about languages with without having to deal with implied competition or judgement.

Não-professor

Sempre que corrijo os textos do Ivan, não consigo deixar de pensar no quão difícil é ser professor, ainda mais em campos abstratos e subjetivos como o de idiomas, e o quão inapto me sinto para tal tarefa!

Holocausto literário

As necessary as it is, it’s always painful to purge my Library folder of all the ‘useless’ (or rather pointless) material I just keep on gathering… It breaks my heart, but I do need the HDD space (besides my mental sanity), and that’s the only way, especially if I’m to be any realistic (although even that sounds far-fetched).

Surviving language(-related) materials: Arabic, Armenian, Bulgarian, calligraphy, Chinese, CJKV, Czech, English, Esperanto, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hindustani, Hungarian, IPA, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Lithuanian, Malay, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, shorthand, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Thai, Tupi, Turkish, Vietnamese, and Welsh, plus a handful of loose, more general texts. Still too much, but it’s okay for the time being.

Phylogenetic tree (2)

[continued from Phylogenetic tree]

When I cross the Indo-European limits, things get completely non-linguistic – although there may be a linguistic basis, it’s actually geography that seems to lead my preferences and taste.

Independently of how I actually got there, there seems to be some sort of ‘spiritual place’ for me in the strip that covers South, (mainland) South-East and East Asia. I feel completely at ease there, and can find dozens of things to love and have fun with there. Options being almost endless makes it impossibly hard for me to choose, though, obviously, so that I must force myself to cut a lot and to put a lot aside, and finally lay my heart on Thai, Japanese and, perhaps, (Mandarin) Chinese. The three of them alone make me wish my days could have 48 hours, so I could dedicate at least 24 to them.

Other than that, however, the linguistic universe feels a little numb for me. It may even be particularly attractive here and there, but forces working out there are much weaker, and subject to much whim and curiosity.

From Africa, I could only single out Swahili, and, even then, I know I sort of force myself to when I say that. There’s curiosity, but there isn’t really anything else going on. Yoruba might be listed, too, although in a really far lower position.

From the Americas, gosh! I actually feel somewhat guilty for that, but I just can’t bring myself to be as interested in any native languages as I believe I actually should! Old Tupi is my first option for nationalistic and etymological reasons, but I’ve totally neglected it for ages (plus the fact that its status as a dead language places it in a museum of sorts in my mind). Regarding living languages, if I was given the option of choosing whichever language(s) I wanted, I might pick Kaingang and/or Guarani, but this is rather random; Nahuatl, Navajo, Cree, Quechua, Cherokee, or Inuktitut might equally fill in the gap.

And this pretty much settles the topic. I mean, I may’ve forgotten something, as it does feel like I had a lot more to write about in my head than what I actually have written down, and there are indeed details and languages I didn’t mention because I wanted to stick to the bigger picture (as funny as this may sound).

Phylogenetic tree

I was thinking of language families again, for no reason. It was probably just my mind wandering and trying to classify things.

There’s no denying I feel at home in the Indo-European realm. Although that might be logical, it’s not necessarily expected, and by no means ordinary, it seems; in my case, however, it seems to be true. And, although it may sound even boring, the Italic languages hold the most special place in my soul library (Portuguese more than included, although some language buffs usually exclude their own native languages from their count).

The (Balto-)Slavonic languages come right next to the Romance ones, that’s undeniable – I find myself extremely comfortable in their domain, and couldn’t even choose a subgroup if I had to. Then Armenian probably comes third in the list, although my efforts into it have never got anywhere near my love for it.

I had something for Celtic languages once, with a strong focus on Scottish Gaelic, but the flame has died away, with a shift to Welsh along the way. A similar process took place with Greek, which was actually my first conscious language crush; it’s been slowly revived, however, although with a similar shift of focus – from the modern to the most ancient layers of it instead.

As curious as it may sound, I don’t really get to place the Germanic languages in a good place in such a list, and part of that has probably got to do with the diversity I actually see in them, as if I actually broke them down into smaller subgroups with a much clearer barrier between them. English has been around for such a long time I find it really hard to analyse my feelings towards it objectively; German got into the equation much later, but still a long time ago anyway, but it certainly gives me different impressions and nuances, and I like it for what it is. Then, I did go into a Scandinavian fever that covered all the languages in the subgroup, although in different depths and timespans, and, for a while, each of them probably felt like the love of my life, only for the passion to grow cold and distant and then finally get placed aside, for a reason or another.

And then, the Indo-Iranian realm, which call upon me very strongly from all directions and angles, crowned by Persian, but then followed by Hindustani (in its varieties) and a dozen other Indo-Arian languages. I’m yet to find my way into them, though.

[to be continued]

My lovers are gone

I loved Greek once, but I can’t for the sake of me remember when or how such love faded away. It did, though, and I don’t think I could bring myself back to the language, at least not easily. A similar process took place with Scottish Gaelic, although in less intense ways. Curious how such things go… I liked the languages, I put a lot of effort (and even money) into them, but then the feeling was gone, apparently never to return.

Vade-retro!

It seems I’m getting a lot better at resisting language temptations! I successfully put anything Polish away last night, and drove my focus all the way back to Bulgarian.

Circle of life

Funny cycle… Studying Thai makes me bump into dozens of Sanskrit borrowings, which eventually turns my attention to Hindi; reading about Hindi obviously leads me to reading about Urdu, too, and the Perso-Arabic alphabet appeals to me enourmously; reading about Urdu, on the other hand, makes me bump into dozens of Persian borrowings, which always leads me back to Persian itself.

«درود به تو، ای ملکه!»

जिज्ञासा / تجسس

It’s not that I’ve put Thai aside, but I’ve suddenly realised I’ve been reading a lot about Hindi in the last few days.

Resoluções lingüísticas

I’ve been wasting so much of my time with a different number of language-related activities that I thought it’s high time I set some personal rules to help/force me along the way…

When it comes to Amerindian languages, I’ll settle with Tupi (with Guarani being a passive companion because of the interesting parallels one can draw from it).

Scholarly discussions aside, for the sake of simplicity, the Altaic family would provide me with Turkish and Japanese (although Korean may linger around as a reserve).

Not much to discuss about the following families: Afroasiatic (Arabic and Hebrew), Austronesian (Malay), Niger-Kongo (Swahili), Sino-Tibetan (Mandarin), and South Caucasian (Georgian).

Indo-European choices as a whole are harder to restrict. My list of possibilites will be limited to: Hindustani (even if clearly more inclined towards the Urdu element), Modern Persian (particularly the Iranian standard), Latin, the four major Romance languages other than Portuguese (Spanish, French, Italian, and Romanian), the two major Germanic languages (English and German, even if it hurts to leave Dutch and Swedish off), Ancient (particularly Epic) and Modern Greek, Russian, Bulgarian, the BCS system (with focus on Serbian, though feeling compelled to cross towards Croatian), Lithuanian, Armenian, and Welsh.

Although I’d initially avoided conlangs, I think I might make an exception for Esperanto, although that’s only theoretical for now.

Twenty something focal itens? That does make things easier, in a way.