kittydesade | (no subject)

viridian has a good idea and a good point. There's been a lot of negativity over the last few days/week, partly due to circumstances beyond anyone's control and things just sucking, partly due to people reacting negatively to circumstances beyond their control or even within their control. A general vortex of neg. We do not like the neg.

So. It's a meme! It's a meditation! It's a memetic meditation! It's a memedi... okay, no. It's not. It's a Jag in need of a Hannibal King "I ate a lot of sugar today" icon is what it is. For the next eight days, a meditation on something happy, something that makes me happy, something I enjoy. For instance, I like horses. But do horses make you happy? I don't know, why wouldn't horses make you happy? See? Too much sugar.

Ahem. Today's meditation, since I already got off on this tangent: Words. Language.

Language makes me happy. Language in general is something that's fascinated me for a long time, at least ever since I started taking a third language. Or... well, see, there you go. I can't really say taking a second language because I never took Spanish as a class, as an adjunct to my basic language skills. I grew up speaking it almost as much as I spoke English, and studying Spanish grammar in elementary school the way most kids in the US and England study English grammar, this is the way we talk like grown-ups. Half my classes were in Spanish, not just the language ones but science and maths and things. Possibly I need to resort to Russian in this because they have more than one phrasology/word/type for 'study.'

Anyway. Ever since I took Latin in Middle school (secondary school?) I've been fascinated with the way languages work. The way some things are similar but others not at all, where words come from. The fact that some cultures have some words for some concepts that other cultures don't have. I was doing my Russian today (as you no doubt have noticed) and the structure of the descriptor term 'Russian' is different in Russian than every other cultural/country descriptor. Which fascinates me. It makes sense, anthropologically, distinguishing between 'us' and 'them.' In Japanese there are character forms (as far as I've studied anyway) for Japan, China, and possibly a couple other Asian countries, but beyond a certain point country names are simply spelled with letters and not groupings of characters.

And this fascinates me. I seriously could spend all day rambling on this, I love it to bits. I love the way ideas come together to make words and when we don't have a word for a particular idea, we make one. In any language. I love teasing out the little problems when one person associates one word or set of words for one idea and another person associates that word or set of words with another idea. It's endless fun as long as you don't get frustrated or upset. I love comparing and describing ideas of different words, exploding a concept behind a word into a whole paragraph or essay of words and condensing it back down into another word or small set of words. It's great fun. I love it to bits. It makes me very happy. And it's why I will probably be studying one kind of language or another, probably two at a time, very possibly for the rest of my life.

Whee words! Now say it in French, Jag!