"A Picture of Language" by Kitty Burns Florey

A short article about early sentence diagrams, which were invented by S.W. Clark over a hundred and fifty years ago.

Mr. Clark was not the first reformer to identify its problems, but he was the first to solve them by arranging the parts of a sentence into diagrams. He didn’t consider the idea particularly radical. As he notes in his preface, making the abstract rules of language into pictures was like using maps in a geography book or graphs in geometry.

But there are differences. Maps and geometric diagrams are ancient; both go back at least to the Greeks. Geometry, of course, can’t be taught without recourse to geometric figures, and schoolchildren can draw a map of their classroom or their front yard without much instruction from the teacher. But making a picture of the sentences we read and speak every day was a concept with no real history behind it: it was invented not by an ancient on the other side of the world but in Mr. Clark’s study, in his classrooms, on long meditative walks around the town of Homer.

I like sentence diagramming (although I hadn't seen it done like this, just the phrase structure grammar trees you see in Syntax class). It's methodical, which I like. I'm terrible at math but I can get the same feeling out of sentence diagramming. Not that I completely understand what the heck I'm doing with all these X-Bars quite yet.

"The knowledge of a foreign language can improve a writer's sense of the possible"

There was an interesting article in the Atlantic by Ta-Nehisi Coates early this month, about foreign language and its impact on a writer -- and what the writer produces, of course. I really only have competent knowledge of one language (damn you, Spanish! Return unto me!), but as he says in his article, he is early in his French studies and already feels/sees a difference in his creative processes.

The point is not that this was an especially great bit of writing. Right now its all just materiel, some of which will come to use, but most of which will either be disregard or remain as subtext--the iceberg under the water. The point is that I had access to new highways. 

I've had this happen a few times over the past couple of months. It's not even just in vocabulary, but in sentence structure. And I have to believe that if I explored languages with more distance from English, I'd see even more interesting things and I would see, not simply highways, but entire flight-paths. 

I'm not one for pronouncements. But it really seems like all writers should learn a second language.

My smattering of Linguistics also has an effect in my writing, especially (I think) in the rhythm of my sentences and in the speech patterns of characters. I'd imagine that anything you are interested in can give you access to "new highways" as long as it forces thinking from another angle or encourages thinking on another plane. Look at something from an architectural point of view, etc. So a foreign language isn't the only way to improve your "sense of the possible."

You should still learn one though.

Translation Exercise: 「女には名前なんていらないんですね」

「女には名前なんていらないんですね」, from 『女のセリフ１２０』 by 伊藤雅子 ( 未来社, 1995)

"Women Don't Need Names, Do They?"

I started listening to older music in high school, and I couldn't stand to think about all of the women of the dynasty whose true names are unknown, who remain for posterity with only descriptors like "General Michitusna's mother."

What reminds me most of this is the heavily underlined obituaries column of the newspaper I read everyday. Most of the names belong to men, but when you do occasionally find a woman she is almost always referred to as "Mother of Mr. X" or, "Mr. X's Wife." Her real name is practically a shadow. And once you come to this realization, you begin to recognize that even while alive women don't have names.

I was left momentarily speechless when a woman told me, "I'm always called "Little X's mother" or "Mr. X's wife," so it makes me happy to hear my own name when I come to the community center." That was almost twenty years ago, but even today women rarely hear their names. On the contrary, women themselves seem to be forgetting that they have names.

I've heard that at the public library, women signing for their library cards had to be asked, "Isn't this your husband's name?" And that women attending a quilting exhibition tried to give the receptionist their husband's names when asked to identify themselves. Women: although they fill the seats at PTA meetings, the names on the attendance roll are all men's; when they buy something and have it delivered home, the package will naturally be addressed to their husbands (no matter if the package contains women's clothes).

Just what do women gain by throwing away their good name?

Reading Phonetic Transcription

I came across a post from John Wells's Phonetic Blog and was happy to see that I could read the transcription.

wən ɪz ʌ. sɪns STRUT əŋ commA ə nɔʔ məədʒd fə mɪj, ɑjd lɑjk tə bɪj ɛjbl tə kəntɪnjɵw tə jɵwz ə sɛprəʔ sɪmbl fə ðə foomə. ɑjd bɪj hapɪj tə mɛjk ɪt ɐ rɑɑðə ðən ʌ. bəʔ dʒɛf dɪsmɪsɪz STRUT əz ə məəkjɵwərɪjəl (məəkjɵɵrɪɪl) ən fəŋkʃən lɑjʔ ɡrɛjl (fə wɪtʃ hɪj wɪnz tədɛjz mɪkst mɛtəfə prɑjz).

Unfortunately, like most of scholarly abilities, my reading skill does not transfer to my production skill. It could take me hours to write a full post in transcription. I'll keep practicing, but in the meantime I'm going to read it over once more. Thanks to phonetics my British accents are getting better all the time.

Translation Exercise: 「私は会社と結婚したのに」

I stopped by the used bookstore today. I found The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language (1988), A book of short stories by "Japanese Women Writers" translated into Japanese, and a book of 120 short essays by a woman named Masako Itou. Each one is only about two pages. I thought they would make for good translation exercises. Here is the first:

「私は会社と結婚したのに」, from 『女のセリフ１２０』 by 伊藤雅子 ( 未来社, 1995)

"But I'm Married to the Company"

You may think the words above were uttered by a person resolutely sacrificing himself to his work, but these are the words of a wife, upon hearing that her husband, an employee at a top-level company, had decided to quit and open his own business.

The husband smiled wryly. "Well, you're half joking." But whether they are an exaggeration or the truth,  the wife's words very eloquently describe the true form of what we call marriage. I may even say that her words glaringly reveal a misunderstanding common to men.

There are often men who confuse the prestige of their rank with the strength of their character, or who erroneously believe that a good income is equivalent to their dignity as a human being. There are also many, many men who are preoccupied with the belief that they as people are held in high regard, when it is only their titles that are venerated -- it is only their labels that rate highly. This is laughable.

But it cannot be said that this tendency exists only in men. The truth is that there are women who marry themselves to the titles of such men. Brand-obsession is not merely a matter of wristwatches and handbags; through marriage, a woman earns status by buying a 'brand-husband'. This is considered a woman's utmost happiness.

I hear strains of "An Essay Against Marriage" author Hideko Okada*: "Man buys love with money, and woman buys money with love."

There are people who, when they see a wife taking a great deal of trouble over her husband's health, call her shameless. A woman's rank is decided by her husband's company position and economic power. Love, which should be the purest of all things, is prone to distortion when a woman's husband is her livelihood.

*岡田秀子、『反結婚論』