Coinciding with the Council of Europe’s Day of Languages, established and observed annually to promote linguistic diversity and encourage the learning of an additional language, as well as treasuring those endangered or overly-influenced by the various lingua francas, Neat-o-rama presents a preview of a beautifully illustrated book that collects some of the untranslatable yet gloriously and rendingly descriptive words from languages around the world.
I especially like the term Mångata, a Swedish word for the rippling, elongated reflection of the Moon in the water, and another delightful Swedish word Tretår that means something like a three-fill—tår alone referring to a cup of coffee, påtår is the refreshing of the original cup, and tretår is one’s third iteration. Also I can really relate to the Hawaiian word Άkihi, describing one’s instant and almost as if on cue forgetting of directions after just being told. Lacuna is from the Latin for little ditch and in the sense here refers to a lexical gap, which means there is no word-for-word correspondence from one language to another, so interpreters must get creative and/or lobby for the inclusion of such foriegn borrowings.
Friday 26 September 2014
lacuna
catagories: 🇯🇵, 🌍, 🎓, holidays and observances, language
Thursday 25 September 2014
rheinufer oder see something, spray something
After work the other day, I took a stroll along the Rhein, near the grounds of the Fortress Reduit where the capital city of Mainz finds itself stared down by its former holding of Mainz-Kastell, now a part of Wiesbaden.
I spied the long corridor of an underpass that gradually raised the main traffic artery spanning the river, which had been completely transformed into an epic gallery for graffiti artists with many huge murals.
I followed the path to its conclusion, enjoying the vignettes along the way, and realised that the exhibition was the sanctioned and respected installation that went by the moniker “Meeting of Styles,” having heard about the project and demonstration sessions that took place earlier in the summer.
There are to be discovered quite some expressive and aesthetic uses of urban space here and I am happy that some canvases are tolerated and even encouraged. Do you have a fantastic mural near you? Please do share.
it happened on the way to the forum: semper fideles or republican guard
Just as they say, Rome was not built in a day, neither was its downfall something sudden and decisive: a long, steady decline that lasted centuries characterised the collapse of the Western Empire after a turbulent succession of emperors. No single factor precipitated this erosion become avalanche, though there were certainly pivotal moments, but before indulging, to the point of obsessing over the next episode’s surprises, the History of Rome series from Mike Duncan, I had not considered military-coup as a cause.
Caracalla took his legacy in another direction by commissioning monumental baths to be built to the south of Rome, luxurious even by spa-crazed Roman estimations, which stand as one the eternal city’s last great construction projects, as later emperors even abandoned Rome for Naples and Milan as unsullied capitals before ultimately transporting it eastward. What do you think? It isn’t as if the politicians and polity at the time caught wind of these events and right away recognised social upheaval beyond. There are contemporary analogues, of course, but do you think the that the Romans were aware of poisoning their own wells or understood the consequences of the way their Empire was defended?