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Lingua Franca

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museum in time, tiger in space

12:50 / 18.09.08

I'm pondering on Rumi now actually, and other works separated from us by gulfs of time, that aren't going to be directly accessible to anyone alive.

I find it a bit confusing that you seem to think that the I Ching would be more 'directly accessible' than the works of Rumi. Rumi was 13th century; the Mawangdui silk texts date from 168BCE, and the I Ching itself is almost certainly much older than that. What's more, there is actually a fairly direct lineage reaching back from today to Rumi, through the Mawlawi Sufi order. You can't really say the same for the I Ching, which has been passed on and taught in a much more haphazard fashion.

museum in time, tiger in space

13:12 / 18.09.08

Because Cantonese is more similar to mandarin than English is to Mandarin

Yes, certainly - but, assuming that you're replying to Trouser's Why, though, Quants, should this be the case? I would like to point out that they don't speak Cantonese in Harbin. They speak a version of Mandarin that has loads of Russian loanwords.

If we keep in mind that the PRC isn't that keen on mysticism (it is, I believe, still illegal to register a business based on feng shui there), then I don't really see why it's so hard to understand that someone raised in a city in the very north of China that's historically been more culturally influenced by Moscow than Beiing would not necessarily find the I Ching easier to understand than someone who lives in England and is interested in magic.

14:38 / 18.09.08

One of the core texts of my current practice is the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali - of which I have four different translations. I tend to favour the translation by Georg Feuerstein, not because his translation is necessarily 'better' than the others, but because he gives the original sanskrit for each verse and then breaks it down to demonstrate how he arrives at his rendering of the text.

Hmm. The B.K.S. Iyengar translation does the same, with insanely detailed commentary on each verse informed by his 60-odd-year practice.

It's a bit of a digression, but have you read it and do you have any thoughts on it as compared to Feuerstein?

14:44 / 18.09.08

(By the way, Iyengar's translation of the first verse is "Yoga is the cessation of movements in the consciousness.")

16:30 / 18.09.08

I don't really see why it's so hard to understand that someone raised in a city in the very north of China that's historically been more culturally influenced by Moscow than Beiing would not necessarily find the I Ching easier to understand than someone who lives in England and is interested in magic.

It's not, I understand. See my comments on the esoteric relating to Trouser's example, and, well, I don't think Rumi would be less accessible than the I Ching.
I was thinking that something separated from us by a long time would be difficult to grasp in the same way something that was in another language would be, so the book of changes (which is much older as you point out and has no unbroken chain of tradition) would be harder to understand.

Pick your own example. I like what you said about Borges, and I'm inclined to agree neither you or I would have much to tell him about ye olde Englishe, but that doesn't mean Beowulf in the original is accessible, it means Borges was a multilingual genius.

No matter what the common dialect of Harbin is, or the linguistic skills of any particular person, or how profound my ignorance of Mandarin, in general I think it's fair to say something written in a language you read is likely to be easier to understand than something written in a language you don't read. Is that fair?

16:47 / 18.09.08

Anyway, to relate this to my own practice again, I always give people a record of the Tarot reading to take away, partly for people to research themselves and get a second opinion and partly so a year (or whatever) later they can go back to it and see if it was relevant, how it matched up to what happened etc.
Just like getting several translations. Part of my usual spiel is to recommend the querent *does* look up the important cards on the net or whatever, to get a second opinion as it were.

18:34 / 18.09.08

Written Chinese is, admittedly, more standardised, but there are still significant differences between, for instance, written Cantonese and written Mandarin, even ignoring the fact that the first still uses traditional characters while mainland China has adopted a standardised form.

Wellll.... within the country of China, Mandarin and Cantonese (and Hakka and Fujianese and Sichuanese) all use an identical written system which grew out of the Shang writing you see in the Mawangdui texts.

On Taiwan and in Hong Kong (and Macau, etc), the traditional written system was never simplified by Mao, and in Hong Kong, at least, there's also a written Cantonese, which isn't exactly traditional "Classical" Chinese.

But I dunno - it still seems likely that someone who's used to reading *characters* rather than *letters*, and who lives in a country where hotels skip the fourth and fourteenth floors and where lunar festivals are still celebrated is going to have a different experience of the Yijing than someone who isn't familiar with any of the numerology, seasonal holidays or ways of making pictures mean things.

18:54 / 18.09.08

On the other hand, I'm right with museum on the translation from the past issue.

The Mawangdui text actually has different homophonic characters as names for some hexagrams. At least the way I understand it. Some hexagrams are called the same word (sound) but different word (character), so might mean different things.

It's a translation over time.

museum in time, tiger in space

00:57 / 19.09.08

Yes, I was really thinking of the differences between written Hong Kong Cantonese and written Mandarin earlier. Written Cantonese, as used in Hong Kong at least has, for example only an epicene third-person singular pronoun, while written Mandarin has three, all phonetically identical. If I'm watching films that have been subtitled in Cantonese it usually only takes me a sentence or two to notice, although they're using the same traditional characters that I'm used to from Taiwanese Mandarin.

It's also very important to remember - and I think this is something that grant is underestimating - that although the 'writing system' may be identical, vocabulary and word order varies between the different Chinese languages. Again, it's very easy to tell if a text has been designed to be read in Taiwanese (by which I mean Taiwanese Hokkien, not Taiwanese Mandarin), although the actual characters used are the same. It's not easy for people, even those totally fluent in both languages, to read Mandarin texts aloud in Taiwanese, as it involves a process of translation.

And of course, complicating everything further is the fact that some of the more peripheral 'Chinese' languages (aboriginal languages unrelated to the Sino-Tibetan family, for example) are usually Romanised, rather than represented with Chinese characters. It's actually not impossible that this might have happened with Taiwanese, were it not for the KMT taking a very dim view of that kind of thing (they took a very dim view of Taiwanese in general). Taiwanese is now taught in elementary schools here with a combination of Chinese characters for meaning, different Chinese characters for sound, and Romanisation for sound as well.

This has strayed a bit off topic, I know - but I think the idea that the process of translation can happen 'inside' cultures, rather than just between them, does have relevance to some of the earlier discussion. I'll have a bit more of a think about the idea that being used to Chinese writing in general helps someone to understand the I Ching - it's reminding me of something, but I can't figure out what.

museum in time, tiger in space

01:03 / 19.09.08

who lives in a country where hotels skip the fourth and fourteenth floors

In my street they've actually skipped number 64. The houses go from 62 to 66 (I live in 68, and it still took me almost three years to notice that).

08:25 / 19.09.08

In some ways I keep thinking the issue of how different two forms of Chinese might be is a bit of a straw man.

The point is that if the Author and the Reader do not share context, translation must occur, and this can result in changes in implications, both gained and lost. How far in time or space you must go for a difference to exist is... well, it's not entirely moot, but it's a spectrum regardless. There's already been one layer of translation anyway, because the Author had to figure out how to put what they were thinking into words in the first place.

--Ember--

09:45 / 19.09.08

Quite. The language barrier.

To go in a slightly different direction, language as a magical tool is incredibly powerful. The verbal part of rituals, sigils, cut up techniques, chanting singing and poetry, using NLP to influence people like Saruman's magic voice, mantras, positive repetition, writing down your goals, magic words... it's a vast subject.
How do you use language ion your practice, dear reader?

12:14 / 19.09.08

Has anyone actually tried to read Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake" out loud like RAW used to suggest?

I tried yesterday for a few minutes (My first copy, haven't officially "started" it yet). Not easy to do. I can imagine that it could be used as a concentration aid and if the proper cadence could be found, might actually produce a trance state. Who knows?

If it can, it's a good example of twisting language around in such a way that the sound and meaning become both intertwined and blurry and can become a tool for accessing an altered state.

I'll play around with it a bit and report back if I find anything.

13:51 / 19.09.08

(aside- today is talk like a pirate day, language can be fun, it's a magical ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT!)

14:08 / 19.09.08

Ummm...

Arrrrr! Has any'o'ye scurvy dogs actually tried tae read Joyce's "Finnegan's Wake" out loud like th'Old sea dog RAW used to be suggesting?

Me tried yesterday for a few bells before tide(Me first copy, Arrrrrrr. I've been too busy raping and pillaging to be actually "started" it yet). Arrrrr. 'Tis quite a task. I can imagine that it could be used as a thinkin' exercise and if ye could hammer it into a bonnie shanty, mighten it not even carry your mind into strange seas, indeed?

P'rapsing it can: it's a good example of a deft tongue dancin' around in such a way that the words and meanings twist like rope and next ye's know, ye's taking a sail round in Neptune's own Clipper!

Me'll play arounds with it a bit and report back if I finds that there be treasure within its bindings. ARRRRRRRRRRRR!

18:24 / 19.09.08

Could you maybe loot and pillage instead, while we're paying close attention to language?

05:50 / 19.10.08

I don't see that anyone is really pointing this out but isn't the written (or digitized) word magical in its own right? I like to think about language in terms of Alan Moore's 'Promethea'. In the last print publication of the series Promethea addresses the written word as part and parcel to magical practice. She also conveys the very important implications of that on life in the 21st century. Language studies utilize grammar studies to make any sort of sense. Grammar comes from the Old English 'Greymare' which has some sort of linguistic connection to the latin 'Grimoire'. A grimoire, as I understand it is almost a Magician's grammar like the Goetia or Almadel. Most contemporary magical traditions, dating back to Crowley, encourage the use of a specific grimoire or cultivating your own.
In that sense doesn't a grimoire just utilize highly complex symbols (visual, sensory, mental, multidimensional) for representation of ideas, in the forms of servitors, gods, or spirits? If one letter conjures a concept, "Y" or "Yod" in Hebrew, and a group of them conjures "YHVH" doesn't the same apply to spirits correlated to those letters? If you allow for a spirit to be a self-determining meaning of a symbol, like a pentagram or sigil, it's easy to see the way letters correspond to their own 'spiritual' intelligences, that when put together make their own sense, and communicate with(in) one's own mind.
That's what I picked up from Moore's 'Promethea'. He spoke of the modern comic as the contemporary version of the heiroglyph. A classic heiroglyph is both image and text, the exact same thing that comic is. But even beyond that, a sigil is only a shade of a difference from a letter, and if a sigil can summon spirits, or act as a bridge to relate to a spirit/entity doesn't the same apply to letters? Doesn't various letters that are read summon their own meaning from the depth of you mind, and then assemble themselves in a coherent manner?

museum in time, tiger in space

01:53 / 22.10.08

Grammar comes from the Old English 'Greymare' which has some sort of linguistic connection to the latin 'Grimoire'.

And also to 'glamour', in its magical sense. From Historical Linguistics, by Lyle Campbell:

Glamour is a changed form of the word grammar, originally found in Scots English; it meant 'magic, enchantment, spell', found especially in the phrase 'to cast a glamor over one' ... Grammar has its own interesting history. It was borrowed from Old French grammaire, itself from Latin grammatica, ultimately derived from Greek gramma 'letter, written mark' ... it came to mean chiefly the study of or knowledge of Latin and hence also to be synonomous with learning in general, the knowledge peculiar to the learned class. Since this was popularly believed to include also magic and astrology, French grammaire came to be used sometimes for the name of these occult 'sciences'. It is in this sense that it survived in glamour and also in English gramarye, as well as in French grimoire 'conjuring book, unintelligible book or writing'.

So there you go. I have to say, though, that the comparison between hieroglyphs and comic strips sounds a bit dubious to me.

14:09 / 22.10.08

So there you go. I have to say, though, that the comparison between hieroglyphs and comic strips sounds a bit dubious to me.

Check Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics". He shows that when heiroglyphs are shown as a whole (eg a whole wall) they read in a sequential order much like a comic, using pictures to tell a story. He shows Incan (or Mayan?) glyphs were used in a similar fashion. McCloud's book is essential reading IMO

museum in time, tiger in space

01:03 / 23.10.08

I have a lot of respect for Scott McCloud, and I've enjoyed what I've read of Understanding Comics, but from what little I know of hieroglyphs it seems a bit over-simplistic to say that they 'used pictures to tell a story'. For one thing, a lot of the hieroglyphic inscriptions that are still around don't tell stories of any kind; they tend to be cartouches and that sort of thing, which just list names.

More importantly, the representational nature of hieroglyphs was secondary to their phonetic value. From Wikipedia:

Visually hieroglyphs are all more or less figurative ... However, the same sign can, according to context, be interpreted in diverse ways: as a phonogram (phonetic reading), as a logogram, or as an ideogram (semantic reading) ... Most hieroglyphic signs are phonetic in nature, meaning the sign is read independent of its visual characteristics. (my italics)

Mayan script, as I understand it, was also logosyllabic, so that a symbol could be either a word or a single sound. I was reading a piece by Eco last week, and (if I'm remembering this right) he suggested that Athanasius Kircher and other c17th scholars quite deliberately portrayed Mayan as primitive picture writing - this in comparison to hieroglyphs and Chinese, both of which Kircher was very keen on and believed to be related to Hebrew.

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