An Example of How Abstrusively Lifeless, Hyper-Intellectualized, Distant and (also) Archaic the Use of Formal Language May Become

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

We are all familiar with the use of formal language and script as the proper vehicle of communication, either with spatial (by writing) or temporal (by speaking) means. This includes Science, Religious liturgy, Government records and etcetera - a manner which is not necessarily restricted to the adoption of a foreign language, but merely the formal and well educated dialects of it. Our lawmakers abstain from writing contemporary bills, say Obamacare, in the common slang or ghetto dialect they may well be using to debate it! In fact, poignantly pointing to people reading this, the language I use is different from the everyday use that people just go on with, for no better reason than they are more comfortable with it, and the more "down-to-earth" the situations, the less ritualized they become and the more they depend upon pulse rather than knowledge, which has its own language, otherwise commonly known as "everyday speak".

I believe, and I'm fairly sure most of you do, that language has a distinct historical character to it. There surely is no language without history, and vice-versa, because the spoken idiom of humanity is one of the underlying basis for its own existence. It is also a sign of this historical character in that everything in language as in history changes, and does so forever; while the physician can sit back comfortably and write Laws which are essentially dead formulations set to be ETERNALLY true (no matter how much the belief in progress contraries this, Natural Law is eternally true until it is debunked by another similarly eternally true Law, and may remain so forever if not otherwise discredited), the speaker of any dialect in the world only fits inside his particular time period. Unless the language becomes rigid by intellectualization and/or formalization, what he says will be unintelligible gibberish even to his grandsons, in the most extreme cases. Thus Language is the living symbol of constant metamorphosis, and all the more impressive due to its self-unconsciousness; we do not realize we "grow" from a kid to an adult, in many cases we can't even perceive the changes which affect us in the critical period of puberty. Everyone of us is changing, and changing, and changing without notice, and the best sign of it can be seen by no other mean than History itself. While the changes between yesterday and today in your body may be imperceptible, one might as well take pictures of oneself, and then look back at them 10 or 20 years in the future, so the radical differences can be perceived. The same happens with history: instead of "epic" watersheds that define periods, we have imperceptible evolution, imperceptible change, which culminates in almost complete revolution after decades or so of timespam, and the same perchance occurs with language. Nobody "perceives" the evolution of language, it just exists, and thus entire grammatical sentences, rules, nouns, syntax, and etc... get radically twisted in such a manner, that one may need to look to artificially preserved languages like Latin or Old English to realize the extent of the metamorphosis of their speech. Nobody knew they were no longer speaking Latin, long after they effectively ceased to do so.

... Now, this singular opposition between "Formal", "Written", "Ritual" and "Everyday" language is the key to what I convene in this thread. It is possible to preserve "DEAD" things long after they died, ergo ceased to be part of the living pulse of mankind like everyday speech. Whatever the reasons to do so are probably implicit and explained already, but the most noticeable feature is that the longest this "distance" between the spoken and the written prevails, the more it increases; there's no "reversion". Usually, entire civilizations will vanish from sight, and thus the use of formal languages will cease, but in some cases they won't. And that singular opposition is thus expressed markedly, in the distinction between the Latin of the Medieval Church and educated means VERSUS the Old French of the "unwashed masses", the Sanskrit of the Brahman priest vs. the Indian of the everyday man, but perhaps the most impressively in the singular opposition of "Classical", written Chinese, with modern vernacular Han language.

Now both Classical and Modern Chinese are written in a mixed pictorial-pseudo-phonetic script which enunciates notions and words without truly "expressing" them. One might read a word without mentally speaking it, much like one may understand a drawing without naming what is being drawn. As such, literary reading and understanding is COMPLETELY divorced from speech... The best analogy would be to compare it to a set of drawings which one looks at, and to fit it well into the Chinese analogy, only vaguely ever associates certain spoken words with.

Of course, that changes when reading the text aloud or trying to transliterate it into a written scheme which is phonetic, like Latin script. Thus, while a person may perfectly understand a text in silent reading, when reading it aloud and being forced to use words with their respective pronunciations, especially modern ones, then discrepancies are bound to happen . Then comes again the dichotomy between written and spoken language, which is painfully evident in Chinese: China, which has existed as a Civilization since the Zhou period (about 1500 BC), witnessed an extremely high number of changes back from the days, sooo many which are mostly lost to us. It is still hard, in part due to the extremely old age of the languages that have reached us, to determine how Chinese was spoken in a remote past.

And the most singular example of this already blatant opposition has got to be a piece of prose written purposefully by Dr. Yuen Chao in Classical Chinese, which is meant to be read aloud using Standard Mandarin pronunciation. The Wiki has the specific details about it, while the video below details the crapload of weird outcomes, specifically homophony, of this approach. Reiterating that the Chinese script is partly pictorial, two words with different meanings might be written differently, and originally they might even have been pronounced differently! But millenia of imperceptible changes all contributed to turn them, literally, into the same word.

[removeduser_487563287433]

Wait, is the above post the example of houw abstrusively lifeless, hyper-intellectualised, disant and (also) archaic use of formal language may become?

It's like you're trying to mock up a title for an Alexander Pope pamphlet.

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

Wait, is the above post the example of houw abstrusively lifeless, hyper-intellectualised, disant and (also) archaic use of formal language may become?

It's like you're trying to mock up a title for an Alexander Pope pamphlet.

Blargh Ferrets, you've never read an academic essay then, particularly in philosophy. My text is pop science in comparison .

[removeduser_487563287433]

I've written academic essays. But I can tell the difference between using a complicated word that has a specific meaning within a certain academic context and somebody who's trying to sound smarter. Anybody who can't explain something in a single paragraph with simply language hasn't udnerstood it in the first place.

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

I've written academic essays. But I can tell the difference between using a complicated word that has a specific meaning within a certain academic context and somebody who's trying to sound smarter. Anybody who can't explain something in a single paragraph with simply language hasn't udnerstood it in the first place.

Being awfully direct and objective sometimes isn't the best option, y'a know?

Anyway, if you bothered to read the text, you would know I gave a small disclaimer.

[hellheaven1987]

Now both Classical and Modern Chinese are written in a mixed pictorial-pseudo-phonetic script which enunciates notions and words without truly "expressing" them. One might read a word without mentally speaking it, much like one may understand a drawing without naming what is being drawn. As such, literary reading and understanding is COMPLETELY divorced from speech... The best analogy would be to compare it to a set of drawings which one looks at, and to fit it well into the Chinese analogy, only vaguely ever associates certain spoken words with.

Hmm, no, there were actual meaning in the earlier form of Chinese characters, which was similar as ancient Egyptian texts, using several combination of natural pictures to represent the meaning to characters. It is just that Chinese got more and more lazy to draw all pictures and decide to simplify the characters, which have continued for 5000 years and result the current writing system. Of course, the most recent simplification is from traditional Chinese to simplified Chinese, which is another act for laziness (by Communists).

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

Hmm, no, there were actual meaning in the earlier form of Chinese characters, which was similar as ancient Egyptian texts, using several combination of natural pictures to represent the meaning to characters. It is just that Chinese got more and more lazy to draw all pictures and decide to simplify the characters, which have continued for 5000 years and result the current writing system. Of course, the most recent simplification is from traditional Chinese to simplified Chinese, which is another act for laziness (by Communists).

Yes, I am aware it was originally "full pictographic" writing, yet it's incorrect to call it so in its present state. Or indeed for any state beyond the most primitive one.

[hellheaven1987]

Yes, I am aware it was originally "full pictographic" writing, yet it's incorrect to call it so in its present state. Or indeed for any state beyond the most primitive one.

We probably can only call it partially pictographical writing today. Many Chinese characters nowaday are just a combination of a character of same sound and a base for represented meaning (like if there is a character relating to water, the characters would be the combination of character for water + other character with same pronouciation). Still, the more ancient, original characters (and generally more simple) can still see the traces of its pictographical meaning.

[Exarch]

We are all familiar with the use of formal language and script as the proper vehicle of communication, either with spatial (by writing) or temporal (by speaking) means. This includes Science, Religious liturgy, Government records and etcetera - a manner which is not necessarily restricted to the adoption of a foreign language, but merely the formal and well educated dialects of it. Our lawmakers abstain from writing contemporary bills, say Obamacare, in the common slang or ghetto dialect they may well be using to debate it! In fact, poignantly pointing to people reading this, the language I use is different from the everyday use that people just go on with, for no better reason than they are more comfortable with it, and the more "down-to-earth" the situations, the less ritualized they become and the more they depend upon pulse rather than knowledge, which has its own language, otherwise commonly known as "everyday speak".

I believe, and I'm fairly sure most of you do, that language has a distinct historical character to it. There surely is no language without history, and vice-versa, because the spoken idiom of humanity is one of the underlying basis for the existence for its own existence. It is also a sign of this historical character in that everything in language as in history changes, and does so forever; while the physician can sit back comfortably and write Laws which are essentially dead formulations set to be ETERNALLY true (no matter how much the belief in progress contraries this, Natural Law is eternally true until it is debunked by another similarly eternally true Law, and may remain so forever if not otherwise discredited), the speaker of any dialect in the world only fits inside his particular time period. Unless the language becomes rigid by intellectualization and/or formalization, what he says will be unintelligible gibberish even to his grandsons, in the most extreme cases. Thus Language is the living symbol of constant metamorphosis, and all the more impressive due to its self-unconsciousness; we do not realize we "grow" from a kid to an adult, in many cases we can't even perceive the changes which affect us in the critical period of puberty. Everyone of us is changing, and changing, and changing without notice, and the best sign of it can be seen by no other mean than History itself. While the changes between yesterday and today in your body may be imperceptible, one might as well take pictures of oneself, and then look back at them 10 or 20 years in the future, so the radical differences can be perceived. The same happens with history: instead of "epic" watersheds that define periods, we have imperceptible evolution, imperceptible change, which culminates in almost complete revolution after decades or so of timespam, and the same perchance occurs with language. Nobody "perceives" the evolution of language, it just exists, and thus entire grammatical sentences, rules, nouns, syntax, and etc... get radically twisted in such a manner, that one may need to look to artificially preserved languages like Latin or Old English to realize the extent of the metamorphosis of their speech. Nobody knew they were no longer speaking Latin, long after they effectively ceased to do so.

... Now, this singular opposition between "Formal", "Written", "Ritual" and "Everyday" language is the key to what I convene in this thread. It is possible to preserve "DEAD" things long after they died, ergo ceased to be part of the living pulse of mankind like everyday speech. Whatever the reasons to do so are probably implicit and explained already, but the most noticeable feature is that the longest this "distance" between the spoken and the written prevails, the more it increases; there's no "reversion". Usually, entire civilizations will vanish from sight, and thus the use of formal languages will cease, but in some cases they won't. And that singular opposition is thus expressed markedly, in the distinction between the Latin of the Medieval Church and educated means VERSUS the Old French of the "unwashed masses", the Sanskrit of the Brahman priest vs. the Indian of the everyday man, but perhaps the most impressively in the singular opposition of "Classical", written Chinese, with modern vernacular Han language.

Now both Classical and Modern Chinese are written in a mixed pictorial-pseudo-phonetic script which enunciates notions and words without truly "expressing" them. One might read a word without mentally speaking it, much like one may understand a drawing without naming what is being drawn. As such, literary reading and understanding is COMPLETELY divorced from speech... The best analogy would be to compare it to a set of drawings which one looks at, and to fit it well into the Chinese analogy, only vaguely ever associates certain spoken words with.

Of course, that changes when reading the text aloud or trying to transliterate it into a written scheme which is phonetic, like Latin script. Thus, while a person may perfectly understand a text in silent reading, when reading it aloud and being forced to use words with their respective pronunciations, especially modern ones, then discrepancies are bound to happen . Then comes again the dichotomy between written and spoken language, which is painfully evident in Chinese: China, which has existed as a Civilization since the Zhou period (about 1500 BC), witnessed an extremely high number of changes back from the days, sooo many which are mostly lost to us. It is still hard, in part due to the extremely old age of the languages that have reached us, to determine how Chinese was spoken in a remote past.

And the most singular example of this already blatant opposition has got to be a piece of prose written purposefully by Dr. Yuen Chao in Classical Chinese, which is meant to be read aloud using Standard Mandarin pronunciation. The Wiki has the specific details about it, while the video below details the crapload of weird outcomes, specifically homophony, of this approach. Reiterating that the Chinese script is partly pictorial, two words with different meanings might be written differently, and originally they might even have been pronounced differently! But millenia of imperceptible changes all contributed to turn them, literally, into the same word.

i think what you're ignoring is the fact that when you learn a language, you don't jsut learn the meanings of the words/characters, but also the thinking of the natives;
As a student of traditional chinese medicine, i have to read texts that are as old as 1500 yrs old and the anglicized translations altogether do not suffice, hence why a lot of modern compilations also have analyses and interpretations from historians and scientists.

now to your question; in my case of studying ancient chinese medical texts; are they 'Abstrusively Lifeless, Hyper-Intellectualized, Distant and (also) Archaic'?
subjectively speaking, i would find them archaic, distant, but i wouldnt call the Neijing or the shang han lun 'hyper intellectualized, or lifeless'.
the neijing itself is in classical chinese but is still easy to understand; the shang han lun which was written in the han dynasty by zhang zhong jing is easier to understand probably because the author is so specific about what to do, when, how etcetc.

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

i think what you're ignoring is the fact that when you learn a language, you don't jsut learn the meanings of the words/characters, but also the thinking of the natives;
As a student of traditional chinese medicine, i have to read texts that are as old as 1500 yrs old and the anglicized translations altogether do not suffice, hence why a lot of modern compilations also have analyses and interpretations from historians and scientists.

now to your question; in my case of studying ancient chinese medical texts; are they 'Abstrusively Lifeless, Hyper-Intellectualized, Distant and (also) Archaic'?
subjectively speaking, i would find them archaic, distant, but i wouldnt call the Neijing or the shang han lun 'hyper intellectualized, or lifeless'.
the neijing itself is in classical chinese but is still easy to understand; the shang han lun which was written in the han dynasty by zhang zhong jing is easier to understand probably because the author is so specific about what to do, when, how etcetc.

They are lifeless not because they are incapable of being understood, but because they no longer exist in "living" means. Such as, history, average day talk, even "low-level" pragmatic conversations; like Latin, they are a strictly formal, unchangeable medium which is also exceedingly polished and restricted. More like a statue, less like a person.

Of course, the "living" part is greatly a metaphor.

I also corrected some weirdness and repetitions in the text...