jump to navigation

Someday, We’ll Know November 30, 2007

Posted by Martin in : General Rants , 2comments

That song is still stuck in my head. I don’t know why, however.

 

There’s this line that a blockmate and I spotted. For some reason, it gets one’s attention.

Two years later, you’re still on my mind.

Very interesting.

 

So, anyway.

Someday, we’ll know the reason for everything that happens to us. But that of course assumes that there is an intelligent reason behind it all, which is a rather weird notion for an atheist to hold. If there is any reason at all, however, I’d like to know. Someday.

Wala lang.

Filipino Class! November 18, 2007

Posted by Martin in : General Rants, Weird Crap , 1 comment so far

So, yeah. Been a while, but that doesn’t really matter. I shall reserve the status report for a later date, seeing as how I have approximately forty pages of Filipino stuff to read.

 

Anyway, we had our first formal lecture last Wednesday. Ho-hum!

It was mostly about language, and how people conceived of it. Various conceptions were summarily given and refuted by our professor, ranging from Aristotle’s definition of language as a “mirror of life” to some unnamed individual’s “capturing of intention”. Curiously, the definition he seemed to favor was language as creation, seeing as how language is indeed limited by what words we have yet language’s – or humans’ – ability to create new words to encapsulate new meanings.

Sure, that’s all nice and fine, but I would just like to wonder why one has to ascribe such tedious descriptions to language when one can conveniently reduce it to a simple, reduced definition.

www.dictionary.com -

1. a body of words and the systems for their use common to a people who are of the same community or nation, the same geographical area, or the same cultural tradition: the two languages of Belgium; a Bantu language; the French language; the Yiddish language.
2. communication by voice in the distinctively human manner, using arbitrary sounds in conventional ways with conventional meanings; speech.
3. the system of linguistic signs or symbols considered in the abstract (opposed to speech).
4. any set or system of such symbols as used in a more or less uniform fashion by a number of people, who are thus enabled to communicate intelligibly with one another.
5. any system of formalized symbols, signs, sounds, gestures, or the like used or conceived as a means of communicating thought, emotion, etc.: the language of mathematics; sign language.

 

Can’t we stop there and just avoid all the ambiguous, “magical” and flowery stuff?

I mean, dood.