"Why are so many things that are important to us, written in a language, hardly any of us understand?"
Do you know how many languages used to be spoken but are completely unknown now in the world? Neither do I but there’s probably a lot of them. They’re called dead languages.
A dead language is a language that has no native speakers but is still in use in some places, an extinct language is one that no one uses for anything anymore. I was shocked to find out there was a distinction between the two.
As someone who tries to stay clear of the complicated parts of the world, this dead language thing struck a nerve. If nobody speaks these languages why do we still use them?
Then I did a little research into these things to see where they're still being used, and I still don’t understand most of it but . . . .
I can’t pronounce that
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I, like most people now, look at ingredient labels before I buy something or pick the one with the least number of things in it that sound fake. To be honest once I move away from the produce or meat sections it gets a little complicated.
When I say complicated, I mean unpronounceable. Words in English, or any of the other Romance languages don’t usually have that many letters in them. It starts looking like they just threw a bunch of letters together and said that’s what it is.
“If anybody questions it, they’ll just think it’s some big chemistry word and is probably OK because they wouldn’t let people sell us things that are bad for us.”
Some of them might not be harmful but with a name like that who knows. I even tried typing some of them in and the spell check went ballistic, but it was spelled exactly like that on the label. In all fairness I have issues with spell check all the time but it’s usually about my rhetoric not spelling.
My question is “ What language are those words from?” Is chemistry considered a language now? I’m sure it probably should be but for an ingredient list shouldn’t the word be something that consumers would actually understand?
People know H2O is water. That ones easy but Cyanocobalamin.
How many people in the world actually know that one is B12? And that’s not even one of the hardest ones. They get a bit ridiculous.
I shouldn’t need to speak chemistry to buy food.
Farm to table is definitely the way to go.
“What’s in those?”
“Cow, beets, greens, olive oil, herbs, cheese from cow and goat, other vegetables, chicken ."
“What no 99 Letter Words?”
“We could make up something, if you like.”
“I don’t. I like easy and uncomplicated things.”
I’m also a little curious about why so many “foods” have so many dyes and things in them. What did it look like before you painted it to look like a food?
When did food start needing to be painted to still look like food?
Things at farmers markets don’t have that stuff in them and they look pretty tasty to me.
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Thankfully the language of “FOOD” is on the rise again.
You’re a what?
There are a lot of people in the world now who have jobs that are a little hard to understand what they do exactly or it’s a little misleading.
Psychotherapist for instance. To most people the word Psycho implies something horrible or murderous and a therapist is supposed to help people with problems.
Traditionally you would break up the word to understand its meaning. So, a psychotherapist would be a crazy person who tries to help people through murder and harm.
Fortunately that’s not what they really do but I can see how people might be misled into thinking that because of the words used.
Look at doctors, unless you actually need to go to one most people have no idea what they specialize in. Their names come from Latin, which is a dead language except in science. This is where I get a little confused about it: None of these people existed when the language was being used. Why use it now?
Why can’t a Dermatologist just be a Skin Doctor? Cardiologist = Heart Doctor.and so on and so on.
That is what they are, why make it so complicated that people need translators to find people who might be able to help them with whatever is wrong?
Why use a dead language to name things that people only understand in the language they speak? Do they even teach Latin anywhere anymore? Alexa doesn't evenknow Latin yet.
How did people find people they needed before google translate?
I guess I could say that I’m something of a Verbumologist = Wordsmith or I could just say I like writing.
I am also a Piscanturologist. Which means I like fishing.
Nobody knows what I mean if I say Verbumologist or Piscanturologist but they do understand if I use the words fishing and writing.
I’ll keep it uncomplicated. It just works better for me.
Skin Doctor. Fisherman, Writer, Brain Healer.
​Why doesn’t it just say that
Have you ever tried to read a bill or a law as it is written in the language they use? It’s not all in latin but it is supposed to be written in a way that there is no wiggle room in the interpretation. Wiggle room might not be the language they would have used but it is a term I am sure people will understand. Unlike legal jargon or legalese as they call it. You actually need to be a lawyer to understand half of what the laws say.
How are people supposed to know what is legal and what is not if they can’t understand the language that the rules are in?
It’s almost like they want people to break the rules. If people don’t know then how can you hold it against them, right?
And if it worked the way it was intended why do so many criminals go free because of loopholes. Isn’t that what the language is supposed to prevent?
HHMMM. What the language used was supposed to prevent is actually what they are using to get away with breaking laws. Sometimes people just try too hard, I guess.
If you don’t want people to do “THIS” then just say “Don’t do that.” It doesn’t take a whole page of language most people can’t understand to say DON”T. Does it?
Maybe I’m wrong about it but I couldn’t get through the first paragraph of some of that stuff before I had to start looking things up. Then I just decided it was too complicated and went on to something else.
I’m glad there are people who understand the language that this stuff is written in, but I have no idea what it’s saying. It’s a little scary to think there might be laws I am unaware of simply because I can’t speak the language.
I speak English but the rhetoric they use is not English. It’s some weird, formalized version of it that nobody ever spoke. Probably for a good reason.
If everybody spoke in that version of Language it would be the afternoon before you could finish saying good morning and would be dark before they understood what you meant. Then people would argue for the next weeks over the interpretation of what I said.
Good morning.
See how easy that is. All the time they spend trying to figure out what each other is really saying I can spend fishing or doing other things or doing good in the world in the places I do understand.
If things are already complicated, making it more complicated probably isn’t the right direction to go. But that’s an uncomplicated way of looking at it.
If you do speak this language and it is your calling, I applaud you. The way your brain works is amazing to me, but my brain does not work like that, and I am very grateful it doesn’t.
I have a very uncomplicated way of seeing most things and I try to stay clear of complicated things. Legalese is one of them.
Einstein said politics was more complicated than physics. I think he was right.
Good night..
They Used to
I don’t know when it happened exactly, but people started using less and less of the vocabulary and structure that was available to them. You can read journals and letters from people during the 1700’s and 1800’s and it’s almost a completely different language. I don’t know if people walked around and talked like that all the time but the way they wrote was eloquent and beautiful. Not the famous writers or professionals of the time but just people.
Shop owners and soldiers with minimum education wrote in a style and used vocabulary most people in the world now can’t even understand.They wrote to convey emotion and thought and experience in a way that would be understood by whoever read it.
And it worked.
A lot of what writers and poets and others are trying to do now and have to study and put in years to the craft to accomplish is what the everyday person could do by what seems like instinct back then.
What happened?
I have no idea. I don’t even know when it happened. But it is by far my least favorite language that has almost become extinct.
Were people smarter then? No.
Did they feel different? No
People as people have always just been people, as far as I know. But something did change in the way we communicate with others. Maybe real communication is the language that is actually dying. . or being replaced with things no one understands.
I don’t have the answers to a lot of questions in the world and the complicated parts of it are something I really try to stay clear of. But occasionally I do notice a thing or two.
To me it looks like a lot of what Language was supposed to be has been replaced with just words. Words that either don’t mean anything to most people or could be confusing to others or are so complicated that people just started overlooking them.
Instead of experience and something shared they got replaced with an ingredient list or a book of rules they can’t make sense of.
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