Warning: This post contains Serious Geekery. (Reader discretion advised.)

In our reading on the history of English, one paragraph in particular struck me as being monumental. The block of text under the heading "The Vikings Simplify English" is fairly modest, but it describes an event which has had a lasting impact not only on the way we write and speak, but also on the way we think.

English was once an extensively inflected language just as Latin, Ancient Greek, and some Romance Languages are, but it is no longer.

Take the English sentence, The dog bit the poet. If you were to rearrange at random the words in the sentence, you would get sentences that have different meanings (The poet bit the dog.) and sentences that make no meaning at all (The bit poet dog the.). This is because in English we do not inflect, or change the spellings of, nouns to signify how they function in a sentence. Poet is spelled poet whether he is biting or being bitten.

In Latin, the same sentence looks like this: Canis poetam momordit. But it could just as comprehensibly look like this: Poetam canis momordit, or even this: Momordit poetam canis, and it would still be readable (so long as you knew Latin). The inflected -am ending on poetam clarifies that the poet is the victim of the attack, no matter where in the sentence he tries to run.

The result is that in Latin, the order of the words has almost no bearing on their meaning, while in English we are dependent upon sentence structures and forms. Different languages are inflected to different degrees and have extremely different structures. I think it very likely that that these differences have an effect on how we associate ideas, even if we're not consciously making grammatical decisions in our thoughts.


To give another (gratuitous) example: Dixit, et ignotas animum dimittit in artes naturamque novat.

He said he turns his attention to the unknown things in nature and the arts, he shapes his mind anew.

In the Latin order it reads: He said and unknown things mind he turns attention in art nature and he shapes anew. Two distinct clauses, completely violated and mangled into one formless conglomerate. WTF Ovid!?

Go back into the water.

Pill bugs. I don't know why, but pill bugs. Maybe it's not explicitly a "fear," but I have an extreme aversion to them which extends into complete unwillingness to condone their presence. I am uncomfortable so long as they are within my sight or there is the possibility of physical contact.

Other people think they're cute, and actually play with them, prodding them until they roll up into little grey bundles. I would gladly welcome the power to remain indifferent. But then again, other people fear spiders while I enjoy arachnid company.

That's the thing, isn't it? Spiders are arachnids. They are meant to dwell on land and in dusty corners, among us humans. Pill bugs are crustaceans. They belong in the sea, and they know it, so I wish they'd end this little charade. On land they are grotesquely smooth and soft and wet, like little ambulatory boils wriggling through rot and crawling concealed through damp decay.

A week ago I was playing my violin. When I had finished and put away my instrument, I walked into the living room and found my parents both watching a television program pasted together from bits of handheld camera footage of the September 11 attacks. I felt strongly compelled to sit down and watch with them, and as I did so I was impressed with the unfortunate irony of my abridged perceptions of that day.

On September 11, 2001, I was being driven to a violin lesson when my mother told me about the attacks. I just remember thinking, this is a lot bigger than I think it is. I knew then that I didn't understand. They had happened while I was at school, and no one had told me or my classmates. I did not see the news reports or watch with the rest of the country as the second tower was hit. All the adults around me hid their reactions. I did not know that three thousand people were dying, and that thousands more were being choked by smoke and debris as their lives were changed forever. I saw all of that, the real people and their responses, for the first time eight years after the fact. I realized that the desire to protect me had backfired.

I was nine years old and at a complete loss; nothing I had experienced had prepared me to judge anything of that magnitude and complexity. Because I didn't see adult reactions to the attacks, I didn't know how to react. Because I didn't see the attacks themselves, they had always seemed somewhat remote to me, like something from a history book. By most adults I was shielded from all but the shallowest implications and displays of paper patriotism, and I took the attacks only as seriously as they were presented to me. For some time I regarded them with a degree of cynicism, of which I slowly came to be ashamed as years passed. Now that attitude seems disgusting and alien to me, but I have no individual to blame but myself. I was nine years old, and people had to deal with my reactions as well as their own. I' m just glad that I have come around to some sort of understanding, broken as it is, after eight year

How I Write

Most of the time, which is to say when I'm writing for school, I really don't write the way Dr. Romano suggests. I write slowly, I think before each phrase and sentence. I consistently do poorly in any sort of situation where I am timed, unless I have had time to think ahead and prepare. When a teacher says, "Pull out you notebooks! We're going to write about -- now!" I'm often not in that "writing state of mind." I get lost in the thoughts before I stick them on paper. And how will I have time to revise and rewrite if I'm turning it in in five, ten minutes?

The subject matters, I think. I mean, just how passionate can one be, within the realm of decency, when one is writing about vacuum filtration in alum synthesis? A-Rod wasn't looking for me to rhapsodize. On the other hand, that sort of passion might create the sort of ease and fluidity that is valued in any writing, without necessarily a flowery aspect.

I am capable of the "gush," but people rarely see the result. I abandon it too soon, or devalue it, or decide to keep it to myself. What is beautiful in the park at 10:30 at night is too often garish the next morning. I hope that eventually I will develop a "writing state of mind" that is appropriate and useful in many contexts.