Hopping off on your examples, German seems somewhere inbetween, because you can say I have hunger and I am hungry, but the more frequently used one is definitely the one with "have". You can have hunger and thirst in German, but you cannot have tiredness, you are tired. I won't go on now, but I will be thinking about this stuff again, thanks to your post. (native language German, working as a translator from English, a few years of French in school, and a few phrases in some other languages. I LOVE comparing how different languages do things. So thanks for that :)
God, I wish I had your knowledge of languages... I'm wandering about in the shallow end of the word pool ;-) Fascinating that German seems to sit somewhere between the two!
It reminds me that when my brother was just here from Germany and I’ve heard him ordering a “tall black ( coffee ) but with milk, please” .. what we call a flat white. 😂 It was also a reminder to me that I struggle writing in English (grammar mainly) and I need google translate to write German 🙄🙄
Ha :-) Years ago — before the bespoke coffee boom took off in America — I'd unthinkingly order a "white coffee" here (i.e. with milk) and nobody understood...
Whereas I once wanted a cocktail in an American bar, and asked for an Americano ... which is basically a Negroni with soda water instead of gin ... and was very surprised to get a coffee.
A black coffee with milk is a white coffee or perhaps an Americano with milk. A flat white is an espresso coffee infused with foamed milk, stronger than a latte. As an Australian travelling around Europe I've been bemused by the bewildering array of often undrinkably bad milky coffee for sale under the price-amplifying label of "flat white".
Do you know of the Whorf hypothesis? (It has nothing to do with Klingons.) It theorizes that a language's structure shapes the speaker's world view. Jack Vance based a novel on it called "The Languages of Pao".
I do! In fact, it's often referred to as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis because of Edward Sapir's influence/involvement in it... fascinating idea. I've heard of that Vance but never read it... I should.
Feb 18·edited Feb 19Liked by Michael Marshall Smith
As Shania Twain might say, "So... you're Sora and you can take stock photography, take already (flawed) digitally-rendered AI amalgams of preexisting imagery, take film footage, take cartoons, take anything and everything once created by a person, take only what you are able to take (ie. take only what is available online, which is such a limited and one-dimensional resource with so much unfiltered, crude and inaccurate content as to make it irresponsible to use as a resource in the first place), take it all and cobble it together, with complementary glitches and mistakes of perspective, from a prompt given to you by someone who isn't driven by an impulse to create or communicate or care, but by someone who is easily impressed by novelty and new and shiny things, that feels secure when they interact with new and shiny things, who feels smug when they feel they are able to do something with a simple prompt that used to take years of dedication, learning, money and talent to accomplish, who feels like a god, or at the very least has a kind of blind faith that novelty equals progress and that they are part of some kind of great digital transcendence and will eventually become a god, someone who might also be addicted to dopamine hits from the use of such technology, someone who is unconsciously looking for meaning and love but is too afraid to really look for it and is therefore susceptible to the marketing of said technologies, someone who does nothing of worth with their AI-generated films or images, other than to allow them to exist within the finite databanks of the internet, allowed to feed back into the eventual outcomes of more prompts, creating an inbred gene swamp of wretched inhuman content, that, well... just don't impress me much."
The way to improve is to keep talking. I find speaking French difficult, not because I don't have the words, but I am hard on myself and lack confidence, after relaxing somewhat the flow is surprising and a revelation to me. I so want it all to be perfect, but sometimes even though I may not always be able to say it all grammatically correctly, I make myself understood.
I guess that you are a perfectionist like myself, am I right? It is detrimental when we inmerse ourselves in a passion, I find it hard to accept that learning is about making mistakes, sometimes the same ones over and over again. It can be counter productive and my rational self knows this, but my ego doesn't always read the memo! 😅
In Irish, you say tá ocras orm, hunger is upon me, rather than I am hungry; this goes for emotions as well as physical conditions (tá athas orm, happiness is upon me, for example). I've spent years pondering how the different constructions affect one's worldview, so I thoroughly enjoyed this post!
Yes, hello! I couldn't deal with Twitter anymore - not even the crap posted on it so much as the feeling that I was complicit in supporting all kinds of nastiness. I don't miss 99 percent of it, but you are definitely part of the 1 percent :)
Those distinctions of having, being or experiencing a manifestation of an external condition lead me back to conjectures from Robin Dunbar et al about "othering" of motive or responsibility to an unspecified animistic, or theological agent. The brain constructs a "they" that is everywhere and nowhere.
I still have a lot of the Italian I grew up with in our bilingual home, and Italian is very like French. (it it NOT like Spanish!) Linguistics was my Thing, and it still is, and Spoken Here is on my book wishlist.
Sora, and AI? NO. Just ugh and wtf with the uncanny valleyness. Perhaps in a few years, when the bugs are de'd. Or never.
I liked your Secret SC photos! It's fun to manipulate work, and homemade cgi, why not! It's still not good looking, or any kind of replacement for filming, or actual animation. At least we don't have to count fingers anymore. Much.
Interesting comparisons of languages. I love how people think differently. If you just want a refresher in French, rather than something deeper, DuoLingo may help. It's been teaching me Spanish.
Suddenly, in maybe just a couple of years, whenever Today Programme interviewees are asked a question, their answers always seem to begin: “So…”
I admit to a tendency to tetchiness before my coffee has fully revitalised my system but I find myself getting increasingly irritated by what strikes me as meaningless sloppiness. Today I can stand it no more. Research is required.
I heft the second volume of my trusty Compact OED onto my knee and find 40 distinct ways to use “so” as adverb or conjunction. Each way is amplified by numerous sub-categories illustrated with Old English and more recent citations ranging from the twelfth century to the present. But none suggests it as a prefix to answering a question. (Pepys figures twice in the citations, but not for his customary diary sign-off “and so to bed.”)
So (used here in the sense of OED definition II.10.a: “For that reason, on that account, accordingly, consequently, therefore”), as my heavy hard copy is the 1971 edition, I turned to the internet version of the OED. I scrolled down and down to the very end of the 40 options https://www.oed.com/dictionary/so_adv?tab=meaning_and_use&tl=true#1374364030, where I found:
"Additional sense (2022) colloquial (originally U.S.). Used to introduce a statement, explanation, etc., typically in response to a question or inferred question. So in this sense functions as a discourse marker, often used to suggest that one is explaining, summarizing, or elaborating on a topic which has been raised, but also when simply pausing to consider one's next words. For other earlier uses of so as an introductory word, cf. senses I.5c and II.10b.
- 1999 ABC News Nightline: Can we now create a machine as fast and as powerful as our own brain and if so, would it be alive? 1st scientist: So I believe that if you ever got a machine that you could talk with and have a conversation with and ask it how it felt, I think it would probably have something that I would call consciousness.
- 2021 Fair Disclosure Wire: Give us a sense of what kind of dynamics you're seeing across your businesses so far this spring. [Interviewee] So our research team is one of the best in the business, if not the best [etc.]"
It is as I suspected all along, this “so” is no more than a filler, used by politicians while working out how to answer or, more usually, to avoid answering the questioner. I suspect it’s intended to sound more portentous than “er …” but it is utterly devoid of meaning in anybody’s dictionary.
And I'm glad you did — that's a fascinating deep dive into it! I have to admit that after over a decade in California I am to the manner, if not born, then increasingly reconciled. I've been known to start more than a few sentences with "So..." myself ;-)
And on your other point (the other message), I was very struck a few yeas back when I read — in the context of someone pointing out how some of the genders for words seem out of line with reality — that really, it's not to do with gender at all. That's just the most core binary that most of us have been aware of over the centuries, and so it got bolted on...
And another thing: Why do the French have a masculine world (le monde) and the Germans a feminine one (die Welt), while the French moon is feminine (la lune) and the Germans have der Mond?
Late, but since you asked. I subscribed because I like the way you write. And I like Substack because it gives me a break from my health writing and pharmacy work. I like the randomness of topics. And if I like a writer's work, almost any topic is interesting. Which posts have I liked the most? I like when you share your insight as a writer. And I especially like it when you've written on personal topics too. Sharing feelings and vulnerability often seems harder for men I know. But of course, it's all part of the human experience.
And about the frequency, I don't pay attention to how often a writer posts. There's enough forced writing out there, so I'd rather read something you want to write whenever you're inspired.
That's good to know, thank you! I'm trying to increase the frequency just a little, but there's enough stuff out there... and you can always tell when something's been forced as a peice of "content".
oooooh, language nerdery, I am here for it!
Hopping off on your examples, German seems somewhere inbetween, because you can say I have hunger and I am hungry, but the more frequently used one is definitely the one with "have". You can have hunger and thirst in German, but you cannot have tiredness, you are tired. I won't go on now, but I will be thinking about this stuff again, thanks to your post. (native language German, working as a translator from English, a few years of French in school, and a few phrases in some other languages. I LOVE comparing how different languages do things. So thanks for that :)
God, I wish I had your knowledge of languages... I'm wandering about in the shallow end of the word pool ;-) Fascinating that German seems to sit somewhere between the two!
It reminds me that when my brother was just here from Germany and I’ve heard him ordering a “tall black ( coffee ) but with milk, please” .. what we call a flat white. 😂 It was also a reminder to me that I struggle writing in English (grammar mainly) and I need google translate to write German 🙄🙄
Ha :-) Years ago — before the bespoke coffee boom took off in America — I'd unthinkingly order a "white coffee" here (i.e. with milk) and nobody understood...
Whereas I once wanted a cocktail in an American bar, and asked for an Americano ... which is basically a Negroni with soda water instead of gin ... and was very surprised to get a coffee.
A black coffee with milk is a white coffee or perhaps an Americano with milk. A flat white is an espresso coffee infused with foamed milk, stronger than a latte. As an Australian travelling around Europe I've been bemused by the bewildering array of often undrinkably bad milky coffee for sale under the price-amplifying label of "flat white".
Ha - true!
Do you know of the Whorf hypothesis? (It has nothing to do with Klingons.) It theorizes that a language's structure shapes the speaker's world view. Jack Vance based a novel on it called "The Languages of Pao".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
I do! In fact, it's often referred to as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis because of Edward Sapir's influence/involvement in it... fascinating idea. I've heard of that Vance but never read it... I should.
It's on Kindle. A fairly short novel, but interesting. (But then, I'm a huge Vance fan.)
That goes on my list! Thanks for the recc
As Shania Twain might say, "So... you're Sora and you can take stock photography, take already (flawed) digitally-rendered AI amalgams of preexisting imagery, take film footage, take cartoons, take anything and everything once created by a person, take only what you are able to take (ie. take only what is available online, which is such a limited and one-dimensional resource with so much unfiltered, crude and inaccurate content as to make it irresponsible to use as a resource in the first place), take it all and cobble it together, with complementary glitches and mistakes of perspective, from a prompt given to you by someone who isn't driven by an impulse to create or communicate or care, but by someone who is easily impressed by novelty and new and shiny things, that feels secure when they interact with new and shiny things, who feels smug when they feel they are able to do something with a simple prompt that used to take years of dedication, learning, money and talent to accomplish, who feels like a god, or at the very least has a kind of blind faith that novelty equals progress and that they are part of some kind of great digital transcendence and will eventually become a god, someone who might also be addicted to dopamine hits from the use of such technology, someone who is unconsciously looking for meaning and love but is too afraid to really look for it and is therefore susceptible to the marketing of said technologies, someone who does nothing of worth with their AI-generated films or images, other than to allow them to exist within the finite databanks of the internet, allowed to feed back into the eventual outcomes of more prompts, creating an inbred gene swamp of wretched inhuman content, that, well... just don't impress me much."
That... is one of the best comments I've ever seen ;-)
Perhaps a trifle long winded.
Wouldn't have been so effective shorter ;-)
Ah, but the punchline! *chef's kiss*
The way to improve is to keep talking. I find speaking French difficult, not because I don't have the words, but I am hard on myself and lack confidence, after relaxing somewhat the flow is surprising and a revelation to me. I so want it all to be perfect, but sometimes even though I may not always be able to say it all grammatically correctly, I make myself understood.
Yes, I'm the same... it's relaxing into the flow and just trusting you'll be understood that's hard...
I guess that you are a perfectionist like myself, am I right? It is detrimental when we inmerse ourselves in a passion, I find it hard to accept that learning is about making mistakes, sometimes the same ones over and over again. It can be counter productive and my rational self knows this, but my ego doesn't always read the memo! 😅
I always find that a large glass of Bordeaux (or two) is enormously helpful in my ability to understand and speak French 🤪.
My nervous French usually improved enormously under the pressure of holding strong against petty French bureaucrats.
I also noticed that while I must submit to endless correction of my French, I must never correct their equally atrocious English...
Exactement! Je suis d'accord!
When I say"hold strong", you have to imagine a combination of Captain Haddock and Chief Vitalstatistix at their most eloquent...
Book and music recommendations, recipes, wry observations, rants...the more content I can read on Substack, the less time I spend on Twitter.
Ha, true :-) I shall carry on, then...
In Irish, you say tá ocras orm, hunger is upon me, rather than I am hungry; this goes for emotions as well as physical conditions (tá athas orm, happiness is upon me, for example). I've spent years pondering how the different constructions affect one's worldview, so I thoroughly enjoyed this post!
Excellent - and hello! Been a while since we waved... I guess Twitter is such a shitshow these days...
Yes, hello! I couldn't deal with Twitter anymore - not even the crap posted on it so much as the feeling that I was complicit in supporting all kinds of nastiness. I don't miss 99 percent of it, but you are definitely part of the 1 percent :)
Those distinctions of having, being or experiencing a manifestation of an external condition lead me back to conjectures from Robin Dunbar et al about "othering" of motive or responsibility to an unspecified animistic, or theological agent. The brain constructs a "they" that is everywhere and nowhere.
Huh — very interesting. Wasn't aware of that idea... I'll check it out, thank you!
I still have a lot of the Italian I grew up with in our bilingual home, and Italian is very like French. (it it NOT like Spanish!) Linguistics was my Thing, and it still is, and Spoken Here is on my book wishlist.
Sora, and AI? NO. Just ugh and wtf with the uncanny valleyness. Perhaps in a few years, when the bugs are de'd. Or never.
Yes, never might work... though I know I'll be drawn to play with it...
I liked your Secret SC photos! It's fun to manipulate work, and homemade cgi, why not! It's still not good looking, or any kind of replacement for filming, or actual animation. At least we don't have to count fingers anymore. Much.
In Welsh we say "I am hungry for" as in
"Rwy'n newynog am reis" Try saying that after a glass or two, or even before 😂
Yikes... that looks hard ;-)
Yes us Welsh folk like a challenge in life 😉
Interesting comparisons of languages. I love how people think differently. If you just want a refresher in French, rather than something deeper, DuoLingo may help. It's been teaching me Spanish.
That's a good idea re DuoLingo... I must give that a proper try.
I learnt a lot from that, but Mosalingua is exceptional.
—For me it's a pleasant chat, where it's nice to meet and discuss topics in common. In my case real cultural exchange (of different cultures)…
Kind of an Exclusive Club.
Pleasant chat... except in cases when the answer requires more in-depth and careful preparation.
P.S As in the case of the strike of Hollywood actors and writers….Who better could clarify and explain the situation…..
Well… that's fine with me….
Excellent — I'll keep on doing what I'm doing, then! Thank you for being here...
SO – WHAT?
Suddenly, in maybe just a couple of years, whenever Today Programme interviewees are asked a question, their answers always seem to begin: “So…”
I admit to a tendency to tetchiness before my coffee has fully revitalised my system but I find myself getting increasingly irritated by what strikes me as meaningless sloppiness. Today I can stand it no more. Research is required.
I heft the second volume of my trusty Compact OED onto my knee and find 40 distinct ways to use “so” as adverb or conjunction. Each way is amplified by numerous sub-categories illustrated with Old English and more recent citations ranging from the twelfth century to the present. But none suggests it as a prefix to answering a question. (Pepys figures twice in the citations, but not for his customary diary sign-off “and so to bed.”)
So (used here in the sense of OED definition II.10.a: “For that reason, on that account, accordingly, consequently, therefore”), as my heavy hard copy is the 1971 edition, I turned to the internet version of the OED. I scrolled down and down to the very end of the 40 options https://www.oed.com/dictionary/so_adv?tab=meaning_and_use&tl=true#1374364030, where I found:
"Additional sense (2022) colloquial (originally U.S.). Used to introduce a statement, explanation, etc., typically in response to a question or inferred question. So in this sense functions as a discourse marker, often used to suggest that one is explaining, summarizing, or elaborating on a topic which has been raised, but also when simply pausing to consider one's next words. For other earlier uses of so as an introductory word, cf. senses I.5c and II.10b.
- 1999 ABC News Nightline: Can we now create a machine as fast and as powerful as our own brain and if so, would it be alive? 1st scientist: So I believe that if you ever got a machine that you could talk with and have a conversation with and ask it how it felt, I think it would probably have something that I would call consciousness.
- 2021 Fair Disclosure Wire: Give us a sense of what kind of dynamics you're seeing across your businesses so far this spring. [Interviewee] So our research team is one of the best in the business, if not the best [etc.]"
It is as I suspected all along, this “so” is no more than a filler, used by politicians while working out how to answer or, more usually, to avoid answering the questioner. I suspect it’s intended to sound more portentous than “er …” but it is utterly devoid of meaning in anybody’s dictionary.
So what? you may reasonably ask.
So, I’ve got that off my chest.
And I'm glad you did — that's a fascinating deep dive into it! I have to admit that after over a decade in California I am to the manner, if not born, then increasingly reconciled. I've been known to start more than a few sentences with "So..." myself ;-)
And on your other point (the other message), I was very struck a few yeas back when I read — in the context of someone pointing out how some of the genders for words seem out of line with reality — that really, it's not to do with gender at all. That's just the most core binary that most of us have been aware of over the centuries, and so it got bolted on...
And another thing: Why do the French have a masculine world (le monde) and the Germans a feminine one (die Welt), while the French moon is feminine (la lune) and the Germans have der Mond?
Late, but since you asked. I subscribed because I like the way you write. And I like Substack because it gives me a break from my health writing and pharmacy work. I like the randomness of topics. And if I like a writer's work, almost any topic is interesting. Which posts have I liked the most? I like when you share your insight as a writer. And I especially like it when you've written on personal topics too. Sharing feelings and vulnerability often seems harder for men I know. But of course, it's all part of the human experience.
And about the frequency, I don't pay attention to how often a writer posts. There's enough forced writing out there, so I'd rather read something you want to write whenever you're inspired.
That's good to know, thank you! I'm trying to increase the frequency just a little, but there's enough stuff out there... and you can always tell when something's been forced as a peice of "content".