Monday, July 20, 2009

Silence in the cheap seats ...

"No language can say everything: each language has to be silent about some things in order to say others. Each language is tuned to particular, special notes ... the genius of an individual language is made up from lots of little insights into how the world is organised ..."

... an English world view would be slightly in variance with a Russian one, no matter how close the relationship between the two languages. That variance of views stems not just from cultural differences but from differences between the ways the two language systems cut up and make sense of the world.

Nicolas Rothwell quoting from (and writing about) Nicholas Evans' book 'Dying Words: Endangered Languages and What They Have to Tell Us' in 'The Weekend Australian'.

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