"If Yiddish is abandoned, its true adversary, the language of the country, will be victorious and complete assimilation, the destruction of our nation, which our traitors anticipate, will come about. With the destruction of the most important criterion of our nationhood, the language which stamps us with a unique individuality, our nation will lose its soldarity and disintegrate. With its language our people will lose its individual content, its soul, a unique world of spirit and life." - Matisyohu Mieses 1907
2 months ago
1 comment:
Okay, english...
My biological anthropology teacher, an otherwise dull and typical wise-cracking college professor, said something thought provoking - though he said it so self righteously that you could tell his intention was for the people in the class to believe not to think - he said that what makes us human is language. Now, I'm assuming that as a biology professor that he understands that in fact what makes us the species homosapiens homosapiens (i think) is our DNA and such. But upon thinking about what he said I discovered a different thought about this:
What makes us "human" is our perceptions of what humanity is, and we're taught what humanity is through language; so is language what makes us human, and furthermore if it hold such power to make or break our picture of humanity will in fact break the vision of a culture if that cultures language is destroyed? I think the answer is undoubtedly yes on many accounts but this view of it is new to me.
Certainly, for the most part, culture would not exist without some sort of coherent form of communication, and without that, or being deprived of that would undoubtedly tear that particular culture apart.
On another note: the question still remains to me about whether or not culture is something to be valued. I cannot deny that a certain groups style of art including music, literature, painting, sculpting, etc, is a significant and notable presence in human history and such, but once the notion of culture is streched beyond that of art I find a hard time valuing it; I've not yet finished my thought on this as I've been intending to do for some time now, but as I see it at the moment:
As an advocate for intellectual individuality I struggle with appreciating culture when it becomes anything more than what I've mentioned because I believe that any type of religious or governmental structure that imposes morality on people creates a complacency in the community about morality and any philosophic inquiry.
It may be wrong in the end, I don't have any particular knowledge of psycology to speak of other than my own experience with my mind (which I deem to be enough, unfortunatly others may not), but I going to eventually organize my thought on it into a essay of some sorts. I fear that my want for perfection will make me add other whole ideas to what I'm trying to say with it and I'll get overwhelmed like I often do...
But anyway, my point here was not to tangent it was to pass on a thought that was passed on to me: language being what makes us "human". (semioticians use quotes to highlight words which they mean to stand out as typically accepted use or meaning of the word; here it being "human" as in people walking through city invented ipods most intelligent and conscious things in the universe, etc -what people percieve being human to be - as opposed to human being like adam. it's a useful tool sometimes...)
God I remembered salad fingers while i was writing this. That shit was wierd.
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