The 'Words' Conspiracy

It was actually a combination of another members signature and another member thread that inspired me to write this thread. The signature was regarding 'txt' message grammar, it made me smile. I have seen many threads that touch on this lazy form of writing. As i stated in another thread, this is not a new language, 'we' meaning my generation were writing it on schoool bags, walls and school diaries and in notes to one another back in the early 90's. This is were it should have stayed though, the school playground. It did not damage to my own grammar (i hope) and i did not use it formerly. People say it is a dumbing down language - you forget for a kid it is seen as quite witty coming up with a shorthand version of words. However, like i said, it should have remained in the playground and not be used formerly.
The second reason for the inspiration, the other members thread was seeing if there was a hidden agenda with the letter A. From what he said about it being a half finished pyramid got me wondering. I amswered the thread with the origin of that letterand how the letter A had derived from a ancient phonetic symbol for Ox.

That got me wondering how many people actually know what words mean. I mean really mean. As you see people today using this short hand txt message writing - you are feeling they are losing the sense of the original word by shortening it. But this has been going on for Thousands of years. How many of you know what words actually mean, when you see what they are de-rived from them the meanings become alot clearer e.g. The term geography comes from the Greek word “geo” meaning “Earth” and the Latin word “graphein” meaning “write”.

I suppose the same could be said for the days of the week. I would think many of you take the name of the days forgranted, originally they were taken from the planets, - today in the English language at least have kept 3 of those days, the remaining 4 are named after nordic gods. In french, i think all the days are named after planets, not sure about other languages.

Anyway, over thousands of years words have been lost to translation. The thing is when we think we know what a word means - do we really? I know we get the 'jist' of what it means but we are never really taught what they mean - unless like myself you see a pattern and felt the need to look deeper. As a child i wondered 'who made words' 'who chose that word and why'. I liked words and hated numbers, really good at spelling really poor at maths - unusual i know. My curiousity really started with a teacher telling me about via-ducts and subways and the latin meanings of sub and via - so from then i knew anything with sub means below and via means by. I would love to learn latin, i only know bits, but the bits i do know help me, as they can be found in all languages to a certain degree.



[edit on 3-1-2009 by MCoG1980]

If you would like to learn more about latin, you should visit this excellent website:
www.latinlanguage.org...

You can learn a LOT here. Like the latin words for colors:

Albi/Albus: white
Aurei/Aurantiacus: orange
Carnei: flesh colour
Flavi: yellow
Fulvus: deep yellow
Lutei Niger/Nigra: black
Purpurei: purple
Rosei/Roseu: rose
Rubra/Rubri: red
Viride/Viridi: green

My favorite color is purpurei.

reply to post by ziggystar60


Thanks for the link, i will do. White - yeah so you see why the word albino makes sense. Great stuff this isn't it.

your favourites Purple eh, does that have anything to do with the crown chakra, ha,ha Mines Viride/Viridi: green.

[edit on 3-1-2009 by MCoG1980]

reply to post by MCoG1980


When "txtspk" started making the rounds en masse and in force, I had to laugh at first. I joked that it was the "newspeak" of the era, and Big Brother must be having fun out there.

When it started invading the forums, it made me realize that some people are not very technically "attuned" to proper time and place. Kids today are moving a mile a minute it seems, and it becomes disturbing when they fail to balance out their pop culture with the established norms.

Spelling errors, sentences that make no grammatical sense whatsoever, paragraphs that run on without breaks, etcetera makes reading their ideas and insights (however interesting) somewhat impossible.

Growing up I had a keen interest in codebreaking and various written cyphers - but these days I don't have the time to sit down and deconstruct the majority of those sorts of posts.

A shame really.

I'm sure they'll grow out of it once they realize not everyone "plays the game" on the same terms as themselves, and if not - well - the serious student will have a more distinct advantage.





[edit on 1/3/09 by GENERAL EYES]

as a kid i looved the word power section of readers digest

remember that????

Very interesting post. One note: in French, six days of the week are named for celestial objects, Sunday was changed, long ago to "God's day":

"di" means day in old French
Sunday:
Dimanche,

Monday:
Lundi - Lune (moon) day

Tuesday:
Mardi - Mars (same as in English) day

Wednesday:
Mercredi - Mercure (Mercury) day

Thursday:
Jeudi - Jove (Jupiter) day

Friday:
Vendredi - Venus (same as in English) day

Saturday:
Samedi - Saturne (Saturn) day

Of course, from old French to new French, this is not always very obvious... But there you go.

I agree, learn Greek and Latin and you'll understand most of French, English, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.

reply to post by ajmusicmedia



I did wonder about that, if it were sun i'd of thought it would have 'sol' in the word. Do you know what it was before it changed? I'd be curious to know.

One word that has got me a bit boggled is conscience. Maybe someone could help me out. This is what i get but it doesn't make sense really to what i really had understood the word to mean, i would say my thoughts were as of the main dictionary's entry. :

Conscience

Prefix Con- - Latin with/together
Science - Latin for Knowledge

definition in the English dictionary:

www.askoxford.com...

I think i'm now officially a words geek.




When i learnt to spell as a child a would break words down to remember how to spell them, and say the shortened version as a word in my head, after a time this became i my preferred method of learning and so it stuck. Doing this though you see how words are formed and makes it easier to look out were the words derived from. I found learning difficult but i wanted to learn and often came up with ways to help me remeber stuff. Does everyone do that, ha,ha i guess so.



[edit on 4-1-2009 by MCoG1980]

Originally posted by shortywarn
as a kid i looved the word power section of readers digest

remember that????

Can't say i do, but i've always liked all word games, can't do some of them crptic crosswords though, ha,ha. Growing up i liked the Dingbats kind of puzzles the most:

www.quiz-zone.co.uk...

reply to post by MCoG1980


I read that and i can relate to what you are saying.. i do the same thing with maths as you know thanks for the u2u pointing me here btw..

Very interesting thing you say.. you want to understand it.. not question but understand what it is we are infact doing.

I dont care who made me god or whoever all i know is im here and im happy with that.. now with that in hand i looked and loved maths becouse it could show me things about life.. or atleast give it some meaning "to me" not anyone els just me..

Words and maths are very same same but you can get words from maths and maths from words there self reflective to us becouse they are one of the same thing "us"..

For use to be alive in the glory of all this madness.. i think the universe is alive. and growing "my only logical reason" based totaly on mathmatics..

or is that just my level of understanding and mathmatics is wrong?

Very thought provoking s+f