Traveling Across Language
One curiosity that comes with studying language is how it changes the way you think, structurally. How meanings are unique to a place and language.
This is why I created a baby project I call Traveling Across Language. It is sourced primarily from the epic traveler Tyrell Heaton, who is A-1 lucky to be married to my cousin, a kindred traveler junkie.
Take a look (click on snapshot below or here >>)
New Entries
Living in Costa Rica I am not near my small strange collection of translation dictionaries, which include Afrikaans, Xhosa, and Hawaiian. This will have to be built from my greater community, bothering people to send me experiences and contributions.
Please send your ideas.
And absolutely any obscure translation dictionary, especially if they came from used bookstores.
Challenges
How to represent a word as a place. Is it the entire community of language speakers, or a specific town? I started with countries but still noodling on this. The map feature does not represent multiple entries with the same geographic data (a country).
Dead languages. classical languages are filled with rich ideas that inform our sense of place. But they do not live in the place any longer. How can they be represented? Currently it is a toggle filter.
Abstract ideas. These can come from a place but have purpose anywhere in the world. For the moment, I created three types of entries: Traveler Concept, Local Slang, and Cultural Idiom.
Representing invented words. John Koenig created The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows to fill in the gaps of his poetry, when complicated emotions did not yet have a word to capture them. This is nearly the opposite of the purpose of this experimental map, and yet, perhaps they have a place?
What do you think?
Inspiration: the dala dala
It is one thing to accept the rules of another language — use “ser” for permanent characteristics and “estar” for temporary characteristics — but it is another to accept the richer idea that in Spanish there are multiple ways to express “to be.”
This, and my friend Vic’s eureka observation that the bus we were riding in Panama was the same damn bus that we rode in east Africa. Only there we called it the “dala dala” because the guy leaning out the side to offer to pick you up was advertising the dollar price. The bus was the same object, but the name gave it a context.
I also still say that specific South African cadence of “OK lady OK,” because that was the useful English phrase the driver and his advertising director would know. The response, no matter what you ask. I now say this to myself, when I wonder why I am doing something in a given moment.
OK lady OK…
