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Of interest.
I find it interesting that, for the most part, people are only interesting to people who share the same interest. People who are interested in sports to a great extent (one of the few areas where I have very little interest) interest me very little, unless they have some other overlapping interest. I find it interesting that the people I find immensely boring are interesting to other people, probably people I would also find boring. And they probably find me boring. It's hard to think of one's self as boring. It's depressing too, since no one wants to spend one's life trapped with a boring person one can't escape from.
In the past year or so, I've given my passion for words and language free rein, and I worry sometimes that it will make me boring to more people. It's not all that fashionable to be a logophile. I get the sense that people like to have their words neatly tucked away in books, sorted alphabetically and kept out of sight, occasionally brought to mind by a (written) Word of the DayTM list as an oddity. But talking about words and their usages and their denotations and their connotations and their variations and their permutations is as foreign to most people as endlessly opining on the draft picks is to me.
The internet spoils me. Suddenly the people interested in and of interest to Tablesaw are at my fingertips. It makes me less inclined to pan for gold in the seemingly unending Sutter's Mill of California.
SatNYTX: 14. What's with me solving the Saturday faster than the Friday? Two weeks, now I think.
In the past year or so, I've given my passion for words and language free rein, and I worry sometimes that it will make me boring to more people. It's not all that fashionable to be a logophile. I get the sense that people like to have their words neatly tucked away in books, sorted alphabetically and kept out of sight, occasionally brought to mind by a (written) Word of the Day
The internet spoils me. Suddenly the people interested in and of interest to Tablesaw are at my fingertips. It makes me less inclined to pan for gold in the seemingly unending Sutter's Mill of California.
SatNYTX: 14. What's with me solving the Saturday faster than the Friday? Two weeks, now I think.
no subject
The interest-diffusion principle in real life works through friends; you're at the party of someone who, like you, enjoys [x], and there you meet someone else who also likes [x]. It works this way here too.
I've been following a number of interestingly branched chains, from my friends to their friends to their friends' friends, which seems to be the point at which interest-dilution takes over and football picks replace etymologies. Sometimes I find gems, more frequently I find trash (just as in real life). The big difference, to me, is that I can lurk quietly and nearly invisibly here.
If you're wondering: tablesaw -> nothings -> ilanarama. I was also a member of the NPL for a few years in the mid-90's (nom ISIS) but left because of time problems.
no subject
In my NaNoWriMo novel, the first character you meet is totally fascinated by words. He goes on to be a crossword puzzle author and hermit.
Words are the fossils of thought
Take the modern state of Iraq, f'rinstance.
250 km south of Baghdad lies the ruined city of Uruk, of Gilgamesh fame. The oldest city in known literature. Archeology is still going on there, though they have to duck every time bombs fall.
My guess is that 'Iraq' is just one transliteration of the same very old place name. (Why the USA is not now planning war against the State of Uruk I'm not sure - maybe some British guy's typewriter post WWI had a sticky K key and they used a Q instead - but it'd be a lot cooler.)
I don't really know my Sumerian/Akkadian, but I'm figuring 'Uruk' is actually 'UR.UK', which might be 'City of Uk', (and the similarity between 'Uk' and 'Ak' as in 'Ak.kad' is suggestive... ) In Genesis, Abraham left the city 'Ur of the Chaldees'... was it Uruk, or where there lots of little Urs around that area? Is the 'er' in 'Sumer' itself related (City of Sum? City-dwellers?)
And Frank Herbert's 'Arakkis', aka Dune, is of course inspired by the same place and culture. When I figured that out my admiration of Herbert went up a couple of notches.
History shifts and morphs, as do words, and folk etymology is always tenous at best, but connections always remain, and if you dig long enough you find all sorts of fascinating links.
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