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(via elizabeth-clare)
Posted on April 14, 2012 via la lune with 8,708 notes
Source: metallick
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(via elizabeth-clare)
Posted on April 14, 2012 via Lost In Vogue with 4,991 notes
Source: voguelovesme
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Posted on April 3, 2012 via Ponderful with 94 notes
Source: ponderful
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Languages like Spanish, French, German and Russian not only oblige you to think about the sex of friends and neighbors, but they also assign a male or female gender to a whole range of inanimate objects quite at whim. What, for instance, is particularly feminine about a Frenchman’s beard (la barbe)? Why is Russian water a she, and why does she become a he once you have dipped a tea bag into her? Mark Twain famously lamented such erratic genders as female turnips and neuter maidens in his rant “The Awful German Language.” But whereas he claimed that there was something particularly perverse about the German gender system, it is in fact English that is unusual, at least among European languages, in not treating turnips and tea cups as masculine or feminine. Languages that treat an inanimate object as a he or a she force their speakers to talk about such an object as if it were a man or a woman. And as anyone whose mother tongue has a gender system will tell you, once the habit has taken hold, it is all but impossible to shake off. When I speak English, I may say about a bed that “it” is too soft, but as a native Hebrew speaker, I actually feel “she” is too soft. “She” stays feminine all the way from the lungs up to the glottis and is neutered only when she reaches the tip of the tongue.
from the New York Times Article “Does Language Shape How You Think?”.
such a fantastic read.
(via leftist-linguaphile)
You know what’s even more mind-blowing? Speaking a gendered language with a neuter. In Greek we can change the gender of a given referent to anything we want by adding suffixes such as ακι, αρα, ος (aki - neuter, ara - feminine, os - masculine). It’s such a rich language - your entire thoughtscape changes once you’re immersed in it.
(via bbthity)
interesting stuff.
(via torayot)
(via heroin-e)
Posted on April 3, 2012 via Politics, languages, etc... with 1,476 notes
Source:
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the lesson of the moth
i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires
why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense
plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves
and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity
but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himselfDon Marquis, “the lesson of the moth” (via words-in-lines)(via words-in-lines)
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oh look I have a Facebook Page
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Post Apocalyptic Images of Japan
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Rune Guneriussen is a Norway-based artist who photographs orchestrated installations. Household objects are granted an anthropomorphic quality — they appear to be captured in a natural setting. (via)
(via heroin-e)
Posted on January 21, 2012 via sans shadow, with 198 notes
Source: askios
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Excited for We’ll Take Manhattan. Love a bit of David Bailey & Jean Shrimpton.
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