Overeducated & Unemployable

"Justine Henin stopt onmiddellijk met tennissen"

She wasn't even playing the game when she announced she'd stop playing it!

(Observation brought to you by P.)

Unfortunately it doesn't really work out in English. You'd translate the headline as "Justine Henin quits tennis" and not "Justine Henin immediately stops playing tennis". Dutch on the other hand lets you roll two different meanings in one phrase.

What follows is partly the continuation of a discussion with sister_luck on the nature of language change, and partly a comment on a recent post in French by frenchani.

My language doesn't have much of a reputation – be it good or bad. Dutch is spoken in only a very tiny part of the world: Flanders, the Netherlands and some Dutch territories overseas. Afrikaans as spoken in South-Africa has established itself as a separate language long before Dutch had its own grammar and spelling. There's still enough links between the two to be able to understand one another when talking slowly, but the two are as different as, say, Swedish and Danish.
Without reputation and that many native speakers, Dutch-speaking people don't seem to take much pride in their language. Internationaly you don't get by with it. We speak English, French, sometimes German. There's a boost of people studying Spanish or Italian (very helpful for the holidays). You won't easily find a Dutch-speaking person trying talk Dutch with the locals when abroad. Neither will you find foreigners trying to talk Dutch with the locals when visiting Bruges. Dutch is a language for a tiny region. Once we leave, we fall back on our knowledge of other languages – first and foremost English as the language of our daily television programs, but also French as the second language in Belgium compulsory taught at schools.
Dutch-speaking is so regionalised that some people take pride in speaking it imperfectly. For them the region comes first, and they proclaim (with pride!) that they don't talk Dutch, wouldn't know how to talk it, and prefer to call themselves and their language Flemish. Indeed their efforts for one form of unified Flemish aren't that new. When writing down the rules for the Dutch language there have been attempts to install Flemish as a language of its own – without much luck. Still it survives and thrives in spoken language, from where it finds its way into IM and text-speak.
The internet is the place where Flemish as a written language suddenly exists. I don't read any Dutch-speaking blogs because of their lack of love for the language. Most internet-speak isn't any different from what I hear from people's mouths: incorrect Dutch with a regional accent. The world wide web was from the start a written world. One would assume that it would be a place to show your love for language, but it became a place to show. Nothing more. Then I don't need to show in Dutch. The audience would be so much smaller than when writing in English.
Of course English won't be able to take away my mother tongue. Contrary to those that take pride in speaking Flemish, I take pride in trying to speak and write correct Dutch – especialy when working with the kids at school. There are parts of me that can only be expressed in that harsh and cruel language – even words that aren't harsh and cruel. But for me it isn't a language to use online. It's a language to hide those things that aren't meant for the public.

Is there a word for an escalator that doesn't go up? My dictionary calls it a travelator. I like it, but doesn't it sound off for you?

For my readers' convenience I tried translating the Dutch word "bandwerk", but my dictionary is convinced it doesn't exist and Sherlock is a bit too literal for my taste. "Bandwerk" is what I've been doing today: wading through file after file stacked into iPhoto, tagging it appropriately, thinking up titles, writing down commentaries. I thought I'd be quick about it, just do some additional tagging and make some new smart folders (which look a lot like the smart folders most of you probably have in iTunes). Hell no, of course. I started yesterday afternoon and am still going strong. It's the last batch. I'm wading through my Chicago-pictures, and then it's some pictures I imported for school recently. And then I'm finaly done. Apart from those new smart folders. Once those are made I'll have a shiny ordering system that'll hopefuly work and won't be abandoned in the middle of the school year. Though most of all I'm left with a sense of longing for iPhoto '08 to come and solve all the problems I have with its predecessor #4 and do it for free.

One thing that restricts my blogging experience and internet communication skills, is the language barrier. It's a common frustration for English bloggers who don't use that language in their real lives. Your writing slows down: The train of thought that seemed so fluent in your head, doesn't come out of your fingers as easily as it would in your mothertongue, because half of the thoughts were actualy in your mothertongue. Unknowingly, you'd been translating all along.
A lot of thinking happens on a level that doesn't use any language at all. Or uses a language that's unconsciously yours – that precedes the realisation you're using language, and the restrictions its grammar, vocabulary, and logic imposes on you. Here are two simple thoughts out of a heap of ideas. One: Using a foreign language demands you start using a different logic for your ideas. You can't translate everything you can say in your mother tongue. Two is related to one: The knowledge of the other language is always insufficient. This means you have to find ways to bend the logic of it to your liking, without becoming gibberish. You start imposing the rules you know on the language you've learned and are using.

Most of all changing languages is tiresome. When visiting frenchani in Paris it wasn't the weather and the long walks that wore me out, but the constant use of French. The other language becomes a cage that doesn't let you say the things exactly the way you want them to be expressed.

introversion n the ability to have long meaningful conversations with only one person at a time.


This definition sprang to mind when reading Elouise's take on introversion vs extroversion:

Is the distinction between introversion and extroversion this?

That extroverts crave others of like mind? And that introverts are weary of discovering difference?

Kid 1: Turkish Girl is always saying bad things about others!
Turkish Girl: You are racist!
Me: Kid 1 wasn't making a racist comment. He was making a comment about you.

There seems to be a shift in meaning when kids use the word "racist" these days. In every argument between kids whose origins lie in two different cultures, one of them will suddenly blurt out: "You are racist!" The word doesn't have any meaning in the context. It's the last straw to cling to, the one thing to say when all other reasoning has failed to make a point.
"Racist" is also solely used for people from Belgian descent, preferably Flemish people. It's like calling the Germans Krauts. No-one knows why they do it. No-one remembers what it actually means, but it's a big insult to be called that. Then it doesn't really matter that Kid 1 is half African. The word is pointed at his Flemish descent and will hurt.

simonf points to a debate at Whedonesque. Nothing new there, I guess. Whedonesque is the place for heated Whedon-related debates. What's much more interesting is what's at stake in this debate: Joss Whedon quarrels with the site's creator if this bit of webspace can be considered a blog¹. It's a quarrel with several layers: first it's about weblogs, second it's about language. Since we're talking about Mr Whedon here, it's probably even more about language than it's about weblogs. It's a meta-debate about what it means to be a (we)blog.

It all starts out so tiny with Whedon stating "This is not, in fact, a blog." Ahem, a sentence like that is bound to stir up some things on a website that presents itself as "a weblog about Joss Whedon created by Caroline van Oosten de Boer (design/html/content) and Milo Vermeulen (PHP/MySQL programming)". So Caroline retorts with a nice definition of what a weblog is (used to be?): "A weblog was and to me still is a website in which items are posted on a regular basis and displayed in reverse chronological order, with the possibility for readers to comment." There you have it, clean and simple. A weblog needs two things: items should be posted in reverse chronological order and readers should have the ability to comment. So, my LJ is a weblog. But isn't, based on this rudimentary definition, a message board like the BC&S a weblog? Let's have look. Are the items posted in reverse chronological order? Check. Can people comment on the items? Check. So, one shouldn't think it strange that Joss Whedon of all people doesn't consider Whedonesque a blog. It's more like a message board, but with an rss-feed!

Now, I shouldn't be so hard on Caroline. Whedonesque is a weblog, but maybe it shouldn't be considered a blog, like most LJ-ers aren't caught dead talking about their blogs. This is an LJ, baby! I have never thought it was wrong to talk about my blog. It's usually the way I present it towards the outside world that generally has a better knowledge of the word "blog" than it has of the obscure abreviation "LJ". Like "flist" it's part of the incrowd-jargon. Another reason why I don't mind talking about "my blog" and call what I do on here deliberately "blogging", because that's what it is. I write for people to read and want them to comment, whether it's on their own blogs, through email or use the comment button on here.

Two things are happening here: first there's a semantic shift and second there's a change in the use of software tools. It is the second change that makes the semantic shift possible. In a first developmental stage blogging software did just what Caroline described. It made it possible to quickly update websites with tiny bits of information. Instead of changing an uploading a complete page, you only have to upload the extra information. The comments-feature is an added bonus.
The leap towards personal diary isn't such a grand one. Look at it as jumping over a dry ditch. Before you know it you have all these people linking to and commenting on each other's personal electronic diaries. It's new, it's hip, it isn't only for teens (hell, every Belgian politician that considers him- or herself something has a blog nowadays), now we need a word to talk about it in the mainstream media. The word is there and voilà: the blog as personal diary tool is born. Whedon says it very well: "What a word means often devolves into what it connotes, in this case a personal diary or some singular person's site, even if there's a comment forum or members." "Blog" as a word doesn't refer anymore to the tools used. Considering the amount in blogging software out there that isn't such a suprise. On the contrary "blog" gets its core meaning from its content and from its contributors. We blog because we say so and we blog because you, dear reader, think so too.
Truely the meaning of the word has contracted whereas the definition of what a blog is, has grown. Several criteria regarding the content of the website have been added. Moreso a blog doesn't even need the ability to comment anymore to be called a blog. The whole blogging thing revolves around what you as writer and reader make of it. There's the website. There's the blog. There's the rss-feed². There's the LiveJournal-friendslist (its very own version of a newsreader). Like Caroline says: "There's room for all of us. We can all be blogs. But some are more bloggy than others." The thing with blogging is like everything else: the tools are there, you just have to make them your own. Like we bend the rules of language into slang, we bend the rules of blogging and the writing of a personal diary into something new that others might actually want to read³.

¹ This brings simonf's great post-title "God calls into question the nature of his universe". I love it, but it isn't quite right according to theology. God created His universe, but the god we're talking about here (i.e. Joss Whedon) did not create this particular part of his 'verse. I can only compare it to God questioning the nature of the personal computer, which of course He didn't build.
Unless of course simonf is refering to gnostic interpretations of creation, in which His universe is actually created by His demonic alter ego.
² This may also count as a reason for the different approach to what a blog is. I'm reading most of my stuff through rss- or atom-feeds via Bloglines. Sites like BBC-News also are on there, but that one isn't a blog, of course.
³ Because I can assure you: you wouldn't want to read my paper diary.