Language // Current TV

The Importance of Language in a Relationship

Man is created as a social being, hence he is fashioned to socialize and build relationships towards other people, whether for business, friendship or romantic purposes. And in order to socialize naturally, he ought to communicate with other people in languages everybody can understand. Therefore, language plays an important role in building relationships.

Discussing the marital context, people from different countries meet in a certain place and end up in marriage and relationship. Despite their differences in language speaking, they still have mutual understanding. They enable themselves to learn the language of their spouse just to communicate properly with them.

Take this as an example: a Chinese guy decided to marry a French lady, so for them to nurture their marital relationship, either the husband will decide to learn French or the wife will bridge their gap by learning Chinese language. It won’t be difficult for both of them to learn either of these languages. Their commitment as married couples motivates them to learn both languages because they simply love each other. The husband wants to say “I love you” in the language his wife is speaking. Likewise, the wife will mutually learn her husband’s language for them to effectively communicate, since communication, is actually, the relationship itself.

“Marriage is like a beautiful garden,” a statement quoted from to Dr. Renee Colclough Hinson, executive director of The Association for Couples in Marriage Enrichment. “It requires skill and constant attention. If tended to, it will thrive, but if neglected, it will wither and die.” That’s why constant communication is an essential way to nurture marital relationships. Particular to couples who speak different languages, learning the spouse’s native language bridges their gap—the gap of miscommunication.

Since communication plays a vital role in building relationships, it must be constantly practiced among couples. Honestly speaking, even couples who speak the same language often argue for certain things, how much more could couples who speak different languages? Nonetheless, effective communication is not close to understanding the language of each spouse, but also includes the nurture of their relationships through other deeds as well, e.g. rendering quality time, giving gifts, presenting acts of service, and the like.

Wouldn’t it be nice for the French lady if her Chinese husband takes the effort in learning her native language? The husband only shows his love towards his wife through his effort to learn and there is no question about that. In the context of marital relationships, learning languages plays a very essential function. It is a natural act of showing love towards the person he or she delights.

source: http://www.abroadlanguages.com/blog/the-importance-of-language-in-a-relationship_939/Man is created as a social being, hence he is fashioned to socialize and build... more

lesheavensent
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Glenn Greenwald: Terrorism is the most manipulted and meaningless word in the American Lexicon

Yesterday, Joseph Stack deliberately flew an airplane into a building housing IRS offices in Austin, Texas, in order to advance the political grievances he outlined in a perfectly cogent suicide-manifesto. Stack's worldview contained elements of the tea party's anti-government anger along with substantial populist complaints generally associated with "the Left" (rage over bailouts, the suffering of America's poor, and the pilfering of the middle class by a corrupt economic elite and their government-servants). All of that was accompanied by an argument as to why violence was justified (indeed necessary) to protest those injustices:

I remember reading about the stock market crash before the "great" depression and how there were wealthy bankers and businessmen jumping out of windows when they realized they screwed up and lost everything. Isn't it ironic how far we've come in 60 years in this country that they now know how to fix that little economic problem; they just steal from the middle class (who doesn't have any say in it, elections are a joke) to cover their asses and it's "business-as-usual" . . . . Sadly, though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn’t so, but violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer.

Despite all that, The New York Times' Brian Stelter documents the deep reluctance of cable news chatterers and government officials to label the incident an act of "terrorism," even though -- as Dave Neiwert ably documents -- it perfectly fits, indeed is a classic illustration of, every official definition of that term. The issue isn't whether Stack's grievances are real or his responses just; it is that the act unquestionably comports with the official definition. But as NBC's Pete Williams said of the official insistence that this was not an act of Terrorism: there are "a couple of reasons to say that . . . One is he’s an American citizen." Fox News' Megan Kelley asked Catherine Herridge about these denials: "I take it that they mean terrorism in the larger sense that most of us are used to?," to which Herridge replied: "they mean terrorism in that capital T way."

All of this underscores, yet again, that Terrorism is simultaneously the single most meaningless and most manipulated word in the American political lexicon. The term now has virtually nothing to do with the act itself and everything to do with the identity of the actor, especially his or her religious identity. It has really come to mean: "a Muslim who fights against or even expresses hostility towards the United States, Israel and their allies." That's why all of this confusion and doubt arose yesterday over whether a person who perpetrated a classic act of Terrorism should, in fact, be called a Terrorist: he's not a Muslim and isn't acting on behalf of standard Muslim grievances against the U.S. or Israel, and thus does not fit the "definition." One might concede that perhaps there's some technical sense in which term might apply to Stack, but as Fox News emphasized: it's not "terrorism in the larger sense that most of us are used to . . . terrorism in that capital T way." We all know who commits terrorism in "that capital T way," and it's not people named Joseph Stack.

Contrast the collective hesitance to call Stack a Terrorist with the extremely dubious circumstances under which that term is reflexively applied to Muslims. If a Muslim attacks a military base preparing to deploy soldiers to a war zone, that person is a Terrorist. If an American Muslim argues that violence against the U.S. (particularly when aimed at military targets) is justified due to American violence aimed at the Muslim world, that person is a Terrorist who deserves assassination. And if the U.S. military invades a Muslim country, Muslims who live in the invaded and occupied country and who fight back against the invading American army -- by attacking nothing but military targets -- are also Terrorists. Indeed, large numbers of detainees at Guantanamo were accused of being Terrorists for nothing more than attacking members of an invading foreign army in their country, including 14-year-old Mohamed Jawad, who spent many years in Guantanamo, accused (almost certainly falsely) of throwing a grenade at two American troops in Afghanistan who were part of an invading force in that country. Obviously, plots targeting civilians for death -- the 9/11 attacks and attempts to blow up civilian aircraft -- are pure terrorism, but a huge portion of the acts committed by Muslims that receive that label are not.

In sum: a Muslim who attacks military targets, including in war zones or even in their own countries that have been invaded by a foreign army, are Terrorists. A non-Muslim who flies an airplane into a government building in pursuit of a political agenda is not, or at least is not a Real Terrorist with a capital T -- not the kind who should be tortured and thrown in a cage with no charges and assassinated with no due process. Nor are Christians who stand outside abortion clinics and murder doctors and clinic workers. Nor are acts undertaken by us or our favored allies designed to kill large numbers of civilians or which will recklessly cause such deaths as a means of terrorizing the population into desired behavioral change -- the Glorious Shock and Awe campaign and the pummeling of Gaza. Except as a means for demonizing Muslims, the word is used so inconsistently and manipulatively that it is impoverished of any discernible meaning.

[more at link]Yesterday, Joseph Stack deliberately flew an airplane into a building housing IRS... more

asherp
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The writing on the cave wall

THE first intrepid explorers to brave the 7-metre crawl through a perilously narrow tunnel leading to the Chauvet caves in southern France were rewarded with magnificent artwork to rival any modern composition. Stretching a full 3 metres in height, the paintings depict a troupe of majestic horses in deep colours, above a pair of boisterous rhinos in the midst of a fight. To the left, they found the beautiful rendering of a herd of prehistoric cows. "The horse heads just seem to leap out of the wall towards you," says Jean Clottes, former director of scientific research at the caves and one of the few people to see the paintings with his own eyes.

When faced with such spectacular beauty, who could blame the visiting anthropologists for largely ignoring the modest semicircles, lines and zigzags also marked on the walls? Yet dismissing them has proved to be something of a mistake. The latest research has shown that, far from being doodles, the marks are in fact highly symbolic, forming a written "code" that was familiar to all of the prehistoric tribes around France and possibly beyond. Indeed, these unprepossessing shapes may be just as remarkable as the paintings of trotting horses and tussling rhinos, providing a snapshot into humankind's first steps towards symbolism and writing.

Until now, the accepted view has been that our ancestors underwent a "creative explosion" around 30,000 to 40,000 years ago, when they suddenly began to think abstractly and create rock art. This idea is supported by the plethora of stunning cave paintings, like those at Chauvet, which started to proliferate across Europe around this time. Writing, on the other hand, appeared to come much later, with the earliest records of a pictographic writing system dating back to just 5000 years ago.

Few researchers, though, had given any serious thought to the relatively small and inconspicuous marks around the cave paintings. The evidence of humanity's early creativity, they thought, was clearly in the elaborate drawings.

While some scholars like Clottes had recorded the presence of cave signs at individual sites, Genevieve von Petzinger, then a student at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, was surprised to find that no one had brought all these records together to compare signs from different caves. And so, under the supervision of April Nowell, also at the University of Victoria, she devised an ambitious masters project. She compiled a comprehensive database of all recorded cave signs from 146 sites in France, covering 25,000 years of prehistory from 35,000 to 10,000 years ago.

What emerged was startling: 26 signs, all drawn in the same style, appeared again and again at numerous sites (see illustration). Admittedly, some of the symbols are pretty basic, like straight lines, circles and triangles, but the fact that many of the more complex designs also appeared in several places hinted to von Petzinger and Nowell that they were meaningful - perhaps even the seeds of written communication.
MORE ON LINKTHE first intrepid explorers to brave the 7-metre crawl through a perilously narrow... more

02
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Redefining “Wife” – WMC Blog

by Audrey Bilger

“That’s no lady, that’s my wife,” the “old ball-and-chain,” the “battle-axe”—such expressions seem to belong to an older time, when a comedian could get a laugh by saying, “Take my wife…please!” If you look up “wife” in the Urban Dictionary, though, you’ll find that negative associations persist. The first definition delivers a one-two punch: “1. The Good Part–The woman you marry and live with for the rest of your life. 2. The Bad Part–The woman you marry and live with for the rest of your life.” Even more crass is the entry that presents the word as an acronym for Wash, Iron, F—, Etc.

I could never see my wife in these terms—and she doesn’t see me that way either. In our shared life as a married lesbian couple, we’ve found that two wives can be better than one, at least in changing the way we think of the word. In part this is because our marriage is such a hard-won right—married gay men feel the same pride in this victory—but in an even more fundamental way, when the word wife becomes detached from husband as the lesser of two terms, the meaning shifts, in a positive direction.

As the oft-maligned half of the husband/wife pairing, wife has had to carry a great deal of baggage. More than the word husband, wife brings with it a legacy of inequality. Until the late 19th century in England and America, upon marriage, a wife’s legal identity was subsumed under that of her husband. They were legally one person, and that person was the husband. In the traditional formulation, “I now pronounce you man and wife,” the man was viewed as an individual in his own right, the wife was expected—by definition—to stand by her man. Even though many heterosexual couples today don’t buy into the man-and-wife formulation, it’s difficult to completely transcend the conceptually imbalanced frame that’s been handed down to them.

Having been in both a straight and a lesbian marriage, I can testify to the transformative power of separating the word wife from its status as the lesser term in a male/female binary. When I was married to a man, I found that no matter how hard we tried to live on an equal footing, cultural expectations and demands came into play. If he did housework, friends and family told me I was lucky to have a husband who “helped out.” Phone solicitors asked to speak to the “head of the household” or the “lady of the house.” Regardless of how individuals organize their personal relations within a straight marriage, in the culture at large wives still get cast as subordinate.

In 2008 after the California Supreme Court lifted the marriage ban, I was able to marry the woman I had been with for 12 years. At first, we were reluctant to use word wife, uncertain as to whether it would fit us properly—or be accepted by others. As soon as we started calling each other wife, however, we began to see how this one word helped to ratify our union on a daily basis. We also found that we were free to live on our own terms. Gender norms don’t dictate which one of us “wears the pants.” Whereas in my straight marriage, I tried to avoid the term because of its demeaning associations, I now see myself as contributing to the work of redefining it and thereby helping to raise the status of women in this arena.

Few who oppose gay marriage broadcast a desire to keep women in their place (that would be radically unpopular)—it’s more acceptable to stir up fears against homosexuals–but when you stop to think about it on the level of words and their meanings, wife will change far more than marriage when same-sex marriage rights are won. Because the focus of marriage equality discussions has been on sexual orientation—since the rights of gays and lesbians as a disenfranchised group are most directly on the line here—little attention has been paid to how those who define marriage as between a man and a woman seek to roll back the clock on feminist advances. The broader agenda of the so-called marriage defenders is to insist that women and men stick to ideas about the family as defined by one set of religious groups.

Defenders of California’s Proposition 8 in the federal trial underway at this time have clarified their interest in enforcing “traditional,” antiquated ideas about marriage and women’s roles. When they claim that procreation is the “central or defining purpose” of marriage, as attorney Charles J. Cooper put it, and that the state has an interest in “steering procreation into households of a mother and father,” in attorney Andrew Pugno’s words, they’re seeking to enforce biology as destiny—for men and for women—and to regulate women’s reproductive freedom. Although they frame their arguments around the notion of protecting women and children (who without a man around the house can become a burden on the state), they’re more concerned about reviving a social system that has passed its expiration date.

For those who want to be free to set the terms of their own life, same-sex marriage should be a cause for celebration. Once we accept the possibility of wife and wife or husband and husband, the whole system of opposite-and-unequal terms gets thrown out of whack. Instead of falling into pre-ordained roles of husband as lord and master and wife as dependent housekeeper and child-bearer, individuals can discover innovative ways to express relatedness.

In this sense the opponents of same-sex marriage are right. Gay and lesbian marriages will change the way we think about marriage, and lesbian marriages will transform the word “wife.” For better, not for worse.
http://womensmediacenter.com/blog/2010/02/redefining-wife/by Audrey Bilger “That’s no lady, that’s my wife,” the... more

LilyBixler
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100 Free Tools & Resources to Teach Yourself Chinese

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The Five Love Languages for Valentines Day

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lesheavensent
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Is “Less” the New “Green”? What Green Language looks like Today

Is “Less” the New “Green”?

Maybe. Green marketing often takes the shape of its current cultural condition. When energy (fuel, etc.) prices were painfully inflated, marketing language (and solutions) turned to saving money and distance efficiency. Way back in 2008, one could be green and indulge at the same time, as long as they drove a hybrid to get there. Today, energy prices have fallen, but less immediately controllable economic hardships have replaced them. The current condition is one of anti-overindulgence, simplicity (noted eight times, it is a form of “less,” but not classified as such in our survey), and doing more with well...less. This is a cultural condition of the economic turn. “Less” is on the lips of CEOs, school administrators, advertising sales teams, governors, and kitchen-table budgeters. And, apparently, green marketers have picked up on this fact. No surprise there. But, “less” in these ads is a factor of economics, not life philosophy. This was the case with “green” too, where it was arguably more about social status and trend than a change in values.

It’s odd how a phrase intrinsically linked to anti-consumption can become the most popular word in marketing goods and services. Like “green,” this is the co-opting of the LOHAS language by the mainstream all over again.

But advertising has never been accused of being “accurate” language, so in a sense what’s odd is that we expect authenticity to play a role in it at all. Or at the very least, we should.

Most advertising is based on use of the superlative. “Very” lost its meaning through overuse, so we installed “very, very” into the language set. “Yes” has had to become “absolutely.” “Green” is currently interviewing for hyper-replacements, both in terms of movement and language. This is evolutionary language theory at its quickest. It will be interesting to watch “less” become a superlative. And, of course, we await lesswashing — where the consumption of less is a contrived illusion.

Encouraging consumers to consume less is an emerging marketing strategy. Engineering ways for them to have the same reward consumption offers is a sustainability strategy.

Author Edward Abbey said, “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” In more theoretic terms, according to ecopedagogy, sustainability is not being realized because it represents the antithesis to the political, economic, and cultural status quo of the powerful forces needed to fuel growth. The ‘less’ backlash is a response to this and marks a real milestone along the pathway to culture change and LOHAS ubiquity.Is “Less” the New “Green”? Maybe. Green marketing often... more

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Last woman of Endangered Tribe Dies - Age 85

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Ancient language extinct as last surviving speaker dies

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B(o)(o)bies; The Importance of Defining Terms

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Last speaker of ancient language of Bo dies in India

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Who Is The Keeper Of My Photo In Odessa–The Decay Of A Landfill Or The Warmth Of A Deep Drawer?

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Thinking about Time Literally Moves Us

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DeliaTheArtist
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How To Use A Semicolon!

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New "iPad" proving a hilarious name for people who never touched pen to paper

stephenthomson
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TEDTalks: James Geary, Metaphorically Speaking [video]

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Chimp Language Decoded

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Progresshiv
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Tattoo Jew

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Breaking through the language barrier

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10 Words You Need to Stop Misspelling

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