Benjamin has really written a great work. I’m most impressed and am still reading his things because he makes me think a great deal. The first chapter is about making connections and associations. These connections and associations are then presented within a psychological foundation in the second chapter. Certain words such as drag and push and ect…have a psychological effect that creates a connection to other words. Therefore these words are associated to other words such as drag being associated with down. I think a word like drag is just English, however, and a translated word for ‘drag’ would probably imply up or down in many cases. The next several chapters go into the symbols that different tribes created. Many of these symbols share similarities. This could show connections between tribes. The selections then go into the languages and then, most interestingly, verbs and themes of these native languages. For instance, English talks about time whereas the Hopi language uses manifestations. English would say ‘he just finished and will be over there shortly’ but Hopi would say ‘he is done and can do a walk there’. Most importantly, hopi would have a single short or long word to describe each action that would take many words to say in English. the words generally will have a stem word at the end of them that can be many different words. -ya is placed at the end of a word to explain “rotation or vibration”. wa-ya is ‘makes a waving shake’ for instance like a tree shaking in the wind. Pi-ya is ‘makes a flap like a pair of wings’. These words can also be lengthened to change meaning like waya-yata ‘it is shaking’ and pi-yayata ‘It is flapping wings’.
my question is this; could it be a beneficial thing to make foreign languages a greater priotirity in America? If so how? If everyone was bound to learn a second language fluently, and the American majority was clearly bilingual, could this be a great progression for our country? A language like hopi seems very romantic. One can express great action, and passion, in but a few words. This is a great thing. English allows us to be very thorough in our words. If we had both, we could socialize and do business more efficiently. We could express our intimate sides with Hopi and our business could be in English. I think English can be an insensitive language and allow people to miscommunicate, argue, be unhappy, or even feel uncreative.
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