Replying to LO26622 --
Dear Organlearners,
In my reply (At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za>)
I explained how to form a diminutive in Afrikaans and many different
sentiments which can be conveyed by it. One is "endearment" to
which our host Rick replied:
>[Host's Note: But, Atie, at what point will the entire
>context be revealed? ..Rick]
Greetings dear Ricky,
You are a fast learner and even a greater teacher to let the learner
continue.
I wish I knew more of English to help you. I now must help you on
Afrikaans and that is almost senseless since you cannot speak it. But let
me try.
Afrikaans is extremely rich in distinct vowels (short, long and
diphtongues) -- more than two dozen of them. It also has more than two
dozen additional complex sounds which cannot be described at all as
monotongs or diphtongues. To aid the making of these vowels with
consonants is a complex operation. Your "Atie" will be expressed as the
long "aa" with the rest as you have imagined. To make the vowel a short
"a" you will have to shut it off by doubling the consonant "t". In other
words, you will have to write "Attie" to aid its pronounciation.
In "Riekie" both the "ie"s are already diphtongues so that they cannot be
lenthened. Thus it is not necessary to include a second "k" by writing
"Riekkie".
The spelling of a particular word in Afrikaans depends much on all the
words in Afrikaans as its context as well as the spoken language which we
try to reflect primarily. This makes the spelling of Afrikaans words an
ideal example to illustrate the essentiality sureness. In English I can
only shake my head -- sureness in English spelling is a mystery for me,
especially if I want to imagine the pronunciation by the spelling.
Ricky, the pleasure derived after taking one sip of coffee or wine is to
follow the whole sequence of tastes following afterwards. Is it not the
same with learning? How about a novelist telling early in a detective
story that Joe Smith is the culprit.
I am a very naughty chemist because I have tasted thousands of pure
compounds. I do it because I am forever under the impression that in
certain occassions I will have to act swiftly without having the chemical
means to analyze any compound. It is then when the bare five sensory
organs become my greatest allies. I have in a number of chemistry
accidents managed to make the right decision for action in a matter of
seconds. Would I have not been so naughty, the consequences would have
been ghastly.
Tasting a pure compound after so many times become a disgusting
experience. There is very little, if any, richness of after tastes for a
pure compound. There is little to imagine what it tastes like with every
new aftertaste stepping in. It tastes like XXX and that is that.
Perhaps I am a naugthy biologist too because I have tasted thousands of
different species of plants. But It has helped me like smelling and
touching them with closed eyes to get all the sens organs working. This
helped me immensely to place the plant in a taxonomic category. The eyes
can often fool one.
If I told you short and sweet that to observe a future emergence I have to
prepare myself by imagining it in advance (irrespective of whether I am
way off or hit the bulls eye), and then proceed to defend my claim by
argument, would it have tasted like a cup of coffee? Or would it have
tasted like a pure compound -- it tastes like a falsity (or like a truth)
and that is that. Should I have done it, we have a saying in Afrikaans
which I will translate interlinearly as "I fall with the door into the
house".
I hope this interlinear translation affords all the flavours of what the
saying means to us. The desert people taught me never to "fall with the
door into the house". There is a foreplay to effective contact
(fruitfullness). It involves going through all the other six
essentialities so as to gradually build up the entropy production to a
climax.
With care and best wishes,
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <Richard@Karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>
"Learning-org" and the format of our message identifiers (LO1234, etc.) are trademarks of Richard Karash.