Dear Organlearners,
Doc Holloway <learnshops@thresholds.com> writes:
> Leslie Lax wrote:
> > If empowerment occurs through both growing together, I
> > believe we have true empowerment. Empowerment is something that others
> > (and oneself) take up for themselves.
>
> I think you are bending the word "empowerment" to mean something that it
> doesn't. Growing together is something we do cooperatively. Neither one
> of us gave power to the other, but we shared power. Sharing power is
> something one can do without losing or gaining. It does take two words
> instead of one--but it seems more descriptive of the sentiment you are
> describing. Empowering still means "giving power," regardless of what we
> would like it to mean.
Doc, languages sometimes drive me crazy. Leslie comes form South
Africa so that he will follow the Afrikaans in my contribution. I
hope you other people will also follow it.
I speak speak, write and think in Afrikaans, my mother tongue. I
seldom have the opportunity to speak English, although I have to read
and write it often. I oftne have to check on the meaning(s) of an
English word in the dictionaries. My dictionaries have become
tattered. Sometimes I am lazy and forget to look up the meaning of
a word, assuming that my notion of the meaning is correct. I often
I discover how wrong my assumption was when eventually I do check up
on the meaning of the word. The word "empowerment" is just such a
case.
Afrikaans is probably the youngest language in the world. It belongs
to the Gothic (Germanic, Teutonic) family of languages. It derives in
decreasing order from languages such as High Dutch (Frankonian), Low
Saxon and Frisian, but has also been enriched by Portugese, Malay
as well as indigenous Xhoi (Hottentot) and Banthu languages. The most
important features of Afrikaans are its
* extreme simplification of syntaxis (declensions and conjunctions)
* ease of creating new words (prefeix, suffix, compounds)
* metaphorical richness (idioms, sayings)
* ease of making Afrikaans words out of foreign languages (old Latin,
and Greek, modern Dutch, German, Banthu, Indian, etc.)
Afrikaans can be compared in some respects with English. Modern
English developed from Old English (Anglo-Saxon) during the
Enlightenment. The basic framework is still OE, but much of it has
been overwhelmed (and even lost) by French (Norman), Latin and
Greek. Afrikaans retained far much more of its Gothic heritage before
it became "enlightened". Like English it also has a great capacity to
function as a lingua franca. But unfortunately, the ideology of
"apartheid" did much harm to its use as the lingua franca of Southern
Africa.
I have recently made a trip to Nambia and its deserts. When Namibia
became a Republic, English became its official language. SWAPO
(because of its struggle against apartheid, had no time for
Afrikaans.) For two years many tried to speak English. Since then an
intersting situation has been developing. English is still its "ex
officio" language, but Afrikaans has become its "de facto" lingua
franca.
In Afrikaans we have two words "magtiging" and "bemagtiging" The root
word is the noun "mag" (German: Macht). It corresponds to the English
"might" (OE: miht; Gothic: maecht) and has the same meaning as
"power". The suffix "ig" makes a verb of it so that "magtig" means
authorise, warrant, empower. The extra suffix "ing", which usually
makes nouns out of verbs, makes the noun "magtiging". This noun has a
different and more specific meaning than the root noun "mag". It
means "the result (state) when power has flowed into". This meaning
is explified by the English synonyms empowerment, authorisation,
warrant, mandate, permission, consent, etc.
But something very interesting happens through the prefix "be",
something still retained by the Englsh prefix "be" (from the OE
"be"). It makes something complete (like in "bewildered"), intense
(like in "bewigged"), changing it fundamentally (like in "behead")
and thus makes it causative (like in "befoul"). In other words, the
prefix "be" makes something more holistic. See holism in my
contribution on the essentiality "associativity-monadicity"
(wholeness). Thus, whereas the meaning of "magtiging" is
"the result when power has flowed into", the meaning of
"bemagtiging" is the opposite, namely "the result when power is
coming from within". Hence my Afrikaans-English dictionary translates
"bemagtiging" into "taking into possesion of by self-mastery"
(positive meaning) and "usurpation" (negative meaning).
I was rather surprised to learn this morning that the Afrikaans
"bemagtiging" also had the negative meaning of "usurpation" (Latin:
"usus" use, "rapio" seize). I knew only its positive meaning. General
Herzog had the vision that the Afrikaners would not have
"bemagtiging" (political, economical, social) until their language
was accepted as equal to English. This vision eventually became
actual reality (1926 - 1939) through his strenous efforts. However,
after Afrikaners have taken posssesion of themselves through
self-mastery, the power thus unleashed gave them the capacity to take
possession of others. Politicians in the National Party began to
usurp this power for opportunistic reasons. First Herzog (1939) and
then Smuts (1948) fell against their onslaught. Thus the era of
apartheid (1948 -1992) followed.
Well, what is done in Afrikaans by the prefix "be", cannot be done
that easily in English by the prefix "be". First of all, the "be" has
to be applied to words of Anglos-Saxon origin. Unfortunately, many of
these words have been lost by replacement through Norman, Latin and
Greek words. In fact the word "miht" has been replaced by "power" via
the French "poer" and the orginal Latin "posse". Thus we cannot say
"bepower" people while "be-empowerment" even sounds bad.
The word "empowerment" is made up by the prefix "em", the stem
"power" and the suffix "ment". The Latin prefix "en" becomes "em"
before the labial consonants b, p and m. Thus both the prefixes "em"
and "en" means "(flowing) in(to)". Hence "empowerment" means "into
power state" - power which has flowed from the outside to the inside.
Someone has noted that this is the extrinsical facet of "empowerment"
But what about the opposite "power which has flowed from the inside
to the outside", or the intrinsical facet of "empowermrnt"? The Latin
prefix "ex" does much the same as the Gothic "be", but not as
powerful. Thus, if we want to create a word with "power" as its stem,
it has to be "expowerment". But such a word does not exist in the
dictionaries which I have. Nor does any other word exist with the
exquisite meaning of "the result when power is coming from within"
like the positive meaning of the Afrikaans word "bemagtiging".
While unravelling all these wondrous linguistic relationsips. I
noticed that the two letters "em", seemingly a prefix, may cause
considerable confusion. Latin also has the prefix "e" (the "x "
having been lost) which means "from (within)". For example
"emigrate" ("e" from + "mano" move) "emerge" ("e" from + "mergo"
sink)., and "emanate" ("e" from + "mano" flow). These words with the
prefix "e" and a root which begins with "m---" may tempt us to think
that they actually have the prefix "em" so that we may also think
that "em" has the meaning "from within". It is clearly not the case,
as our dialogue in the concept "empowerment" shows.
Thank you Doc for insisting so much on the strict meaning of the
word "empowerment". It shocked mew out of my assumption that
"empowerment" and "bemagtiging" means the same thing.
Best wishes
--At de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre for Education University of Pretoria Pretoria, South Africa email: amdelange@gold.up.ac.za
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