In two days, the UN report on Iraq comes out, and I expect that it will define, for better or for worse, the stability of the world when it is read by American eyes.
Every day I figure more and more out about language.
It becomes increasingly obvious to me every day that the Portuguese here is a tangential evolution to continental Portuguese. People learn "proper" language, but use in conversation, constructions and vocabulary that correspond with their mother tongue. I do the same thing, but in learning Mozambican Portuguese, have made some adaptations to try and speak in their manner.
I am often tempted to use the "to have + past participle" construction which is very much a part of Portuguese, but is a Latin-based way of thinking. The idea that an activity or action has been completed can also be expressed by saying "already", or in Portuguese, the ubiquitous "ja". Which makes me curious to learn what the Changana equivalent is.
It's very interesting to me to find out how easily a word that has two meanings can be expressed by one word in one language and two in another language. Yet, the speakers are able to feel out the meanings even though there is no one-to-one connection.
For example, the very "esperar" means "to wait" or "to hope". When joined with "que", you can express "I hope...", when alone, you can interject "Wait!" But neither carries exactly the same meaning as in English. Somewhere between "wait" and "hope" is an idea that has one word in Portuguese. If you think about this long enough, it will almost seem like a word is on the tip of your tongue to describe the idea - you can imagine hopeful waiting or even "wait-ful" hoping, and it seems to get closer - but the thing you can't quite express, that you can explain but never put one word to, is the raw idea that language so inadequately strives to express. For the last paragraph, I've essentially tried, unsuccessfully, to explain just one word that seems to correspond with a very primitive idea. This is why written language is so inadequate and inefficient, but plentiful because of its reproducibility and staying power.
Spoken language, complete with body language, gets across the idea just fine. You can even express the same exact idea with completely different words. Or even no words at all, which seems to be where art comes from. And then in the middle of all this expression of ideas seems to lie the oldest means of communication - theater. Good theater is a wonderful blend of the spoken and seen idea - its only criterion for judgment being its effectiveness in transferring an idea.
And this seems to be why my life keeps coming back to it, because it's such a perfect balance of the abstract and concrete worlds. Monday, also, is the start of my first African theater, assuming all goes well.
Peace
John
