Dragg wrote:

@ kaze

You say the second one wins, but in what sense?  I'm not saying that one sentence is better or worse than another so I don't understand why you keep acting like the two are competing. What makes cantankerous more ambiguous?  I would actually say that cantankerous is more specific in describing the type of jerk (stubborn and obstructive).  A word like cantankerous is deliberately filled with a bunch of unappealing consonant arrangements in the same way that "discombobulated" suggests confusion from it's length and phonetic arrangement alone.  These words are deliberately exaggerated which give them more emotion.

Just like if you use the word "terrified" instead of "scared."  The length alone seems to suggest that "terrified" carries a stronger nuance of extreme fear.

You used the two sentences as comparisons. Therefore they are competing. At least I think think so, I could be wrong.
I was not saying cantankerous is ambigious. Cantenkerous oaf is very solid, if you encountered the word cantankerous before.

I was actually refering to - "expelled a stench-filled gust in my direction." Here lies ambiguity; more questions than answers. The second sentence clears it up. I say the second wins because it conveys something solid. The use of dumb and jerk are enough to gain a sense of feeling, even if small, but "burped" makes the cake.

"A word like cantankerous is deliberately filled with a bunch of unappealing consonant arrangements"

Word choice matters far less than how words are used. Your examples illustrate this clearly .

I tease but you understand what I'm saying.

The average English user does not have many of these odd and extravagant words. And it clearly takes years, not only to understand them, but to use them properly as well. Why use a medical term for eye when eye along will suffice?

Yeah and... what he said

iggy wrote:

First of all, you don't have to use mundane, everyday words to make yourself clear using the fewest and best words.

"It really depends on the situation.  The purpose of a lecture is often to convey messages of a practical or technical nature."  Yep, and in that case "the fewest and best words" wouldn't usually constitute mundane, everyday words.

"However, the point of novels and poetry is often to convey emotional states."  In this case, determining what is everyday and mundane is really a matter of opinion and perspective relating to the situation.  Also, writers of poetry are often torn between expressing extraordinary feeling and clarity.  There's a happy medium there.  If you can't achieve that without resorting to a thesaurus and looking up words that your readers are going to have to look up too, you pretty much fail at your goal of communication.

And I personally think that writers who are too ambiguous with their writings haven't actually really developed their skills yet.  Saying that you're leaving it up to the reader to determine "meaning" defeats the purpose of trying to communicate like that.  I like Lewis Carroll because, while it seems just pure nonsense to us, it's totally not when examined under the correct historical background.  For example, a majority of the nonsense poems in his books are parodies of popular songs and poems that EVERYBODY knew and would recognize during his day.

Last edited by kazelee (2008 December 19, 4:32 pm)

igordesu wrote:

And I personally think that writers who are too ambiguous with their writings haven't actually really developed their skills yet.  Saying that you're leaving it up to the reader to determine "meaning" defeats the purpose of trying to communicate like that.  I like Lewis Carroll because, while it seems just pure nonsense to us, it's totally not when examined under the correct historical background.  For example, a majority of the nonsense poems in his books are parodies of popular songs and poems that EVERYBODY knew and would recognize during his day.

That would make his poetry no longer relevant in our society, beyond historical referencing.

How about the bible, Revelations anyone ?

@stehr

ow why'd ya have ta go and open that can of Lumbricus Terrestris?

@dragg

The difference between the impacts of those words, I'd image, depends more on how they are said against being plainly read. Also depends on where the person is from. A Russian probably wouldn't find any English word intimidating. LOL. I kid. I won't go as far as to say this applies to all words, but it applies to the vast majority.

It good to know the examples aren't fighting. I think the ones with more Ks have the advantage.

Last edited by kazelee (2008 December 19, 4:55 pm)

stehr wrote:

igordesu wrote:

And I personally think that writers who are too ambiguous with their writings haven't actually really developed their skills yet.  Saying that you're leaving it up to the reader to determine "meaning" defeats the purpose of trying to communicate like that.  I like Lewis Carroll because, while it seems just pure nonsense to us, it's totally not when examined under the correct historical background.  For example, a majority of the nonsense poems in his books are parodies of popular songs and poems that EVERYBODY knew and would recognize during his day.

That would make his poetry no longer relevant in our society, beyond historical referencing.

How about the bible, Revelations anyone ?

I recommend you pick up a copy of "the annotated Alice."  After reading it, I've come to realize that the ways that people reference and interpret the Alice books in our society shows...maybe they aren't really relevant to our society?  At least, not without understanding where Carroll was coming from when he wrote it.

And the book of Revelation in the Bible?  The historical background on that isn't too difficult.  One of the Apostles was exiled to an island by himself for preaching the gospel.  Then, he had a vision and and wrote this book about it while he was on the island.  There weren't really any witnesses, so either you believe he was a quack and/or making it up, or it was the real deal.  (although), a majority of the book of Revelation references the Old Testament prophets in some way.)  I still think determining its relevance to our society still comes down to whether you believe he was crazy or not.

Wow, this is getting really off topic (and it's partly my fault, lol...).  Sorry.  Oh well, this is fun anyway...

Dragg wrote:

@ Kaze

Maybe so about the Russians, but it's true that most people realize that their languages have unique abilities to exploit certain emotions.  For example, the hard consonant-heavy German language is especially conducive to hard bands like Rammstein

What if the German wants to sing the sweatest love ballade every written?

Dragg wrote:

whereas French is often considered the language of love because it sounds so soft in comparison.

You've obviously never heard French rap... lol

I'd like to believe that French is the language of love for this reason. The truth, though, it's probably called that because some French guy said so.

Dragg wrote:

Italian and Spanish seem well suited for opera because the vowel-heaviness seems to give the languages great emotional value without always sounding incredibly aggressive.

This sounds wholly subjective. I've always found opera to be boring. I've never really sat through one in it's entirety. The few I listened to for more than a few seconds were usually French, German, and (ugh) English. I say ugh because they are far less beautiful when you actually know what the people are saying, especially when they're slap dandiditidooed with cliche.

If you go by quantity of pieces produced in those language's I would say it reflect the composer's desire to create something that true to area in which modern opera first thrived.

Going by your information, Japanese would be a good language for Opera as well, though.

Last edited by kazelee (2008 December 19, 5:41 pm)

Check out songs by the female French artist "Yelle."  Some good ones are "a cause des garcons," "Je veux te voir," "dans ta vraie vie," and "mon meilleur ami."  you should be able to find those on youtube.  I think you'll like 'em.

I think there is a lot more consistency to a language like Spanish or Italian.  I think a lot of English-speaking musicians instinctively know how "off" English can sound at times, which is why we so often have to resort to artificial gimmicks like trying to rhyme every line to try to bring about a sense of balance.  I've never tried writing any works in Spanish, but I learned enough to know that it wouldn't be as hard to bring about a sense of balance in Spanish because so many words end in vowels when compared to English.  Just as studies have shown that humans show a preference for symmetrical objects, I think one would find similar standards of beauty in songs.  Deseo may be a random word choice but I think it is also fairly representative of the Spanish language in terms of song-friendliness.

Last edited by Dragg (2008 December 19, 7:08 pm)

snallygaster wrote:

Hmm, I didn't think RTK1 had that many rare keywords (there were 3 I didn't know -- Paulownia, Hawser and Godown).  And Heisig can't really be blamed for Paulownia, Wisteria, Mandala, Sutra, etc. which are standard translations of words that happen to be well-known in Japan but not so much in the West.  But those RTK words in Katsuo's list are pretty hardcore; I only know about a third of them.

I chuckled when I read that. We all have different backgrounds, and all three of those words were familiar to me.

* I can see Paulownia trees from my desk as I type this.
* I first laid hands on a hawser as a young lad in the scouts.
* I first went to a godown, as a small boy, with my father to buy bulk rice.


However I've had minor troubles with some of the story lines for other characters. The references to baseball for example leave me nonplussed (and of course I'm not using that word in its North American sense).

What the f.... SERIOUSLY!?

Those are actual keywords?  Crazy.  How did any of you guys ever finish RtK?

(I never did Heisig past about frame 250.. at which point I switched to making my own cards with a combination of zhongwen.com, Kanji Learner's Dictionary, and the ordering of Kanji ABC. I've never had to use a keyword like that, except for the understandable Buddhist terminology.)

Last edited by mafried (2009 March 13, 4:08 pm)

Ah, okay. That makes sense.

-----

I don't think this serves any credit to Heisig's "one keyword per kanji" marketing gimmick.  He gave 崎 the keyword PROMONTORY.  I called it a STEEP CAPE.  Maybe it's just me, but one of those is much easier to remember than the other... (I'm a native English, college-grad and I'd be hard-pressed to give a dictionary definition of "promontory", even if I sorta know what it means.  How the heck then do you make a story out of it?)

Last edited by mafried (2009 March 13, 4:25 pm)

Katsuo wrote:

Here's twenty-eight everyday keywords from RTK3. How many do you know?

camelopard, autochthonous, receptable, plantain, shingling, kudzu, candle rush, sedge, viscera, escutcheon, loquat, plotosid, zelkova, refulgent, redaction, livraison, pongee, damask, gimp, gunwale, ghee, carillion, piebald, crucian, kalpa, entreat, tenebrous, brahman.

I knew 18 (assuming carillion should be carillon), but I also play Internet Scrabble daily and encounter lots of words not in general use that way.  Zelkova could be useful in Scrabble, have to remember that!

Sometimes when I see a kanji of a difficult English keyword in daily life, I know the general idea of the kanji, but not that English keyword anymore, because I never learned it well in the first place. Sometimes I even remember the dictionary description, but not the word!