I like how complicated and interlinked the world is. Take, for example, one of my ball-point pens. It was assembled in China from a number of components:

1. A casing of polystyrene plastic manufactured following a process which took a hundred years to develop, from petroleum oil, for which people drill into the depths of earth & sea - and which exists only as a result of the deposition of organisms on top of organisms for millions and millions of years.
2. A tip of brass - made by mixing copper and zinc, both of which must be extracted from the earth and purified through complicated, labour-intensive, potentially dangerous processes
3. A ball of tungsten carbide produced by heating chemicals to half the temperature of the Sun several times, which is ground into shape using diamond cutters (probably themselves manufactured using a process involving extreme heat and pressure applied by very complex machines)
4. Ink made from a mix of glues, solvents and resins sourced from various parts of the world

So the manufacture of every part of this pen involves long processes, which require the involvement of hundreds of people - all of whom must be fed, watered and housed by yet more people, making use of tools and materials produced by yet more people. 

Millions of people were involved, and centuries of technological development required, to give me this pen - an exceptionally simple device (compared to, say, my laptop, cell phone, or alarm clock) and one which attracts almost no notice from me unless it happens to break or get lost. And yet, indirectly, the whole world is connected to me through it!

Lost & Confused : On Insecurity in an Academic Environment

In the 19th Century the Oxford University Press published a book on birds in Madagascar(1). It was a very expensive book to produce, with colour prints at a time when that was expensive, and excellent scholarship. And it sold ten copies.

Even today, with many many universities and interested people across the globe, most academic books sell barely 200 - 300 copies(2), mostly to other academic libraries. The low sales are because, as a rule, these books are so specialised and pitched at such a high level that very few want to buy or read them (3). This is the greatest thing about academia - that there are a collection of minds, all around the world, functioning at an exceptionally high level, and engaging in dialogue with each other. They hopefully raise the tone of society and make us more civilised, but otherwise contribute little tangible to the world outside the academic bubble (4), which nevertheless continues to fund and subsidise them. This never ceases to amaze me.

One of the best things about being a postgraduate student is that I have my foot in the door of that world. I have the great privilege of rubbing shoulders with the sort of extremely clever people who publish those kinds of books. I've seen them think at a million miles an hour, I've seen them work unceasingly for days to produce something the world has never seen before, I've eaten their baking. I feel extremely fortunate.

On the other hand, this can also be one of the worst things about being a postgraduate. One is surrounded all day, every day by geniuses. How can you not feel insecure when they translate in ten seconds, on the spot, the passage that you've been struggling over for an hour and a half? When you overhear them debating a point and do not understand a thing said by either side? When they look at your work and a ask an offhanded one sentance question, which demolishes your entire argument?

It is difficult to imagine that they were once grad students themselves. They must have always been as gods among mortals. And if you're not divine now, how can you ever hope to truly reach that level?

And this is why I think it is important to take a step back every now and again and see academics outside academia - where they are regular mortal people. To see that they can be fairly ignorant about things outside their subjects. To see that alcohol affects them as much as any one else. To see that sometimes when they don't seem to make sense it is because they do not in fact make sense. To see that you may know as much or more about your thesis topic than they do - that one day that thesis could itself be a book that no one will buy.



(1) Actually, it might have been birds from somewhere else - I read about this in Simon Winchester's The Meaning of Everything, a very good history of the Oxford English Dictionary - But it was a few years ago, and I no longer have the book at hand. At any rate, the point stands.

(2) See discussion here: http://www.poliscijobrumors.com/topic.php?id=26495

(3) And most of those who do are grad students, who can't afford to purchase their own copies.

(4) Every so often some major discovery occurs which does cause a tangible change, but these are erratic, unpredictable, and not always positive.

Reference : French Connecting Words

I crib academic French, which is to say, I read it word for word, dictionary in one hand and sheets of grammar notes in the other. This is perfectly doable with French (especially if you've done a bit of Latin), with two hold-ups. The first is that negation is kind of weird - but the notes on the wikipedia page on French grammar explain those in a particularly useful manner, so that's not a huge issue.

The second issue is the random connecting words, which hold sentances together - things like 'but' 'and' & 'since.' I keep a reference sheet for those and live in terror that I will lose it or accidentally toss it out. Thus I thought that I would post it to this blog, so that I have a virtual copy. This post is therefore really more of a personal reference than anything else (an incomplete one at that), but if you find it helpful, then that's all for the good.

• à cause de - because of
• à cela près - excepting that
• à cet effet - to that end / therefore
• à la fois - at a time / at once
• à moins que + SUBJUNCTIVE - unless
• à partir de - starting from
• à peine - hardly / barely / scarcely
• à peu de chose près - more or less
• à peu près - more or less / almost
• à propos - by the way
• à propos de - about / with respect to
• à sa solde - on his behalf
• ailleurs - elsewhere
• ainsi - thus
• ainsi que - as well as / just as
• alors - so / hence
• après - after / afterwards
• au courant - at current / up-to-date
• au fond - deep down / in the depths of
• au moins - at least
• au-delà - beyond
• aujourd'hui - today / at present
• auquel / auxquels - to which / at which
• aussi - too / also /as well / as / therefore
• aussi bien - in the same fashion
• aussitôt - immediately
• aussitôt que - once / as soon as
• autant - so much
• autant de - as much as
• autant que - as much as
• autant que + SUBJUNCTIVE - as far as
• autour - around
• autrement - otherwise
• autrement dit - in other words
• aux - au + le = to the
• avec - with
• bien que - although
• bientôt - soon
• beaucoup - much / very much / a lot
• car - as / since / because / for
• celui - the one
• celui-ci - this one / the latter
• celui-là - that one / the former
• cependant - meanwhile / however
• c'est-à-dire - that is to say
• comme - as / like / how!
• d'abord - primarily
• d'abord et avant tout - first and foremost
• d'abord que - as soon as
• d'ailleurs - besides / furthermore / from elsewhere
• dans la foulée - at the same time
• dans le courant de - in the course of
• dans le même temps - on the other hand / simultaneously
• de temp à autre - now and then
• de temps entemps - from time to time
• de tout façon - regardless
• dehors - outside / outside of
• depuis - since / for / from
• désormais - henceforth 
• donc - therefore / thus
• dont - of which / of whose / whereof
• dequi - of which
• dequel / delaquelle / desquels - of whom
• depuis - since / from / for
• du - of the / some
• du reste - moreover
• en dépit de - in spite of
• en effet - in effect
• en même temps - simultaneously / on the other hand
• en revanche - on the other hand
• en tête - ahead
• enfin - finally / in fact
• entre - between
• grâce à - thanks to
• guère - hardly
• ici - here
• il faut - it is necessary
• il s'agit - It is a question of / It is about
• jadis - once/long ago
• jusqu'à - until / up to / to
• jusqu'à ceque + SUBJUNCTIVE - until a certain time
• jusque - until / up to
• jusqu'ici - hitherto / so far
• l'évidence même - self-evidently
• loin de - far from
• lorsque - when
• mal de tête - headache
• malgré - despite
• même - same
• _______ même - very ______
• même les - even
• moins - less
• ne .... aucune - no / not any
• ne .... aucunement - not / not at all
• ne …. guère - not much / hardly
• ne .... jamais - never
• ne .... nulle part - nowhere
• ne .... nullement - not / not at all
• ne .... personne - nobody
• ne .... plus - no longer
• ne .... point - not / not at all
• ne .... que - only
• ne .... rien - nothing
• nettement - clearly
• nul - no / not any
• nulle part ailleurs - nowhere else
• or - yet/presently
• ou - or/either
• outre - besides
• par ailleurs - furthermore
• par rapport à - in relation to / compared to
• parce que - because
• parfois - sometimes
• parmi - among
• partout ailleurs - everywhere else
• pas autrement - hardly
• pendantque - while / as
• pendant - during / throughout
• peu - not very / few / little
• peu à peu - little by little
• peut-être - maybe / perhaps
• peut être - may be (looks very similar to the previous)
• plus haut - moreover
• plus ou moins - more or less
• plutôt - sooner / instead / kind of
• pour autant - inasmuch as
• près - near / close
• près de - near to
• presque - almost
• puisque - since / because
• quand - when
• quand même - anyway / in spite / [intensifier]
• quant à - as for / according to 
• que - that / than
• quel - which/what
• quelle qu'en - whatever
• quelque - some
• quelque chose - something
• quelque chose de + ADJECTIVE - something which has a quality of [the adjective]
• quelquefois - sometimes
• quelquepart - somewhere
• quelqu'un - anybody / somebody (masculine)
• quelqu'une - anybody / somebody (feminine)
• qu'un - that a
• sans - without
• sans doute - without doubt [i.e. the author is asserting something without properly backing it up]
• sauf - except/unless
• selon - according to / depending on
• semble-t-il - so it seems
• si - if/such
• suivant - next / following
• surtout - especially
• tantôt - sometimes / later / earlier
• tardif - late / later
• tel - such / one
• tête - head / top / beginning
• tôt - early
• toujours - still / always
• tous - all / every
• tout / toute - any
• tout à coup - all of a sudden
• tout à fait - entirely
• tout à l'heure - earlier / later
• tout d'abord - first/primarily
• toutefois - however / nevertheless
• trop - too / too much
• tropde - too much of
• toujours - always / still
• voilà - there is / here is / i.e.
• voire - even / indeed

Written English is the New Latin

The grammar in many of the undergrad essays that I have been marking is appalling. One manifestation of this is a near-universal inability to use apostrophes correctly. I am convinced that the reason for this is that the write how they speak- and their spoken english simply does not match written english.

Now, written language and spoken language are distinct concepts - one is permanent marks on a page and the other is momentary sound vibrations in the air (1). And they don't need to be in anyway connected; in Medieval Europe people spoke English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Polish etc but all wrote in Latin. But in practice the two concepts aren't distinct: written language is understood by analogy with spoken language - when we read we hear the words in our heads.

This causes problems when the two types of language are similar but not exactly the same. Spoken English (in New Zealand at any rate) does not distinguish between "your" and "you're", "there", "their" and "they're" or "orange's" and "oranges". Neither do many of the undergrad essays which I have been reading. These undergrads, I want to stress, are not stupid people. But, increasingly, these distinctions are not intuitive to them.

That is to say, "your" "their" and "orange's" are the vestiges of the English genitive case, which indicates possession. Spoken English is not a case-based system. The only uniquely pronounced genitive forms left are "my" and "his" (2). What this means is that, although these students have been told the rules, they have very little in their spoken language to use as an analogy for these written concepts. The case system is fundamentally foreign to them (3). It is much more intuitive to express case distinctions using word order and connection words like "to" "from" "for" and "by." I think that eventually the old genitives will be lost altogether - in New Zealand English, anyway.

There is precedent for this, in Latin. Classical Latin had six cases for every word, which it could use to express different notions. So a normal word like puella "girl" had all of these forms:

Cases (4) Singular Plural Nominative puella puellae Accusative puellam puellās Genitive puellae puellārum Dative puellae puellīs Ablative puellā  puellīs

This allowed the Latin speaker to express a wide range of meanings, simply by changing the form of the word. But, around the time of Emperor Augustus, Latin began to experience a number of sound changes; these changes were gradual, but the end result was that the long and short vowels merged and final 'm' disappeared. This seriously impacted on the case system, so that the different forms came to be pronounced:

Cases		Singular	Plural
Nominative		puella	puella
Accusative		puella	puellas
Genitive		puella	puellar
Dative		puella	puellis
Ablative		puella	puellis

Which is problematic, particularly in the singular. Normal people, speaking normal Latin (and quite possibly unable to read) could no longer convey meaning using their case system. Instead they had to do that through prepositions and word order. As a result the modern descendants of Latin, such as French, Italian and Spanish don't use a case system (5). The elites had to have the idea of the case system drilled into their heads in schools, but, by and large, they continued to use the case system in their writing, even though they couldn't pronounce it. The common people apparently continued to enjoy hearing (and thus presumably could understand) classical Latin plays, speeches and masses. Eventually the spoken languages (Old French, Old Italian, etcetera) gained enough prestige to be considered worthy of being written in themselves - but that didn't even begin to happen until the 800's.

This, I think, represents the future of English. But if the Latin analogy is anything to go by, then it is not all bad. For one thing, Latin written in the classical style continued to thrive well into the 1700's - that is, over one thousand five hundred years after it had ceased to be spoken in the classical manner. So we need not fear the 'death of English' any time soon. It even extended its range to places that had no tradition of spoken Latin, like Medieval Germany and Scandanavia. With English's increased adoption as a language of international communication, it is already doing this as well (Note also that when this happened, spoken German continued to thrive - the hope is that local languages will likewise survive the spread of written English).

For another thing, as I have mentioned, the death of spoken Latin facilitated its diversification into several new languages, and with those languages, the development of new cultures. Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and French are all noted for their unique literatures and vibrant cultures. The vast Anglosphere, which now contains well over four hundred million native English speakers, and notable for its cultural homogeneity, could well benefit from the diversification of our language.

(1) Or movements made with hands and body in the various Sign Languages - and in fact, I think expressions and body language play a large part in all spoken languages - witness the increased difficulty of communicating with people over the phone.

(2) "her" is an oblique form - it fulfills genitive, dative and accusative functions.

(3) Another example of this is the confusion around the use of "so-and-so and I" vs "so-and-so and me". Both are correct in certain situations, because "I" is nominative (used for the doer of an action) and "me" is accusative/dative (the thing the action is done to). So it should be "Sam and I went to beach", but "a shark attacked Sam and me"

(4) The cases can do several different things and it isn't really important here what those things are, but in case the hypothetical reader is interested:

• Nominative
• The subject of a verb (usually the one doing it) in "The dog sleeps," "the dog runs" and "the dog is fed by its owner" 'the dog' would be nominative in latin
• Both the subject and object of a verb meaning "to be", e.g. "The dog is a corgy" "the dog is tired"
• The vocative case usually looks identical to the nominative, and is used for addressing someone "Hi Stephen!" "Here! doggy!" "Sit, Dog!"
• Accusative
• The object of a verb (the thing that the verb is done to): "the cat chases the dog"
• Duration of time: "the dog howled, for three nights"
• Motion into a place (with a preposition): "the dog went into the house"
• Surprised exclamation "what is rubbing on my leg? The dog!"
• Genitive
• Possession: "Steven saw the dog's owner" and "Steven saw the owner of the dog"
• The whole that something is a part of: "three of the dogs howled" "some of the dogs howled"
• And generally, any noun describing another noun "he has a fear of dogs" or "he saw the movement of the dogs"
• Dative
• An "indirect object" of the verb - common with verbs of giving, "he gave food to the dog" some verbs only have this sort of object - there's usually a sense of motion involved "He ran into a dog"
• An alternative way of expressing possession, especially with a verb meaning"to be" - "The dog of mine is old"
• Purpose of an action "The dog howls for attention"
• What is called a predicative dative: "The dog's health is of concern." 
• Ablative:
• Manner of an action "He shouted with great volume" "The dog ran with great speed" 
• The doer of a passive verb "The dog was fed by the lady"
• The instrument used to do an action "She called her mother by telephone"
• Time when an action occurred "The puppy was born on Tuesday"
• Location where it happened "The dog sat in the yard" "He lived on a mountain" "She went out from the house"
• Phrases that aren't connected to anything else in the sentance, called 'ablative absolutes' "The dog howled, I was surprised"

There are more uses, not all of which fit into neat categories. An important point to make is the English can and does express all these meanings despite largely lacking cases - We use word order and prepositions. Latin used cases and some prepositions.

(5) The only language descended from Latin which retains the cases, so far as I am aware, is Romanian, which still has a combined nominative/accusative case and a combined genitive/dative case.

Mushishi & Kino's Journey

I was recently lent the anime Kino's Journey, about a girl called Kino who travels from country to country, on a talking motorcycle, never staying in one place for more than three days. It is very episodic, with almost no overarching plot, and the focus is as much, or more, on the quirks of the countries than on the main character herself. These countries always prove distopian - there is, for example, the country where the people overthrew the king, set up a democracy and then went mad, reflexively voting to execute everyone who made proposals they disliked, until there is only one citizen left. Not one country she visits is without unpleasant undertones. It is rare that Kino 'fixes' the problem. Often her role is simply to witness the country with us (and get out alive).  Usually it is unclear whether there actually is a problem, whether it is possible to fix it, and whether it should be fixed. At any rate, why should fixing the world be Kino's job?

Kino & Hermes (the motorcycle) of Kino's Journey

The show has a lot in common with one of my very favourite anime, Mushishi, about a man called Ginko who travels from place to place investigating people troubled by spirits. Just like Kino's Journey, it is episodic and focussed on the 'problem' caused by each spirit. These tend to be a bit more esoteric than the issues in Kino's Journey, and much of the point of the show is working out what the problem actually is. There is, for example, the man who thinks he sees the future in his dreams. In fact, he is infected with a spirit which is causing his dreams to become reality. The two anime share a great deal in plot structure, pacing, and the motif of the traveller who must keep on moving which invites comparisons between them.

Ginko of Mushishi

But there are some major differences - Unlike Kino, Ginko takes an active role in trying to fix the issues he encounters - more often than not (though by no means always), he is successful. Mushishi, then, is much more optimistic than Kino's Journey. The solutions Ginko offers usually boil down to 'live more moderately in accordance with nature/the spirits' (though it is never put so generally or so baldly). Usually the discovery of the spirit responsible is a moment of true beauty. By contrast Kino's Journey employs the arc words "The world is not beautiful, therefore it is." Not once does Ginko solve a problem with violence. On the other hand, the only time Kino solves a problem, she does it by killing the country's ruler and inciting a bloodbath.

There is another difference. Mushishi's overall time period is vague, but it is clearly pre-nineteenth century - there is very limited technology, most of it human or animal-powered. The time period of Kino's Journey is even vaguer, but it is a world with exceptionally advanced technology (at least when the plot demands), including cyborgs, mind-altering neurosurgery, and the elimination of work. Most of the time this stuff exists as the plot demands it (One episode revolves around the fact that planes do not exist), but the overall effect is to shift the focus from the relationships of humans with nature found in Mushishi to consideration of the relationships between humans and their technology. Nature largely disappears from the equation. At one point Kino's Journey considers "What do people do when you get rid of work?" a question that Mushishi can never even pose - within its setting that is impossible. The answer that Kino's Journey offers is instructive on its overall philosophy, that if you get rid of work, people will make work - because people don't change; they will always be stressed, violent, mean, gullible, and ignorant.

Why should this be so? Kino ultimately pins the blame on egoism, the belief in a 'self' - a very Buddhist conclusion. The very core idea of Buddhism is that the root cause of suffering is the (allegedly) incorrect belief in a self. Mushishi does not show this sort of Buddhist influence. On the contrary, its focus on the relationships between humanity and a natural world full of spirits, and the solving of problems by changing behaviour is very reminiscent of Shintoism. This I think is the root of the differences between the two shows. Though both made in Japan, they draw on different religious traditions, with very different approaches to humanity and the world.