words matter

[L]anguage isn't just a body of vocabulary or a set of grammatical rules. It is a flash of the human spirit, a vehicle though which the soul of a particular culture comes into the material world. And when we lose a language, we lose a vital element of the human dream." - Anthropologist Wade Davis, from here.

As I've said before, I'm not a good writer, but perhaps it's not quite true. I'm ok - better than some, with a decent vocabulary and enough understanding to deploy the occasional 25 cent word with aplomb (see! there I went). But I read enough to know that I can't make words sing, not the way I see in some fiction or poetry.

Right now I'm in the middle of the the second Captain Alatriste novel and I'm finding that there are some really beautiful bits in this series, many about love of country (there is one wonderfully melancholy section in the first describing the poet Quevedo's love for Spain despite its corruption and decline) and some of the most moving prose about young love I've ever read - I find myself really feeling for poor Inigo (the narrator), and his childhood crush on Angelica de Alquezar. He makes it clear that she breaks his heart in some undescribed way when they're adults, but he still describes her as "as beautiful as Lucifer before his expulsion from Paradise" (p. 79).

And this is just the English translation. I wish I could read the original Spanish. I've never spoken or read another language fluently but I often suspect I'm missing some nuance or art that simply isn't translatable from the original.

On a more practical level, there's a lot of costume (and other) research out there in languages I can't read. I've been feeding two Spanish articles into Babelfish and cobbling together a textile-specific glossary as meanings become apparent, but I know I'm missing something. I'm even told of magnificent finds in the Czech Republic, but all the research is in Czech!

One day when I have abundant free time and single-minded, laser-like concentration, I may well pick up a Rosetta Stone for one language or another and give it another stab, though frankly I don't give myself much hope as 4 years of high school French and 3 of (admittedly half-hearted) college Italian haven't managed to stick :P But still, knowing only English (and incompletely, IMHO, at that) I'm aware that I'm missing some flavors and shades.