#anna wierzbicka

[nofatclips]

Nightride by Me And That Man from the album Songs of Love and Death - Director: Roman Przylipiak

[asfaltics]

a something of one of many, as they please

  In the annexed drawing — a section — will be seen a something of one of these ₁ a something, of —         It would now show as tab fourteen, I’m told, of exhibit fifty-eight. ₂ — a something of several subjects ₃ a something of many qualities ₄ a something of weird, touched with a vague ₅ few words, a “something” of, slow-moving and quiet and soft-spoken, ₆ still more or less a something of this contradiction ₇ —         a kind of thing, a something of one kind at many times,         in one hand [m] part for holding ₈         one fiber per cc for asbestos ₂ — you will incur especially when you let spirits come as they please. ₇

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sources :

1 C. Bruce Allen, “Shakespeares’s ‘Inns’,” in The Art-Journal 13 (1874) : 325 / more 2 Lederer, cross-examination of Gyan Rahjans, in Proceedings, Royal Commission on matters of health and safety arising from the use of asbestos in Ontario. Vol. 42 A. (June 21, 1982) : 128 / more 3 “The Higher Education of Women in Sind,” by Miss T. V. Lakhani, M. A., Dip. Ed. (Joined College in 1922), in The Golden Jubilee Book of Dayaram Jethmal Sind College, Karachi. (1887-1937). Edited by Prof. L. H. Ajwani (Karachi, 1939) : 95-97 (96) / more 4 Second Chapter. The Judgement. in Hegel’s Doctrine of Formal Logic, being a translation of the first section of the Subjunctive Logic; with introduction and notes by H. S. Macran (Oxford, 1912; original text 1816) / more 5 “The Last Days of Edgar Allen Poe,” in Scribner’s Monthly 15 (March 1878) : 707-716 (707) / more 6 Virginia Cuppaige, in “Personal Abstraction, Four Painters’ Views,” artists talk (NYC, May 9, 1980), in Judy Seigel, ed., Mutiny and the Mainstream : Talk that Changed Art, 1975-1990 (New York: Midmarch Arts Press, 1992) : 168-171 / more 7 “Spiritualism through the World” (by R. B. H.), in Human Nature : A Monthly Record of Zoistic Science and Intelligence... No. 10 (London, January 1, 1868) : 606-622 (611) / more 8 Keith Allan, “On the semantics of cup,” in Helen Bromhead and Zhengdao Ye, eds., Meaning, Life and Culture : In conversation with Anna Wierzbicka (2020) : 441-460 / more

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aside —

“I’d been working on the index of an encyclopaedia, and later on a dictionary. This kind of work makes you feel light-headed, brainwashed, neutral, slightly dazed, as though you’d been smoking pot. The business of ranking words in alphabetical and arbitrary columns without any concession to sense, value, or category, produces a kind of occupational disease, a detachment that in its turn makes everything seem threateningly equal, meaningful or unmeaningful.”

Jennifer Dawson, her afterword to reissue of her The Ha-Ha (1961; 1985; Scribner 2025) : 175 : link

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all a something of’s  

[linguisten]

Behemoth, bully, thief: how the English language is taking over the planet

No language in history has dominated the world quite like English does today. Is there any point in resisting? [text | podcast]

In some ways, the worst threat may come not from the global onrush of modernity, but from an idea: that a single language should suit every purpose, and that being monolingual is therefore somehow “normal”. This is something that’s often assumed reflexively by those of us who live most of our lives in English, but historically speaking, monolingualism is something of an aberration.

[el-candelabro]

Toki Pona: el idioma que demuestra que menos puede significar más Toki Pona demuestra cómo un idioma con apenas 120–137 palabras puede expresar ideas complejas y replantear la relación entre lenguaje, pensamiento y realidad.... https://revistaliterariaelcandelabro.blog/2026/07/toki-pona-lengua-minimalista-y-pensamiento/

Toki Pona: el idioma que demuestra que menos puede significar más

[riotnsurf]

Veronica ‘zhengdao’ Ye in “Translating lives” edited by Anna Wierzbicka and Mary Besemeres

[e-stranger]

Minimal English - metalanguage

English is not an international language and it is wrong that scolars use it as if it is.

Describing diversity is impossible if you use English, you need a metalanguage.

Depression is an English concept. NSM makes it possible to talk about it.

Anna Wierzbicka cited from :

In this video she explains, she has nothing against people being naturally imprisonned in their language, but that she opposes scolars’ and for instance also politicians’ thoughtless use of it. I read Anna Wierzbicka’s book Imprisoned in English: The Hazards of English as a Default Language, because I can imagine that this indeed might be a problem. 

Moreover the blurp for the book promised Anna Wierzbicka had a solution.

NSM (Natural Semantic Metalanguage) has 65 primes (a human conceptual vocabulary) and a simple syntax.

Minimal English is a new derivative of the Natural semantic metalanguage research, with the first major publication in 2018. It is a reduced form of English designed for non-specialists to use when requiring clarity of expression or easily translatable materials. Minimal English uses an expanded set of vocabulary to the semantic primes. It includes the proposed universal and near-universal molecules, as well as non-universal words which can assist in clarity. Minimal English differs from other simple Englishes (such as Basic English) as it has been specifically designed for maximal cross-translatability. From : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_semantic_metalanguage

There are two kinds of English words. Words of one kind are like this:     if someone says something with these English words,         many people in many places on Earth can know well what this       someone wants to say. There are not many words of this kind. When someone says something with English words of this kind, this someone is saying it in "Minimal English".

When someone says something in Minimal English,     people in many places on Earth can know well what this someone wants to say. At the same time, people in these places can say the same thing with other words,     not English words. From “Global English, Minimal English: Towards better intercultural communication” Cliff Goddard and Anna Wierzbicka 2014 : http://hrc.cass.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/hrc/u78/Global_English_Minimal_English%20position%20papers.pdf

Ps "Minimal English has no priviledged status as a conceptual mini language of human understanding. From a conceptual point of view, Minimal Spanish, Minimal Chinese, or Minimal Arabic would of course do just as well."  

[the-narrowsea]

Sky: Something very big people can see it people can think like this about this something: it is a place it is above all other places it is far from people.

Anna Wierzbicka We learned about her theories today in linguistics and this just sounded so much like a poem to me.

[metasyn]

Interesting.