I’m surprised you don’t reference the etymology of weird - check it out if you don’t already know it. I thought I did but it turns out it goes back further than the weird sisters of Shakespeare.
I love that suggestion, Josh! I'll be honest--instead of doing my research, I just sat and looked at the word "weird" for like 10 minutes yesterday and stone-cold tripped. The way the "ei" breaks the rule "i before e except after c." The way the pronunciation and spelling feel almost dissonant. The other words hiding within it: wired. weir. wed. red. ire. dire. Looking up the etymology, I'm thrilled to learn it used to be spelled "wyrd," which makes WAY more sense! I am fascinated that it comes from the idea of destiny and those who can control fate. That would be weird, but perhaps not in the sense I've been feeling, although it aligns in a beautiful way with the weirdness of Sun Ra. I LOVE the connection to the notion of "to turn, to wind." These make beautiful sense to me (and now I'm tripping on the word "wind"!) Lots for me to chew on here :-) Thank you!
Words are weird. The e before i looks less strange to me after trying to learn German for the past couple of years. I've also been thinking a lot recently about the differences and intersections between spoken and written language, with pronunciation kind of kicking off that thought. Speaking comes before writing so writing is initially an attempt to represent spoken words, but it's imperfect as all representations are - including speaking which is an attempt to communicate thoughts and realities. Ultimately in learning new languages I've come to the understanding that despite attempts to make rules about how to turn written words back into sounds, written language is just an approximation of the spoken and so the spoken needs to be learned separately in a sense - but both can help our brains (thoughts) learn the other - and part of learning languages is learning other ways of thinking. This is all pretty well off the topic of the original post, but I still think it's all connected - or maybe it's just that everything is connected.
I’m surprised you don’t reference the etymology of weird - check it out if you don’t already know it. I thought I did but it turns out it goes back further than the weird sisters of Shakespeare.
I love that suggestion, Josh! I'll be honest--instead of doing my research, I just sat and looked at the word "weird" for like 10 minutes yesterday and stone-cold tripped. The way the "ei" breaks the rule "i before e except after c." The way the pronunciation and spelling feel almost dissonant. The other words hiding within it: wired. weir. wed. red. ire. dire. Looking up the etymology, I'm thrilled to learn it used to be spelled "wyrd," which makes WAY more sense! I am fascinated that it comes from the idea of destiny and those who can control fate. That would be weird, but perhaps not in the sense I've been feeling, although it aligns in a beautiful way with the weirdness of Sun Ra. I LOVE the connection to the notion of "to turn, to wind." These make beautiful sense to me (and now I'm tripping on the word "wind"!) Lots for me to chew on here :-) Thank you!
Words are weird. The e before i looks less strange to me after trying to learn German for the past couple of years. I've also been thinking a lot recently about the differences and intersections between spoken and written language, with pronunciation kind of kicking off that thought. Speaking comes before writing so writing is initially an attempt to represent spoken words, but it's imperfect as all representations are - including speaking which is an attempt to communicate thoughts and realities. Ultimately in learning new languages I've come to the understanding that despite attempts to make rules about how to turn written words back into sounds, written language is just an approximation of the spoken and so the spoken needs to be learned separately in a sense - but both can help our brains (thoughts) learn the other - and part of learning languages is learning other ways of thinking. This is all pretty well off the topic of the original post, but I still think it's all connected - or maybe it's just that everything is connected.