I'm writing my talk that I will deliver at a conference in Chicago on Friday. While I publish my articles both in English and in Spanish, I only present conference talks in Spanish. Mostly, I do it because in English I still have an accent which has a tendency to get stronger at the most inopportune moments. (Whenever I try to say the word "focus", it always comes out sounding like "fuck us" or even "fuck ass." Of course, it always manages to wake up the audience, but it's also kind of embarrassing.) In Spanish, though, my pronunciation is very Argentinean with pretty much no trace of an extraneous accent.
Writing in Spanish is very liberating for me. I can be as wordy as I like and create endlessly convoluted sentences. While writing in English presupposes editing down anything even marginally superfluous, in Spanish creating beautiful verbal flourishes is considered a mark of a good writing style.
So if you notice that my posts have become even wordier that usual, bear with me. I'll be done with the conference soon and will go back to trying to control my wordiness.
14 comments:
I like flowery English! Have you read any Tom Robbins? He is one of my four favorite novelists.
No, I don't think I read this novelist. Maybe I should check him out. :-) Who are the other three? :-)
My flowery English style was beaten out of me (not literally but verbally) at Yale.
The other three are Nalo Hopkinson, Nnedi Okorafor, and Erica Jong. I confess that each of these has gotten into the ranks of my favorites by virtue of a single book, although I like their other stuff, too. For Erica Jong, the book is Fanny published around 1979 ot so. For Nalo, it is Midnight Robber, and for Nnedi it is Who Fears Death.
In the interests of full disclosure, Nalo is a friend of mine and I know Nnedi slightly, but they would both be on the list without any personal acquaintance involved.
I know Erica Jong but not the other two authors. Thanks for the recommendation, I will be checking them out.
You are welcome! BTW, my two favorite books of Tom Robbins are Skinny Legs and All and Jitterbug Perfume, although, again, I like most all of his novels.
I *thought* you were getting wordier! I wasn't mistaken.
I like your verbosity, please retain it for the blog?
Thank you for the support, Vinod Khare! The wordiness is only going to grow until the end of next week. :-)
"The wordiness is only going to grow until the end of next week. :-)"
This is ambiguous; it could be made less so if it were more ornately worded. Does it mean that the wordiness will continue growing and not diminish at all until the end of next week, and possibly beyond? Or does it mean that it will grow only until the end of next week and thereafter will cease to grow?
"This is ambiguous; it could be made less so if it were more ornately worded."
-:-) Funny. Your point is well-taken. :-)
"I'll be done with the conference soon and will go back to trying to control my wordiness."
:-( Is this necessary?
Are you hinting that my Ivy education was a COMPLETE waste of time? :-) :-)
Did you learn that ivy is harmful to stone or masonry walls? If so then your education was certainly not useless. From what I hear from you and others, though, it may perhaps not have been the optimal university experience.
I love, love, love flowery prose. I don't read Spanish, so I keep cherishing it when I encounter it in English. So, if your ivy education, as you say, attempted to slaughter the floral excesses of the written word on the vine, to unmix the mixed metaphors of literary joy, then I fear that from my standpoint it was what can only be described as semantic tragedy. I am glad you escaped with a Ph. D. in a sufficiently short time that you still possess the capability.
(As you see, I cannot really write flowery prose myself; I must rely on others to provide it.)
"Did you learn that ivy is harmful to stone or masonry walls"
-I swear to god I had no idea. :-) I must have been a pretty lousy student, huh? :-)
Since you are such a valued reader and commenter, I promise to write at least one post in my pre-Yale style and dedicate it to you. It will have to be after my conference, though, because that is something that will need to be survived.
Thank you!!!
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