the world is a tempestuous place. rain muted my vision into an unfocused swirl of wind and grey, constantly changing shape, changing pattern
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house rules for wordsnachtwyrmDecember 1 2008, 06:17:04 UTC
Words are tools and should do what we tell them.
In the absence of understanding how the chinese play with their words, you could invent your own mechanics of playing with their words.
You could end up with something similar to engrish (which at times can be unintentionally brilliant), but you could also end up with something awesome, like Rollins' burning missive from Boris in the Czech Republic. The merger of the basics of a language with the structure and traditions of a different language can make some really interesting and cool imagery. Nothing will capture quite the same image as "fat, bald technologist be insane" did.
Sometimes not knowing what you aren't supposed to do is better than knowing the rules.
(Normally, i wouldn't advocate that kind of thing because most people need the rules to be minimally coherent, but i think you have a facility with expression that makes the risk of tragedy slim.)
I feel this way about Spanish. I don't know how good your Chinese is, but I feel like I'm at this maddening level where I can express myself basically but couldn't write anything that both made sense and sounded good. Because with English I know the intricacies of connotation, which is something I fear I'll never have in a language I didn't grow up speaking.
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In the absence of understanding how the chinese play with their words, you could invent your own mechanics of playing with their words.
You could end up with something similar to engrish (which at times can be unintentionally brilliant), but you could also end up with something awesome, like Rollins' burning missive from Boris in the Czech Republic.
The merger of the basics of a language with the structure and traditions of a different language can make some really interesting and cool imagery. Nothing will capture quite the same image as "fat, bald technologist be insane" did.
Sometimes not knowing what you aren't supposed to do is better than knowing the rules.
(Normally, i wouldn't advocate that kind of thing because most people need the rules to be minimally coherent, but i think you have a facility with expression that makes the risk of tragedy slim.)
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