it seems that my words were unclear.
A very unfortunate situation indeed, for I have asked for some thoughts, co-operation and brainstorming. I think you were about to give it, but were hindered by my not-so-clear introduction.
Allow me to have a tabula rasa in this subject.
---
I volunteer at an organization (I recently quitted - another story). Each month this year members and volunteers organize a special evening. Each month is focused on one of the disabled group of people.
If you think of the circle of 'handicapped' people, please think about it in a broader sense. Those who have some serious physical disability (like having no sight for example) are clearly handicapped. The mentally challenged are also. Their place and potential in life is limited, right?
There are the homeless, the poor, the list is endless.
---
It seems to me that somehow, everyone is handicapped in some way. But I DO think it's another story. Well, I have to learn to keep my mouth shut.
---
Okay, here's the organization.
Each month.
A disabled group.
It's October.
The subject is 'family'.
---
Sometime in the spring, it was 'women/women with kids'.
Do you see how they fit into the category of handicapped?
I don't know about your circumstances, but in Hungary a woman gets less salary than a man in the same position in the very same firm.
Women are supposed to work PLUS do all the cooking AND housekeeping and be that lovey-dovey wife, while not being acknowledged for all those tremendeous efforts they usually do for the sake of the family.
---
Feminism put aside, October is about FAMILY.
I don't know about your circumstances, but in Hungary there's no such a thing as tax by families. We have things like a long maternity leave (for 1,5 YEARS after the baby is born the mother receives 75% of her last salary), a monthly childcare allowance paid by employers.
It may all sound nice, but money-wise that's just about it.
There are 3 of us who are doing this project.
We have the assumption that FAMILY as such is decaying.
---
I don't know about your circumstances, but apart from the XXth century, FAMILY in Hungary used to mean the co-living of generations. Children grew up hard working, yes, that is one side of the coin, BUT they were surrounded not only by their grandparents, but in most cases, by their grand-grandparents as well. Sometimes the very old had to work, too, but they were also there to tell stories, fables and ease any pain the young met.
---
Where are those (grand-) grandparents now?
Where is a normal family now?
---
And now, about the word ROOT - that stirred up my kind readers the most.
In the Hungarian language, root (gyökér) refers to
1.) the part of a plant that is within the ground. It is to supply the plant with nutrients and water, right?
2.) quite metaphorically, the very same word refer to one's family.
If you come to think about it was your parents (and grandparents) who have made you come to alive, and they did supply you with all the necessary elements to make you become of what you are now. I'm speaking, as I more often than not, BOTH in the physical, psychological and mental sense. I mean all the three aspects. If one's adopted, one got the body from his real parents, but all the rest must be coming from the adoptive parents, right?
Without a root, a plant dies.
And so do humans without a family.
Anyone disagreeing?
There.
---
Now, the word gyökér (root) has undergone a change in the past few decades.
From being a neutral word, it became a negative judgement about one's mental capacities. A synonim for being dumb, inarticulate, incoherent, unintelligent, ignorant. Thanks Thesaurus, I love you.
I remember when in highschool I was taught the word 'g-a-y'. It was just an ordinary word for me, nothing more. (Special punctuation is for search engines. Or rather, against them.)
Later on I was informed that it had other, very specific connotations attached to it.
Would I, in my right mind use the very same 3-letter word to describe someone who's happy?/animate?/colorful?/bright?
No way!
---
So the word gyökér (root), which used to have a nice feeling around it, for it referred to something nutritive, familiar (I'm playing with words here, people), desireable... Now people see the word as something negative.
I believe in the power of words.
Why else would I be writing this?
If we attach meanings to words, there'll be meaning within them.
---
If we think the very word 'root' is undesireable, then sooner or later we'll begin having the same ideas about the meaning BEHIND the pure combination of four letters. (root).
My hypothesis is that derogating the word 'root' means derogating the meaning behind it, too.
This event will NOT be a linguistic lecture for sure.
It is just an example.
We have started to consider our 'roots' as something negative.
I think this is a TERRIBLE MISTAKE.
---
I love this word: mistake.
For me it means that we mis-take. Choose something falsely.
(Did I mention I was conservative, btw? Perhaps, to mainstream liberalists like those in the leadership of that women's organization my ideas will mean nothing.)
I think that's enough.
Tell me to shoot myself.
11 megjegyzés:
Very interesting. I see why you would make the argument that women with children are in away handicapped by law, by work, by sexism, by the obligations and responsibilities of being a parent. I also find this argument about the change in root also applying to the word family. Has it become such a detriment in Hungary to have a family? Usually slang and derivations of words start with the younger generations. Do they look down on having families? Perhaps there is the root of the problem (pun!). If the younger generation have now seen having children and having a family to be a negative consequence, then I can see how it could have filtered down to the use of the word root. But I am not a linguist and it would be nice if a linguist could interpret this phenomenon.
Very interesting. If you want to post more as you develop it, I will be interested to read it.
Hi, svelsofa. Ello asked me to come by to talk about roots as a linguist in training, and so voila! One of the really interesting things to me about the post is how many parallels there are between Hungarian and English. This must be cultural influence since, as you know, Hungarian is not an Indo-European language, meaning both languages can't have just inherited the meanings through an older common language. Instead, it must be influence between Hungarians, Austrians, etc., living together or at least nearby.
The connections I saw between English and Hungarian is that, while root does not mean family exactly in English, it does mean your ancestors and where you came from. Someone who is researching their great great grandmother is exploring their roots. Also, if an American with Hungarian ancestry were to just go visit Hungary, even if they never met a family member, they would be exploring their roots.
I want to say that "dumb as a root" is also an expression in English. But Google only finds one hit of that. I think we more often compare stupid things to stumps than roots, but they are kind of similar, no? Both of them, by appearance, are these dirty things that just kind of sit there.
Anyway, at least two things could be going on. One option is just that root in Hungarian has had two meanings for a long time. It's always meant both ignorant and family. However, the first one is taking off right now in popularity. It's really common for words with some taboo or negative meaning to take over any related meanings. Like g-a-y (to copy your earlier hyphens). That's actually my mom's name who is in her 60s. But the taboo meaning took over and it's almost impossible to use the word anymore to mean happy. Most words that get associated with s-e-x are the same. I'd list them, but I might break my hyphen key. The key is that the taboo or racy meaning and the other non-taboo meaning often have little to do with each other. There is a connection historically often, but the more common use of the word g-a-y now did not originate because people thought of happiness as somehow related to people who love the same s-e-x.
The other possibility is closer to what you are worrying about, I think. This possibility is that people are thinking about families as stupid and so they then start using the word more for being stupid in general. One way to (attempt to) tell the difference between possibility 1 and possibility 2 is to find an old Hungarian dictionary, one from a few decades ago before the changes in family you report. Is one of the old meanings of root being ignorant even 50 years ago? If so, the odds are that the two meanings are separate and that it doesn't reveal so much about people's modern view of the family. (this is over-simplifying).
And hello again!
I love it when Paca talks linguistics! He is so smart!
Ello,
I'm glad I was able to make you see my point about women being 'handicapped', at least in some terms.
I agree: the root of the problem //(liked the pun!), PLUS Hungarians do have this expression 'root of a problem'// must be what you said.
People have begun seeing having a family, having attached to one's roots despisable THUS they started using the word 'root' in a negative manner.
Also thanks for sending Pacatrue over for his bright insights!
Pacatrue,
Although Hungarian is truly not an Indo-European language, it's vocabulary has only a little to do with the closeness of Austria. We do have taken some of their words over, especially in the areas of house-building, living in the city etc., but the basic words (like 'root' for example) have nothing to do with German.
I'm glad you put it so much better than me: root does NOT exactly mean FAMILY, but rather ancestors. For a native Hungarian with a bit of a linguistic sense, 'root' does have the feeling of something one can depend upon, something one stems from - just like a plant.
And whoo-hoo, we also use stupid as a stump. OR, we use it 'He's a stump'.
Stump (tuskó) however has a connotation of being a bit aggressive, deliberately stupid, while root (gyökér) is just plain stupid.
I will check upon your suggestion. My assumption is that gyökér (root) basically had NO negative feelings attached to it.
It was attached later on (as you said for your second option)
Thanks for dropping by!
SzélsőFa (no I didn't find the right symbols, I just copied it.)
Actually, I did also come to this site. Somehow I thought it was going to be in Hungarian so I went to the other one first.
And I was blown away by the discussion. It was so thoughtful and interesting and you have such a good way with words - even English ones.
I think I would make a distinction between 'disability" and "prejudice" or "cultural barriers." I would say that we think of (and I'm being descriptive here, not prescriptive) disibility as being a characteristic of the individual. Being blind then would mean an individual is missing a physical ability that is considered 'normal.' Thus it is harder to negotiate the normal world because it was constructed for 'normal' people.
But prejudice is a constructed set of barriers to intentionally prevent groups of people from gaining equal access to things. So there are lots of rules that in the past (in the US) intentionally kept women out of law schools, out of jobs, from voting, etc.
These aren't problems inherent in women themselves (except maybe pregnancy). Men could raise children, there could be daycare centers, etc.
But I think your point is a provocative one which makes us think about having to remove barriers to women in the sense that we (in the US) are required to take down unnecessary barriers for the disabled.
Anyway, I had my wife read this too and her reaction was similar to mine (about how good it was.)
I do have one minor issue - while I like the visual effect of the black line, on my computer the writing goes through it and thus reading the post was difficult.
Cheers,
Hi Steve2,
I'm glad you liked this entry and the discussion. I am also thankful for those who commented - a discussion is always built up of at least more than one people, right?
My entries are not always like this one. But you can find that for yourself by browsing through the acrhives. I suggest using the labels (bewasre: 'labels' is translated, it is 'Címkék': but the rest is in English, so no need to worry.
I liked your arguments.
Being a woman should not mean any restriction for the person involved. Separate ways, different ways of thinking and behaviour, yes. But when gender is unimportant, there should be no differences.
I'm glad you took your wife to see what I have :)))
You know this entry wass written b/c this is part of my preparation to a conscious raising event.
And I was eager to see opinions beside my own :)
Re: black line.
Very interesting. I don't see no black line.
Do you mean the stripes on the right handed side bar, underneath links, archives and such?
OR do you mean the bolded sentence in the middle of the post?
No one has ever complained about black lines, please I need some more info to see what are those.
Thanks!
Hi Szelsofa,
This post is very similar to one of the very first posts I read on Bernita's blog.
It touches my heart. I do think that the concept of 'family' is changing worldwide. And I think it's more than a shame, it's tragic.
The more people who are in your life to support and encourage you, the stronger you are. My husband's best friend is Pakistani. He lives with his wife and extended family in this big, gorgeous house. My husband and I envy them for their family, not their house.
I just made a post about 'I hate my mother.' I don't have anyone except my husband to lean on. And when he's traveling, I have no one in case of emergency. It's hard. I think a lot of people are like this. At least in the U.S. And I think it's terrible for a society in general.
One of the reasons I like the book "A Fine Balance" is because it touches on this issue in a very real way. It takes place in India in the 1970s. I think you'll like it.
And I also think women have ALWAYS worked harder. So there!!
:-)
Hello Church Lady,
it is tragic.
That's what I wll try to convey within that club of women on 29 October.
Big, supportive families are really fascinating.
And yes, I do remember you having said that about your mother. I am so sorry, again, about that.
Perhaps my comments revealed my feelings.
I will check that book in the Internet.
Right now, I'm busy reading The Reincarnationist - a nice book sent to me by a friend of mine...do you happen to know her, btw?
Women DID have other, more difficult jobs then men, I agree. Perhaps, b/c we are made of a better substance :)))
I see I was on the right track. Yes, I think it's a very good topic for your project. Anything that holds your back from your natural state is a handicap. Raising children is a sacrifice. Yes, it has amazing rewards, but it remains a sacrifice.
Thanks Jason for the remarks and suppport. I will let you all know about how this project goes/went.
It is due on 29 October.
Megjegyzés küldése