10-03-2016, 03:57 PM
Thank you - I loved that! Even muted 'Antique Road Show' to listen.
I attended a lecture by David Vann - well more a reading, really, and I wrote this later. But listening to Beowulf read aloud fluently by someone who'd studied the language it was written in - was really mind-blowing for me. He believes technology has influenced language hugely, always, but more so lately, and soon the only vowel will be a schwa.
On listening to David Vann
The writer reads
from Beowulf; words
take up their sounds and fly
off the page; first time, for me.
A thousand-year-ago invasion
heard in the long Germanic vowels,
language as war spoil, class marker.
Fascination with this text
begins to make sense
interrupted by vibration
from my neighbour’s mobile phone’s
silent tone pulsation;
as his thumbs button-dance
‘wuv u’ appears as text.
Will this be seen, next millenium,
as an indication of one way
technology refreshed language?
Or one way it destroyed? Will all
vowels come to the schwa, eventually?
I məst stədy ləngəstəcs nəxt.
I attended a lecture by David Vann - well more a reading, really, and I wrote this later. But listening to Beowulf read aloud fluently by someone who'd studied the language it was written in - was really mind-blowing for me. He believes technology has influenced language hugely, always, but more so lately, and soon the only vowel will be a schwa.
On listening to David Vann
The writer reads
from Beowulf; words
take up their sounds and fly
off the page; first time, for me.
A thousand-year-ago invasion
heard in the long Germanic vowels,
language as war spoil, class marker.
Fascination with this text
begins to make sense
interrupted by vibration
from my neighbour’s mobile phone’s
silent tone pulsation;
as his thumbs button-dance
‘wuv u’ appears as text.
Will this be seen, next millenium,
as an indication of one way
technology refreshed language?
Or one way it destroyed? Will all
vowels come to the schwa, eventually?
I məst stədy ləngəstəcs nəxt.