Faldage and I will be out of pocket for a while, but I wanted to leave this think-piece to come back to.

When I was growing up, it used to bother me no end that the impressionistic painting of life I was experiencing was systematically hived into little boxes, for greater understanding, by my parents and my teachers. I clearly remember being synæsthetic then; by the time I was 10 that was gone.

In college, as I made my way through linguistic theory, I was struck by the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and the very idea that the words we use could influence our perceptions. At the same time, I was grappling with brand-name religion, yet another (to my mind) way of categorizing phenomena to make them easier to deal with. (sorry, I don't mean this to be a religion thread!! Just another example of how we understand life)

I've come to accept that categories and patterns can be good, useful things. So now I'm wondering: wordminstrel has classified Faldage as both a fastidious and as an evangelical grammarian, thereby (to my mind) neatly compartmentalizing him into a single, one-dimensional, easy-to-understand box.

Wordminstrel, do you have such sobriquets for any of the rest of us? And does this help with understanding?

Anyone else like to comment on this apparent need of ours to compartmentalize?

interesting point Anna..

humans, tend to place things in catagories... nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs.... even thought some words can fit into every catagory (i think of the t shirt explaining how the word F*** or Sh*t, can be any one of these parts of speech, but many common words can be one or more parts of speech)

we catorgories ourselves too, (male/female, husband/wife, single/married, young/old, conservative/liberal, and any other number of ways... and sometimes, by doing so, we effect our personality.

i used to be, stealing a line from dicken's, "a mere child". i had married young, and had children young, and more over, had married a man 7 years my senior (a big gap at age 18!)who also had many friend 7 to 20 years older than him. so i was always the youngest person in our 'set'.

at some point, i realised my tag line, "i am but a mere child" was one i used to absolve myself of responsiblity. i stoppped using it, and that was part of my process of "growing up"...

(My ex-husband, used and still uses occationaly, the cute line, "Don't try to confuse me with the facts, i have already made up my mind." --it remains one of the lines i hate!)

these little tag lines, expressions, that we use at points in our life, can be self defining. and while we use them, while we define ourselves with them, they do define us change the words, and thing change....

My former father in law was self conscious about losing his hair... but one day, (in the late 1950's) Don Ameiche (not sure of the spelling of his name) arrived in the neighborhood of their summer home, by helicopter... as he stepped off the 'copter, the strong down winds, mussed up his thick wavy hair.. his daugter, (a child at the time,) looked up to her father and said, "that would never happen to you daddy, you always look neat, you even have a neat head" -- her comment changed Frank's veiw-- he wasn't balding, but neat, right down to his head, and his didn't have thick unrully hair that would get blown about in the wind...her words let him see his baldness in a new way, and the new view was a more possitive one, one he could accept, (even if he didn't cherise) and his baldness bothered him less.

Word minstral comments reflect a perseption of Faldage... and words are very powerful. The don't really effect Faldage unless he takes them to heart, and lets them.

it is interesting that we have two adages about words and their power...

"sticks and stones might break my bones, but words will never harm me..."
and
"The pen is a mighter septer than the sword."

both are true...

i think this idea could be a wonderful thread, a wonderful way to explore how words compartmentalize, or liberate us.

Helen, it's nice to see you here again. A thoughtful post, as always. :-)

Anna, I had to look up synesthesia--still not certain how it relates to compartmentalizing, but--and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, too, in Atomica: A hypothesis holding that the structure of a language affects the perceptions of reality of its speakers and thus influences their thought patterns and worldviews.

[After Edward SAPIR and Benjamin Lee WHORF.]

We were (and are, I guess) certainly different people. I wanted everything in life to be compartmentalized, black and white. Still do, as a matter of fact, though I've learned better. (I've noticed the same trait in my daughter; my son, like his daddy, is more of a "whatever" type of person). I am trying to learn to quit struggling against the fact that the world is the way it is and not like I'd like it to be (thanks, muchly, to my very good friend CK for helping me along in this--you're a master).

I've mentioned before, I think, the strong tendency of us humans to put things into patterns that we recognize. Possibly due to our innate fear of the unknown?

I wish I knew more about what the theory means when it says: "...the structure of a language affects the perceptions of reality of its speakers...". Structure of a language sounds to me like grammar. I'm short on time just now, but I may look up more on the theory later, if no one has enlightened me by the time I get back. For now I'll say that I can't see grammar influencing my reality. If I say it was a good book or a book good, I still thought it was good. In one of the Anne of Green Gables books, her friend quotes, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet", and Anne replies something like, Oh, no--I'm sure if it was called a skunk cabbage it wouldn't smell as sweet.

Thank you very much for starting this thread! I was just thinking yesterday that word play is all well and good, but I am ready for some meat! It's been too long since we've had a good discussion.

a one-sentence summation of Sapir-Whorf isn't going to do you much good. here's a pretty good overview of Sapir-Whorf and the antithesis:
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/whorf.html

to me, what's meant by "structure of a language" isn't grammar but more along the lines of patterns of interpretation. here's another statement one could debate: the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis advocates that language has the power to dictate man's world view in a tyrannical way.

First of all, I'm not sure that a Klingon's view of linguistics has much validity unless the language under review consists primarily of words describing war, weapons, death, veangence, revenge and personal honour. The structure of such a language would also have to facilitate an easy juxtaposition of the words within sentence structures in such a way as to make the subtle nuances of meaning unambiguous to all within the culture. Of course, it wouldn't matter to beings not steeped in the culture; the Klingons just kill them anyway.

- Pfranz

Thanks, tsuwm, for the link.

Yes, those compartments do help us order thought--and do help us understand each other better if we're trying to understand each other. And I welcome those times that someone has provided insight so that I could break a compartment down and throw it away to make room for a new one that did the job better. If we want to grow in understanding, don't we beg to have our fondest theories challenged and proven to be incorrect?

Language is, at least, convenient. It works; gets the job of communication done in many, perhaps countless, instances.

But not all. The biggest problem I see in restricting our comprehension to language is that omission of the emotional response--that response that is nearly entirely unrelated to language. I'm not talking about emotional response to anything that involves language, such as poetry or the evening news, but emotional response to life itself beyond words. Spring is here. Dead would be the heart that cannot respond to its unfolding. Yesterday I was downtown Richmond, walking by the enormous equestrian monument of General Robert E. Lee, and passed a man with electric clippers clipping away at boxwoods. The smell of wet grass hit me full force in the warm air, and I felt like bursting into tears, the greenness of the scent so overcame me with pure pleasure. The experience was immediately emotional and unrelated to language. In describing the experience to you, I take you into the event by setting the scene. I use language to take you there so you'll understand where I was and what was going on when the scent of wet grass hit me. But my language had nothing to do with my strong emotional response. It was simply the grass and the scent and my receptivity at that moment to the scent.

My experience--who I am and how I build language--has one wing eternally flapping in the Emotional; the other flaps in the Intuitive. I wonder how Sapir and Whorf accounted for the emotions and intuition having forceful influences in making us who we are?

I think that the base argument - Popper's view vs Whorf's - is about as easily resolved as nature vs nurture or whether ontogeny really does recapitulate phylogeny.

I'm pretty sure there's a link between the language one speaks and the way (the order) in which one thinks. I believe that one of the reasons why native English speakers (i.e. people whose first language is English) are so direct is that in English the verb is always closely associated with its subject and is never far removed from the object, either. The order is usually subject - verb- object, so we are used to saying that "Jack loves Jill". If we spoke in other languages the options might be "Jill Jack loves" or even "loves Jill Jack". The English approach has obviously arisen from pragmatism. Assuming that Romance languages and English are pretty similar in this respect, the same would be true of most southern European and some eastern European language speakers.

Languages such as German, where word order is often paramount such as in the usage of the future tense, must impose a different mode of thinking on people who use those languages. I don't know and can't pretend to guess exactly in what way it would be different, but maybe Wsieber can tell us if I'm right or not.

Languages which have evolved different forms for different purposes - high Mandarin or the Japanese "kudasai" forms come to mind here - would seem to have a whole mindset behind them.

The inexactness of language is a barrier, of course. You can describe something very exactly - "A hill that is 100 feet high, with a house halfway up it with white wooden walls and a red roof, with a field of wheat stretching down to the road from the house, and with trees with bright green foliage on the crest". This is a pretty full description as these things go. But any two people will interpret the description differently, and will add and subtract from the picture mentally derived from the words based on the individual's past experience and future expectations. Word pictures, even between fluent speakers of the same language, are at worst surreal and at best impressionistic. But between speakers of two different languages they may well be best described as minimalist abstract representations. Each of the terms in the sentence above may have a completely different "meaning" in each of the languages the description is translated into.

My tuppence worth, anyway!

- Pfranz

I'm also quite addicted to this subject. At once it reminded me of a thread I started in the distant past
http://wordsmith.org/board/showflat.pl?Cat=&Board=words&Number=3665&page=&view=&sb=&vc=1

There is a well known danger in compartmentalising that can be expressed as:

“Categorise it (or him/her), label it and put it on the shelf – oh yes, here comes another one, I know all about those, stick it with the first.”

The entity becomes the label, and the danger is the label never changes because we use the label as an identifier that means we no longer have to think about the entity in a qualitative or analytical way. We’ve done that already. The label identifies certain attributes but may prevent us seeing any others that are present. An example of this kind of trap might be:

“He’s a communist, indict him.” “OK Senator, but he’s also a talented musician, what specific threat does he represent to us?” “Doesn’t matter, the label says communist.”

There is, using Anna’s words, the danger of “neatly compartmentalizing him into a single, one-dimensional, easy-to-understand box.”

A label as a short hand way of defining a set of characteristics is fine and helps us communicate faster and more efficiently but only so long as it defines the characteristics and not the entity. I think.

Oh, that was fun, reading that again, wsieber! An innocent question about the front of the neck (which was never definitively answered, by the way) went into strangling, garroting, and vampires! We haven't changed!
**********************************************************

The entity becomes the label, and the danger is the label never changes because we use the label as an identifier that means we no longer have to think about the entity in a qualitative or analytical way. We’ve done that already. The label identifies certain attributes but may prevent us seeing any others that are present.
Exactly, dxb. Way back when I did my undergraduate field placement, I was sent a time or two to the day care for retarded children. I suppose one of the purposes of the placement was fulfilled, because as I told the director, I learned that they (the retarded "they") have personalities, needs, and wants, just like "we" do. (Before anyone condemns me for not realizing that earlier, please keep in mind that I was 20 at the time.) And going even further back, I read a book that told the story of a young boy's going blind, and his journey into adulthood and independence. He went into a store one time, and wrote that he could tell the clerk was someone who thought of him as a person who couldn't see, not as a blind person. He put that, when blind comes first, it kind of sets up a fence around person.

Jackie-- Re: I've mentioned before, I think, the strong tendency of us humans to put things into patterns that we recognize.

Ha! another one of my favorite "quotes" is "Truly gifted thinkers find order, where others only see disorder" (and of course, is myself as the former, not the latter!)

but there is some validity to language effecting thought-

two areas come to mind. One is Time( which we have discussed here at AWAD)and Maps.

Norther europeans, and related groups see time as rigid, and specific. 2:00 PM means exactly that. some native americans, and many other cultures have very different views. 2:00 means "the afternoon" .

Japan, curiously is one of those places that actively adopted the european sense of time (to a point, that while they still follow the chinese zodiac, and think this is the year of the Ram, New Year's was January 1st, not the Chinese lunar New Year. and there trains run to very strict schedules, and being late (even by a minute or two)can be an extremely rude act. This was not always so in Japan. It was something they desided upon, and incorporated into their culture, (in the 1850's.) (still haven't unpacked dictionaries, or reference books... maijing dynesty-- spelled wrong...)

Hispanic, and hispanic influenced cultures (for one) don't treat time the same way. they use the same clocks, (both digital and analog)but culturally, and linguistically, time is more fluid.
when English speakers say tomorrow,they mean one day from now...but manana is not the same...it could be one day from now, or it could be some unspecified time in the future.

Maps too,(written expression of geographic space)also effect thinking....

at some point in the late 1700,new surveying tools,and more accurate ways of measuring, resulted in a new map of france being created. and the more accurate map shrunk the country. The king at the time(one of the Louis's)is said to have commented to the head of the surrey taskforce, "Your map has lost me more territory than any battle ever fought in the history of France" --(and map making in france was a very politically unpopular occupation for a long time afterwards)

American indians, knew their way about the land scape, and had reference points (some still exist in NYC, the 'Rocking Stone', a glacial erratic, that weights over 3 tons, but that can be set to rocking by a child, if you know where to push, now part of the Bronx Zoo) , but they never made maps.

maps are a way of defining land and once defined as a concrete thing,crossing threads, it can then be 'owned' in a way that is total foriegn to most of the american indians tribes ways of thinking....

the aboriginal people of austalia, too, navigated with out maps, and the polinasian navigated the south pacific, travelling thousands of miles, on what westerner's called "uncharted" waters. but obviously, if they where consistantly able to find small island, in a vast ocean, they had "charted" them in some way... they just didn't make maps, charts, visual displays that NEuropians used.

I'm thinking at this moment about the movie Castaway. At first, he "lives and dies by the clock." Movie opens with him lecturing new Russian FedEx employees. Everything's rush, rush, rush. Now, now, now. Lost on the island, though, he charts the position of the sun's rays shining into a cave by the month. At the end of the flick, he's standing a crossroads in the middle of nowhere, USA, and takes a good, long while to ponder his choices. (Object lessons aside, I'm thankful that there are people at FedEx who are anal about keeping things at a brisk pace.)

Next subject.

The lack of accurate time-keeping was probably both a cause and effect of cultural properties. In the west (and none of these ideas are my own, but espoused by Landes in his "Wealth and Poverty of Nations"), having clocks actually improved efficiency. People worked dawn to dusk. In the summer they worked long hours, in the winter much less. With clocks, people could actually work (and produce) consistently throughout the year. In China, as a counter-example, the emporer moved people about. The emporer (through his agents) told laborers where to move (sometimes entire villages), when to be at work, when to go home. China didn't develop beyond very simple time-keeping mechanisms. In Europe, by contrast, the village clock was a prized possession.

I don't know who first said "Necessity is the mother of invention," but I think there must be a lot of truth to it. People, individually or collectively, develop what skills, what technology, and what ideas they require to survive, to thrive, to make their lives easier. The Chinese didn't develop an accurate clock because they didn't need one. In other cultures and other places, it could be that geography played a role. When it's 95% and hotter 3-5 hours in the middle of the day and there's no air-conditioning, it's probably not a good work strategy to labor frenetically (like the pre-castway, FedEx guy) - probably even a seriously bad survival stategy.

It may be true that maplessness affected the way that Native Americans viewed land ownership, but did they need it? For hunter-gatherers why would anyone need land as an individual? (Bet hackles were raised when tribe X decided they wanted to hunt on tribe Y's side of the river though!) I'm not sure whether sedentary NAs farmed collectively or individually, but I wouldn't reckon they would actually need to start marking territory unless the commodity was scarce. At that time, for individual tribes, I can imagine they had plenty of room. OTOH, the colonists were coming from a culture where they already had a sense of land ownership - not an easy sense to be rid of once acquired.

Clearly maps are handy for marking territory and for finding one's way reliably. I'm not sure about polynesians navigating the oceans reliably without maps. Did they record the failed attempts? Writing things down, whether maps or words, is a very useful thing for a culture to have - regardless of whether they own things.

k

a rose by any other name
Jackie, I have to agree with Anne. The rose would physiclly smell the same but I bet you wouldn't hear anybody singing about "My wild Irish skunk cabbage" nor would it be THE FLOWER to give to mothers, graduates and lovers.
At the risk of being a mugwump defined by my father as a political bird that likes to sit on the fence with his mug on one side and his wump on the other I think it is a mistake to say that either language shapes our world view or is shaped by it. Nothing in life is that simple. A change in our culture will cause a change in language which reinforces and advances the new trend. At one time the community good was primary and we talked about people. Now more and more the individual is paramount and we speak of a large group of persons. English speaking cultures tend to be much less formal and English is one of the few languages without specific formal and informal second person pronouns. We also lack gender specific articles. In Spanish "the" translates as el (masc.) and la (fem.) How can this not reinforce the traditional roles when the vast majority of household appliances are la cuchina (kitchen), la lavadora (washer), la batadora (mixer). The three main exceptions are the toaster, microwave and refridgerator. It will be interesting to see if the language changes when the roles finally do.
Incidentally I pointed this out to my Spanish teacher and she had never noticed it. The influence over us is so tied into our thought processes that we are not aware of it. And if we do become aware then does that influence lose power?
PS I have seen a Polenesian chart. It looked a bit like a dreamcatcher with the cords representing prevailing wave directions and shell beads the islands.

A bit long for 2 cents, I'll call it my 3 cents worth.

The English approach has obviously arisen from pragmatism
It would be just as well-founded to think that pragmatism has arisen from the structure of the English language. Rather difficult to disentangle cause and effect, here. I think pragmatism is the the first layer of philosophy that grows when the conquerors have settled for good. Higher layers take some centuries longer.
I don't see much essential difference in the role of word order between English and German: Some variations in word order are used to convey different meanings, emphasis etc., and others are simply wrong.

RE:. In Spanish "the" translates as el (masc.) and la (fem.) How can this not reinforce the traditional roles when the vast majority of household appliances are la cuchina (kitchen), la lavadora (washer), la batadora (mixer).

reading this, i thought about english (language) terms, and how they have effected me and my thinking...

civilized areas have woods and forests, but area that we wish to see as "undeveloped", and in need of our interference, are "jungles". the continent of europe, which DNA test now show to populated with people who are extremely genetically close, is in habitted by many different nationalities, but Africa, a continent that has many radically different groups (evident by physical appearences, and modern DNA results) has only "tribes".

The American Indians of NA, were "tribes", too.

and we have discussed in the past, english feminine ending, which are slowly going away --i.e., actor/actress, waiter/waitress, aviator/aviatrix, and so on.

I personally think the feminine ending should go... and i am curious, was there ever originally a seamster?(and as more sewing was done at home, by women, the masculine trade died out, leaving only taylors, and seamstress?
(tayloring is a very specific kind of sewing, a seamstress is one who can sew simple straight seams, as might be found on skirts, or hems, or linens.)

of troy, I attended a rather lengthy workshop on African cultural groups. The speakers, professors from several universities and specialists in African studies, drove home the point again and again that the word 'tribes' was highly offensive to the peoples of Africa and to black or African-Americans alike. We were instructed to refer to the peoples as 'nations'--such as the Yuruba nation. You realize, I'd guess knowing your broad reading, that these nations are independent of the political boundaries that are meaningless with regards to African nationalities.

Interestingly, Native Americans refer to their own membership as either tribes or nations. Do these groups in Africa form autonomous governments, making them making them nations or they simply culturally similar?

And on the jungles vs woods thing, I've known a fair number of people who have spent a lot of time in both and say that there is a difference. Though they never said it in exactly those terms, the words clearly seem pretty apt to these people. I've spent a bit of time in the woods myself and it aint a bit like what these fellas describe a jungle to be like.

This really sounds like some post hoc fallacy to me. We have woods, because we have woods. We have forests because we have forests. We actually DO have (if my geography serves me) a few jungles in tropical regions in U.S. territory - and they're very commonly refered to as such - in Hawaii, in Peurto Rico, possibly in other U.S. possessions.

k

And on the jungles vs woods thing.. there is a difference.

well, yeah! jungles got big snakes and stuff!
-ron o.

well, yeah! jungles got big snakes and stuff!


Well, sneer what you like, but I'm just not sure. I've never seen a snake in the wild in the U.S. that was more than maybe 6 or 7 feet long. I'm sure there are bigger ones, though, maybe 8 or 9 foot behemoths. But 12 feet? 15? I've heared of em, but I've got suspicions.

Besides which, I realize HI has snakes, but I don't think they're native to their jungles and yet we still call 'em jungles. Look, I don't toss my tea in the ocean and say "look at the icebergs." There's a difference in magnitude between staring down at a tiny cube and looking straight on at the bane of the Titanic - and that difference exists someplace else other than the admittedly small range between my two ears. We distinguish between things when we notice differences sufficient to warrant distinction, and YES, many times when they aren't. I know there are people who can look into the television snow and see alien abductors.

I don't doubt that words are used to justify imperialism, colonialism, every nasty thing that everyone always wanted to believe about western governements, religions, people, true or contrived. (I don't even doubt there are people who are convinced they should be deeply offended by the of these terms - no doubt at all.) I just don't think this is a good example.

k

re:We actually DO have (if my geography serves me) a few jungles in tropical regions in U.S. territory - and they're very commonly refered to as such - in Hawaii, in Peurto Rico, possibly in other U.S. possessions.


are they? or are they called tropical rain forests? (and over on the pacific north west (fiberbabe been around lately?) we have temperate rain forests...

Jungles.. are wild, unmanged, uncharted(to european eyes)messy areas..(and we still use jungle in the messy sense...the was a jungle of wires behind the computer, connecting it to a printer, a phone, a scanner, with several power cords as well...

jungle tend to mean a place with unknown risks, and unknown life forms.

forests, can be wild(american, with lots of under brush, and wild growth), or managed, (european style), hard wood, pine,redwood, tropical, or rain-- but forest implies a wooded area, that is know,(ie, civilized in some way!)

not that forest can't be dangerous, with as they say in Oz,"with lions and tigers and bears"--which are known dangers...

Woods are some times used for extremely large forests...(The back woods (of kentucky, or other part of southern US, or the Piney woods--for the once vast stands in georgia and alabama area, or the north woods(new england and how US'ers define canadian woods.), or even the great redwoods of north west. woods are wilder areas than forests.. but jungles are areas that are "unknown"-- but of course they weren't unknown to the indiginous people who lived in them, only to the europeans who came to exploit them!

was there ever originally a seamster?

Yes, according to Atomica. (YCLIU)

Just wanted to say that I took well, yeah! jungles got big snakes and stuff! as a joke, not a sneer.

Just wanted to say that I took yeah! jungles got big snakes and stuff! a joke, not a sneer.

So did I.

joke v. sneer

thanks guys, I coulnd't recall using the sneer-icon.

It's like we've been trying to tell ya, Ron - without emoticons, it's a jungle out there.<eg>

I was being melodramatic, facetious. Never thought you were being nasty.
Rude of me to suggest it, I suppose, but I thought *I* was being funny.

k

Wordminstrel, do you have such sobriquets for any of the rest of us? And does this help with understanding?

"No" and "No" [but it contributes to a lot of mis-understanding].

How gracefully you have made your point.

I thought *I* was being funny.
Sorry, Sweetie. Not the first time I've misunderstood, here.

wordminstrel: *kiss*

I'm not sure. I've always heard the terms rain-forest and jungle used interchangeably. True, jungles are usually thought of as impenetrable. Jungle implies tangled and unmanaged, because jungles ARE tangled and unmanaged. If there were no difference, we wouldn't need another word. As I attempt to recall conversations I've had with people who have been to jungles, the distinquishing factors have been 1) it's a lot darker throughout much more of a jungle, 2) it is more difficult to travel than through a mere woods. Although even in mere forests there are thickets and brambles and stands and other obstructions which are generally trivial to circum-navigate.

I say 'always' above, but the term rain-forest has only come to my attention in the last 25 years or so. Somewhere in that time-span it just became more common to hear "Amazon rain-forest" instead of "Amazon jungle," for example. There may be a slight difference in usage - rain-forest tends to be used when talking about the object in theoretical terms, whereas jungle seems to be more commonly used when the speaker is talking about actually going into or having gone into it. I'm not sure. Haven't really thought too much about it except to try to decipher those conversations of years ago.

It worked for Upton Sinclair because Jungles are places where the laws of modern, human civilization have not applied until recently. I don't think what's happening is that we use words like jungle to describe places where we are trying to justify our involvement. Or, if it does happen, it's completely ancilary to the fact that those places really are jungles.

Jungles do tend to be uncharted - by westerners - or anyone. It's one thing to have a verbal "map," mosaicked from various personal recollections - quite another to have a consistent, persistent, piece of paper that anyone can use. Of course, such a highfalutin thing as a map is more trouble than it's worth to the indigenous people, same as it would be for one of us when we're walking from our house to our local market. But if we go past the areas with which we are commonly familiar, maps tend to be very, very handy - and far easier to use, and far, far more reliable than verbal descriptions. (For those of us who can read them. My wife can't and that's why my daughters are navigators when we travel.)

I wonder now - did the early western explorer/conquerors refer to wooded areas in the temperate zone as jungles as a way of justifying intrusion?

k

Per AHD, the defining characteristic of a jungle is the tangled, impenetrable growth, the defining factor of a rain forest is the annual rainfall (duh).

This would seem to me to allow for a large area of overlap.

As an interesting sidebar, the word jungle comes from the Sanskrit word for desert.

In reply to:

---

the word jungle comes from the Sanskrit word for desert.

---

So what does 'desert' really mean? In Sanskrit?

the word jungle comes from the Sanskrit word for desert.

This IS interesting! The common word for jungle/forest in Sanskrit is ARANYAM (AH-RUN-YUM). This word doesn't seem to be the root for jungle and I am unaware of any other such word.

It seems more likely that the word derives from Hindi. Now, Hindi has the same word for forest; it's only pronounced more as JUN-GUHL. This seems more likely to be the root.
Also, the Hindi word for a savage, or a crude person, or a person with poor manners is JUN-GLEE.

[aside] Hindi and Sanskrit share a common word for jungle too: VANAM (VUH_NUM) in Sanskrit, VAN (VUN) in Hindi and BAN (BUN) in Bengali.

The word for desert in Sanskrit is MARUH (MUH-ROOH). However, I must add, that it has been some years since I kept up with Sanskrit and it is therefore, quite probable that my knowledge is rusty. Shall pull out my dictionaries over the weekend and post again if I find something.

The basis of misunderstandings is seldom the denotation, the dictionary meaning of a word which can be looked up, but the connotation, the emotional content. eg which do you prefer, a rich dessert or a heavy one; a voluptious woman or a mildly obese one; a flower that has a scent or one that has a smell?

..more common to hear "Amazon rain-forest" instead of "Amazon jungle," for example. There may be a slight difference in usage..

http://www.ladatco.com/rf-abt.htm#What is a rainforest?

Edit:
http://www.therainforestsite.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/CTDSites


First time I did that! Thanks, eta and Faldage. Sorry I sent the thread wide with that link.

[Edit 2]
A nagging worry that the newly posted link was not quite all right, made me return to try it myself. True to form, it doesn't work! To save myself from further embarassment, I have posted the link to the main page of the site. Phew!