Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Assignment 8 (Tower of Babel) Drew Sorenson

Here we have yet another strange passage from that book so full of strange passages. In the beginning, all humans evidently spoke the same language (like Star Trek). So they said to one another, "hey, let's make some bricks and a city and a tower that may stretch to the heavens and give us a name lest we be scattered across the face of the earth." Neither the reason these people were concerned about being scattered across earth nor the reason they thought building a city and a tower and having a name would prevent such an occurrence are clear. God saw that they did these things and so for seemingly no reason drove them across all of earth and messed with their language so they all couldn't understand one another.


As to my next language, I should like to learn Klingon, Vulcan, or Mando'a (and you thought my learning Latin was useless). Klingon is an angry language (much like German) spoken by the Klingon Empire in Star Trek and includes a large number of grunts and other guttural sounds. While I would like to learn Vulcan (the language spoken by the Vulcans in Star Trek), human voice boxes are incapable of speaking certain syllables (hence we never hear Mr. Spock's first name, as it is unable to be spoken by human beings) and so that is unlikely. Mando'a (or Mandalorian, as it is more commonly known) is one of the most interesting languages here. Spoken by the people of the planet Mandalore (the most famous of which are Jango and Boba Fett) in Star Wars, it is a mostly spoken language as well as being completely gender neutral (gender being interpreted using context) while using a great deal of enclitic add-ons.

"Genesis 11. The Holy Bible: King James Version." Genesis 11. The Holy Bible: King James Version. Web. 29 Oct. 2014. http://www.bartleby.com/108/01/11.html#1.

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