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| Exegi
monumentum aere
perennius
PRAEFAMUR VENIAM SIQUID EXOTICI AC FORENSIS SERMONIS RUDIS LOCUTOR OFFENDERO...LECTOR INTENDE: LAETABARIS |
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| Meet the
founder, the chairman and the only member of the still nonexistant Society
for Preservation of the Diversity of Earth. Although nonexistant, the society
has an extensive program - a lot of work and no one to do it.
This could be the beginning of a beautiful cybermonument that I am about to build to myself. It usually works and it has nothing to do with modesty. People write a sort of curriculum vitae (CV, WC, what do they reduce it to?) and put it on the web as if anyone cares. But, someone always does. People actually read it. So I decided to overcome my modesty and publish a portion of my head for the world to see. I have some more recent pictures but I got used to this one, so I'll leave it. I was born at some point and it occurred almost a year after the man first landed on the Moon, not that the fact has any significance but nor does my birth. My birth was not a giant leap for mankind, but now that I was there, I was expected to do something useful for mankind and after some unsuccessful attempts with mathematics I realized that I must pursue other ways to knowledge and that I would have to learn all the languages in which that knowledge has been presented. I would need several dozens of lives for that venture and by the time I overcome that first obstacle (the language) I would probably forget why I began all that in the first place. Quest for knowledge thus turns into exploring the languages which becomes a purpose to itself and a passion. So, I obtained a degree in linguistics. In that way I officially proclaimed my interests to the society. Passion does not count, but a degree does. But linguistics is not about languages. It is about whether we communicate at all, whether we call things something by agreement or by some inborn instincts. It considers various languages just various phenomena of the same ability contained in every human brain. They are therefore not worth exploring, comparing, learning nor perserving. Linguistics is often an abstract science close to philosophy. The word philology describes my area of interest better: language as related with culture it supports - its literature, music, art, poetry, religion. My heroes are not Chomsky, Bloomfield and de Saussure nor even Wilhelm von Humboldt, but Champolion, Hrozny, Heinrich Schliemann and Michael Ventris. I took any chance I could to learn a bit of any language available and frequented all the courses of most commonly known languages. But every information leads to another, every language as well. I am not ashamed to admit that most of my English I learned from the Beatles, my Italian from Ramazzotti and Jovanotti as well as from Topolino, Asterix, Alan Ford and Martin Mystere. |
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| Here are
some links that are useful for mastering the basics of some more or less
neglected languages:
Icelandic - phrases
What follows is a list of books, films and music that are cult or just plain good in my narrow subjective view. If I had money, I would probably put them into categories and reward the people who created them, not unlike Nobel did. Most of them contain, besides their artistic value, pedagogical and educational values. They are, what an ungrateful thing to say, good language materials. It is as ungrateful to say the same of the Bible but it is true. Bible is the most translated book in the world and in many languages its translation meant the beginning of literacy and writing. CROATIAN:
ENGLISH:
FRENCH:
GERMAN:
ITALIAN:
POLISH:
SPANISH:
JAPANESE:
PERSIAN:
UKRAINIAN:
HEBREW:
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and in the end:
The love you take is equal to the
love you make.
farewell in any language,
Marko Kovacic