Neocities

baggebo-the-goober

1 year ago

redesigning my persona rn! im currently redesigning the whole website too because i've had a giant surge of motivation

nessiopeia updated their site.

1 year ago

music/2022-06-10-Instrument:-The-Saxafone

balckwell updated their site.

1 year ago

Essays/Wretched

Essays/Daikon

Essays/Nekomachi

3 likes

henryperyer updated their site.

1 year ago

posts/2023.10.23-Bolano-Essay

sorbier saddleblasters

1 year ago

thanks for pointing out the delineation of xiang3 vs think. it's tempting to draw conclusions about what the two languages presume is primarily on your mind (desires vs beliefs). in general i think it's really fun to observe how the two different language (families) draw lines around concepts and group them into words -- thinking/speaking in mandarin changes how i think about things compared to english.

2 likes

sorbier 1 year ago

that said i think (haha, jue2de) that the average mandarin word performs more roles than the average english word, which renders mandarin more figurative/conceptual broadly. apologies for stating it so definitively though -- agree that it's totally my subjective impression.

balckwell updated their site.

1 year ago

Essays/ValidMedium

Main

Main/Essays

index

3 likes

balckwell 1 year ago

new essay: IS THIS WEBSITE A VALID LITERARY MEDIUM? -- in which i do, in fact, get around to answering the question

saddleblasters 1 year ago

I know we've been talking back and forth about this topic for the past year and the half, but seeing your thoughts on it all written down in a single essay was the exact jolt of motivation I needed to get out of bed and continue the neverending battle of sitting with my hands on my keyboard in bewilderment, trying once again to write

4 likes

sorbier 1 year ago

thanks beautifully for this essay, i resonate with a lot with your approach to your website. i've also been thinking about the essays in compiled form, yes all together on the website, but also perhaps in one volume (book). just like how an artist or photographer's disparate works gain a different meaning when combined and sequenced in one larger exhibit.

1 like

sorbier 1 year ago

i wonder what you think about "releasing a collection of essays" as it were.

balckwell 1 year ago

i've definitely thought about publishing a collection, but i know how much work it is to publish a book by one's self, and i don't know if i'd necessarily get enough out of it (creatively) to justify the whole thing. i am much more interested in archival than anything else -- for example, i tend to go for "complete works" rather than "collected works" when i have the opportunity.

balckwell 1 year ago

when creating my website, i've been thinking a lot about whether i'd like to organize the essays chronologically or by subject matter. setting aside the difficulty of determining the subject matter and/or type of many of my essays, i personally tend to prefer chronological organization, so that i can understand the writer's development over time.

balckwell 1 year ago

and that's how i tend to think of my essays: each as part as a long journey. and this is how i've always read websites/blogs i like -- starting from the very beginning. so my trouble in curating a collection would be: do i want to publish a BEST OF BALCKWELL? or do i want to publish archival volumes? and one way to solve this dilemma is to do neither.

henryperyer updated their site.

1 year ago

about

sorbier balckwell

1 year ago

"It makes it seem like people who read/speak Chinese do so in some utterly alien way": yes, thanks for verbalising part of why I didn't like it. also, I hadn't thought about word-by-word as mostly for illustrating grammatical construction, but it makes a lot of sense! i agree (:

3 likes

sorbier updated their site.

1 year ago

blog/middleage

blog

3 likes

nessiopeia updated their site.

1 year ago

bio

reviews

writing/2024-12-08-Grog

reviews/2025-02-23-Why-Album-of-the-Year-Lists-are-Gay

reviews/posts2025-02-23-Why-Album-of-the-Year-Lists-are-Gay

emilynhoward updated their site.

1 year ago

changelog

poetry/untitled

poetry/tidepoolmammal

poetry/subjectlines

poetry/goldenrods

poetry/coshoctontribune

poetry/beforewhatwasthere

poetry/beforethecares

poetry/beforeicallyou

8 likes

emilynhoward 1 year ago

An audio collection of some of my poems went live yesterday. I've linked it to the invididual poems so you can hear them being read by me.

5 likes

balckwell updated their site.

1 year ago

Essays/Xanadu

Essays/Wretched

Essays/Irreconcilable

not_found

index

Main

Main/Essays

Essays/Retreat

Essays/ReachOut2

Essays/ReachOut1

2 likes

balckwell 1 year ago

added most of the essays in the "Best of Personal Essays" section + a "not_found" page because of all the links that don't yet go anywhere!

paddyagius updated their site.

1 year ago

writingpieces/grasslands

index

archive

bisha sorbier

1 year ago

I also use to have a Geocities page...nice to see u around here.

1 like

sorbier updated their site.

1 year ago

blog/translation

blog

7 likes

sorbier 1 year ago

blog post: https://sorbier.neocities.org/blog/translation

2 likes

balckwell 1 year ago

I feel like the main utility of a "literal" translation would be attempting to explain the grammatical structure of a language to someone trying to learn. The sentence that emerges is usually complete nonsense in the target language, but reveals the way that the words and particles fit together in the original.

balckwell 1 year ago

However, a "literal" translation that is just the dictionary definition of each word one after the other (like in the example you linked) is quite unhelpful, and I think you're right to say that it exoticizes the language. It makes it seem like people who read/speak Chinese do so in some utterly alien way, when in reality they parse sentences as naturally and fluidly as someone would in English.

1 like

saddleblasters 1 year ago

I've seen non-chinese-speakers talk this way before about the two meanings of 想, but even in English, think also has (at least) two very different usages: (1) to think/contemplate about something, and (2) to think/believe something is true. the second usage isn't at all a logical necessity -- chinese doesn't really use 想 that way, you'd typically use 认为 or 觉得 to express it

1 like

saddleblasters 1 year ago

so one could easily take an english sentence like "I think this is beautiful" and translate it word by word into Chinese to make all sorts of weird conjectures about the English-speakers' psychology

1 like

nessiopeia updated their site.

1 year ago