Fragments: Words and the Mind

1. If something does not make sense, it is usually because it is not true.

2. Words are the lens to focus one’s mind.
Sometimes I write down my mind in order to know what i was thinking. And reversely, I refused to give voice to things I am afraid to admit.

3. Trim every word. Words have exact meanings and don’t make piles of meaningless things together without a specific, comprehensible purpose.

4. Change we into I.

5. Each word has a specific meaning and I use it for a specific purpose. Every sentence has its evidence. It exists because it is true, not because I want it to be true. It exists because the previous sentence with reason leads to it and the one after it needs it to fulfil the reasoning process.

6. Kevin Rudd still would use your tie “不全面”. I don’t know how many such mistakes I would make when I am to say something. Here is a goal to reach: one day I will feel totally at home with English and have the capability to detect any such mistakes in English just like I know it is totally funny to say someone’s tie is "不全面"。

7. It is not working – to track down all the new words on a notebook. I’ve done almost 5 note-books but they don’t make such big a difference as I expected. At least I never wanted to look back to brush up-that was too much, and most importantly, boring. This is the truth, no matter how unwilling I wanted to admit it. However much fun it was to take the words down to my notebooks, it is not working. Anything, not just words. Next time I use a notebook, I will not use it to take new words down without actually thinking about it-just for the purpose of future reference-something I never manage to do later. First of all, I will make it make sense to me. Then I will write down the brainchild of mine. If I am to track down something, it must be things I will always find happy seeing, something relevant and pertinent to thoughts, not some irrelevant piles a words in a chaos.

8.

"no one who is really involved in the landscape ever sees the landscape." George Orwell

No one who is really involved in the expressing of ideas ever noticed the language. If when i listen to a conversation, my focusing point is still the language, then i am not good enough with it. Of course that is a natural process and i can not bypass it. What i need to do is to get over that stage as fast as possible.

9. Why some language learners are rather blatant in using words that usually embarrass native speakers? In the language-learning point of view, i think it is because when someone is not very familiar with a word, he says it without calling up a mental picture, or even if he does, a rather vague one. We would be readier to say "fuck" than "cao", for the obvious reason that "cao" calls up a more vivid picture upon speaking.