I felt like writing

Recently my classmates and I began character study, and with it, discovered our Myers-Briggs personality type. First of all character study is, for me, probably the most interesting part of a book. In a well written book, the character is hard to analyze, which makes it pleasantly confusing. All I can ask for in a book is that it initally confuses me. I do enjoy being confused, and it does happen noticably often. Rather than complain about my confusion, I like to work things out in my head.

That's one of the best parts of reading; unlike television or other electronic media, it leaves gaps for your mind to fill. How complex is an image or audio compared to the expertise of the human mind? I don't need a character depicted for me if I can interpret as much (probably more) from a written passage. It's one of the reasons I'm partial to reading. Sometimes I wonder how little the future generations will read. Looking at reading texts from as late as the 50's, it's apparant that we're expected to read less and less.

Perhaps there's nothing wrong with that, perhaps reading is ultimatley going to be only as complex as the common spoken word. The other day, I asked my dad "why, if we are required to go to school anyway, don't they teach us the vocabulary and grammar of English like we see in Shakespeare? It's not like we have peasants anymore, all kids must go to school, and although a disturbing abundance of Americans are illiterate the majority of youths in schools are not. So, why is all this vocabulary being discarded?"

You could say that the meaning of our language hasn't changed, because new meanings have been added to words like "programme" very recently. Is it a good thing to pack more meanings into words in favour of using the 'right' word for the situation? All languages become simpler with time. It can make them easier to understand, and thus learn, and also more efficient. For instance, the invention of the Korean alphabet gave rise to a healthy burst of literacy in Korea, since it was a lot simpler than the Chinese system. Look at Latin, the language of the Romans. It's overtly complex, yet, surprisingly efficient. Where's the medium? Is there one? In the scheme of things the human race is relativley new. I suppose we can't be expected to develop a language that's efficient, easy to learn, as well as boundlessley expressive.

I prefer the complex English, left unmarred by nonsense words added to the dictionary in the newest century like "grrrl." Yes, that is a word in the dictionary. No, I will never shame myself by using it. Another new word in the dictionary is "muggle," which is acceptable, since words get added to the dictionary based on literature all the time (i.e. "ravenous" and "utopian.") I digress.

It seems my digression is becoming more frequent the more I blog. I think that's a good thing. When I started this blog, I was going to talk about the personality types Briggs and Myers categorized, yet I went off on a spiel on something remarkably unrelated. I hope it's still interesting..?