1952 Tango languages and understanding
Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2003 10:02:04 -0300
From: Alberto Gesualdi <clambat2001@YAHOO.COM.AR>
Subject: Tango languages and understanding
Dear friends from Tango list
It seems the discussion about languages and Tango that started peacefully , has run havoc .
I think that the core of the discussion was about the understanding of Tango vocabulary , so I will like to go back to the start with this : the understanding.
There is not a consensus about what kind of language is to be used with usual words related to tango. Take for instance "ochos" , that some tango people refers as "eights".
I take some lessons with Carlos Gavito and Marcela Duran here in Buenos Aires, some time ago ( year 2001 I think). A part of the class , was "embellishment for women".
So Gavito asked one woman , a good dancer and as far as I know , spanish fluent since she was a Buenos Aires native
"Please do an ocho"
The woman made a forward ocho
Gavito insisted " no, please, again, do an ocho "
The woman do again an ocho , by moving his feet with a pivot with the other feet. Once again Gavito" maybe I am not expressing myself properly . I will ask Marcela. Please Marcela, do an ocho
And then Marcela Duran , do an ocho . She used his feet , make the same feet movement than the woman, but ..... draw an 8 with the point of his feet in the floor"
Then Gavito said " when I asked you to do an 8 , I was intending to express that this is the kind of embellishment I would like to practice, how to use the simple steps and improve them with embellishments . If the floor was a blackboard and you have a chalk on you r feet, after the practice, all the floor have to be covered with 8s"
This is I think, one thing to comment about how the understanding is so difficult, even if the language is shared between teacher and students.
There is something very interesting written by Baruch Spinoza, the philosopher , about the improvement of understanding. He intend to complete the work, as a Treatise for the emendation of intellect, but death caught him in the middle of the work. However what was left was so valuable that was published after his death , incomplete . This are some paragraphs that I would like to quote
Warm regards
Alberto Gesualdi
Buenos Aires
[19]
Reflection shows that all modes of perception or knowledge may be reduced to four:- I. (2) Perception arising from hearsay or from some sign which everyone may name as he please. II. (3) Perception arising from mere experience - that is, form experience not yet classified by the intellect, and only so called because the given event has happened to take place, and we have no contradictory fact to set against it, so that it therefore remains unassailed in our minds. III. (19:4) Perception arising when the essence of one thing is inferred from another thing, but not adequately; this comes when [f] from some effect we gather its cause, or when it is inferred from some general proposition that some property is always present. IV. (5) Lastly, there is the perception arising when a thing is perceived solely through its essence, or through the knowledge of its proximate cause.
[20]
All these kinds of perception I will illustrate by examples. (2) By hearsay I know the day of my birth, my parentage, and other matters about which I have never felt any doubt. (3) By mere experience I know that I shall die, for this I can affirm from having seen that others like myself have died, though all did not live for the same period, or die by the same disease. (4) I know by mere experience that oil has the property of feeding fire, and water of extinguishing it. (5) In the same way I know that a dog is a barking animal, man a rational animal, and in fact nearly all the practical knowledge of life.
[21]
We deduce one thing from another as follows: when we clearly perceive that we feel a certain body and no other, we thence clearly infer that the mind is united [g] to the body, and that their union is the cause of the given sensation; but we cannot thence absolutely understand [h] the nature of the sensation and the union. (2) Or, after I have become acquainted with the nature of vision, and know that it has the property of making one and the same thing appear smaller when far off than when near, I can infer that the sun is larger than it appears, and can draw other conclusions of the same kind.
[22]
Lastly, a thing may be perceived solely through its essence; when, from the fact of knowing something, I know what it is to know that thing, or when, from knowing the essence of the mind, I know that it is united to the body. (2) By the same kind of knowledge we know that two and three make five, or that two lines each parallel to a third, are parallel to one another, &c. (3) The things which I have been able to know by this kind of knowledge are as yet very few.
!Navega y ayuda a los chicos!.
Conectate ya aqum.
