Words in Bloom

 

Intellectual Biography of Celeste Horner

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I am Celeste Horner, the author of words-in-bloom. I'm a librarian, linguist, cognitive information systems developer, and seeker of keys to life's cosmic mysteries!

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Childhood in Bilingual Quebec

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My interest in languages developed over the course of a life which took me around the world. Born in New York, I was raised in Québec, an environment where whether on store signs or soup cans, French and English were presented side-by-side. 

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Chinese - My first language mystery

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Occasionally, my family would venture from our home in the quaint, victorian village of Knowlton in Ville de Lac Brome, to the dynamic metropolis of Montreal. Dinner, at day's end, often took place at a Chinese restaurant.

 

Passing under the upswept wing eaves of an Asian gate, and through an electrifyingly red door, signaled entry into an environment of exotic sights and aromas. As  kids, my brother and I would make a beeline for the fish tank, where there was mezmerising swirl of iridescent finned creatures. There were watercolor paintings of waterfalls in misty mountain landscapes with craggy ancient trees, and people wearing draping robe costumes. A pleasant tinkle of Asian stringed instruments patterned the air. Plate settings were framed by tea cups and chopsticks.

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The first language mystery that really stumped me was the Chinese menu. I would squint and frown at the mysterious characters on the page. They looked like indecipherable cross-hatches. I had heard that one should contemplate Chinese writing to attain greater wisdom. But how could people shake meaning out of them?

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This puzzle persisted for decades. Then, before I got a degree to become a librarian at Cornell University, I worked as a receiving clerk, processing a sumptuous stream of books from all over the world. During this time, I encountered the books of Barbara Aria: The Nature of the Chinese Character, and The Spirit of the Chinese Character.

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These books were a total revelation. She showed how the Chinese word for bright, Míng, was composed of the characters for the light-giving sun and moon 明. The word for forest,

Lín, is composed of two trees 林 . The clouds of mystery parted. I could appreciate the insightful use of symbolism for abstract terms like Good (a caring mother and child), and Truth (a bird brooding its eggs like a philosopher pondering an emergent idea), and see that Chinese was visual poetry! We can appreciate one another's languages and bridge the divide between cultures!

 

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Next:

 

2. Hebrew, Greek, Arabic

3. Mongolian, Portuguese, Swahili, Petroglyphs

4. Discovery of Super-language Symbols in Hopi 

5. Reinventing the Dictionary