{"id":5058,"date":"2011-05-05T18:00:09","date_gmt":"2011-05-05T18:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/?p=5058"},"modified":"2011-05-05T18:00:09","modified_gmt":"2011-05-05T18:00:09","slug":"language-bears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=5058","title":{"rendered":"Language bears"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today I came across this quote from Francis Bacon on <a href=\"http:\/\/yourvietnamese.com\/learning-languages.html\">YourVietnamese.com<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Men imagine that their minds have the command of language, but it often happens that language bears rule over their minds.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/images\/blog\/languagebear1.gif\" height=\"180\" width=\"150\" align=\"left\" style=\"margin:0 15px 10px 0; alt=\"Language bear\" \/><\/p>\n<p>At first I interpreted it as meaning that &#8220;<strong>language bears<\/strong> (i.e. linguistically-gifted bears) rule over their minds&#8221;, rather than the more likely meaning that &#8220;language <strong>bears rule<\/strong> over their minds&#8221;. I don&#8217;t know if Mr Bacon intended this to be a pun, but that&#8217;s what it is to me. <\/p>\n<p>This got me thinking about what kind of creature a language bear might be &#8211; perhaps a real bear that have been taught or acquired a spoken or signed human language; or a talking teddy bear of some kind, like the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.babogbaby.com\/index.php\/about\/\">B\u00e1b\u00f3gBaby<\/a>, an Irish-speaking teddy.<\/p>\n<p>The expression &#8216;to bear rule&#8217; is not a common one, as far as I&#8217;m aware, and sounds like something you would find in the Bible. For example, the King James version of Daniel 2:39 is &#8220;And after thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee, and another third kingdom of brass, which shall <strong>bear rule<\/strong> over all the earth.&#8221;, and Esther 1:22 is &#8220;For he sent letters into all the king&#8217;s provinces, into every province according to the writing thereof, and to every people after their language, that every man should <strong>bear rule<\/strong> in his own house, and that it should be published according to the language of every people.&#8221; &#8211; the king in question was Ahasuerus, who is identified with Xerxes I (519-465 BC).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today I came across this quote from Francis Bacon on YourVietnamese.com: &#8220;Men imagine that their minds have the command of language, but it often happens that language bears rule over their minds.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5058\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}