Asier Mendizabal: Linguagem/ corrente

Asier Mendizabal

It comes as a surprise to the non-Portuguese speaker that the word normally used for chain is corrente, current. There is something counter-intuitive in this idea of displacement which, in turn, denotes a displacement in language itself. It is surprising that an image that evokes subjection, that even symbolizes generic concepts such as oppression or slavery and that makes one imagine the impediment to something or someone moving, would share its name with that which flows, with that which runs. And it denotes a displacement of language itself, as I say, because it is easy to reconstruct, backwards, the chain of phonemes that in their progressive transformation (sound shift, linguists call it) form its etymology up to the Latin currere and, from there to the voice*kurs in Pre-Indo-European, both naming the simple act of running. The displacement of the sounds made into words along languages and times, takes us, reversing the [...]