43. On language

I was telling my friend Franca about my Italian teacher questioning the verb I used to describe a woman who was shunned. He suggested "ignorata" in place of "schivato." "Ignorata" seemed too tame, not as mean or intense as the word "shun" in the sense of, say, Arthur Miller's The Crucible. In response to my comments, Franca talked about the Dothraki language carefully devised for Game of Thrones and described a scene involving someone using the word "sorry"—which prompted the GOT response, "There is no word for "sorry" in Dothraki," followed by a beheading. Whenever I apologize too much, I'll think of the Dothraki language. That might help me spend more time on asserting and accomplishing.

(For August 22, 2019)