language : Brett Fish

Reflections on a president’s speech: Whose Lang was it anyway?

South Africa, things to wrestle with, thorts of other people, tricky things, what i am watching

Reflections on a president’s speech: Whose Lang was it anyway?

South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa addressed the nation last night. As he did - and this is not for the first time - i felt a sense of pride, the feeling of being led, a deep respect for the humility that was shown when he spoke about government miscommunicating and making mistakes, confusing messages, and contradictions. While he spoke, i jumped on to Facebook and simply wrote this: Such humility coming from Cyril Ramaphosa... [...]

By brettfish|2020-05-14T09:47:59+02:00May 14th, 2020|South Africa, things to wrestle with, thorts of other people, tricky things, what i am watching|2 Comments

If you take their money…

shtupidt people, South Africa, thorts of other people, what i am reading

If you take their money…

i am almost finished reading 'Country of my Skull' by Antjie Krog and it has been punching me relentlessly in the gut. This passage from chapter 20 titled 'Mother faces the Nation' contains one of my particular angry spots when it comes to lazy South Africans: To the right of the Commissioners, a phalanx of mostly white lawyers - representing victims and perpetrators - is building up. 'I represent the family of Lolo Sono,' says [...]

By brettfish|2016-09-29T15:32:36+02:00September 29th, 2016|shtupidt people, South Africa, thorts of other people, what i am reading|0 Comments

They should speak English

change the world, South Africa, things to wrestle with, thorts of other people, what i am reading

They should speak English

Everyone in South Africa speaks English, right? i imagine we would be surprised as how many English speakers think and assume that. i would probably be less surprised at how many of us expect that. Because English, right? Firstly, it would probably surprise a whole lot of them to discover that English is only the third most spoken language in the world to start with. But it was this passage by Antjie Krog in 'Country [...]

By brettfish|2016-09-21T08:51:28+02:00September 21st, 2016|change the world, South Africa, things to wrestle with, thorts of other people, what i am reading|2 Comments

Breaking Bread [with Trev]: Finding the Words

Following closely in the footsteps of, 'Breaking Bread [with Trev]: Changing Your Mind' comes 'Finding the Words', the second post in a Tandem Blog Conversation piece which sees a conversation of 5x100ish words each, this time on the topic of the languages we speak [or don't]: = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = Brett: My wife and i started learning isiXhosa just over a month ago which is [...]

By brettfish|2015-09-25T12:19:47+02:00September 25th, 2015|inspire-ations, tandem blog post, things to wrestle with, thorts of other people|2 Comments

Vibing a vibe, vibeously [or how the english language bends to my will]

i like the english language. i like it to do my bidding! and so for years now i have played around with it, removing most capital letters [except for words associated with God like Love, Grace and Justice when i mean them in a God-related way way], changing nouns into verbs [see "vibe" and "vibing"] and other parts of speech, spelling words in my own unique, often phonetical way [thort for the week] or sometimes [...]

By brettfish|2013-02-11T01:27:21+02:00February 11th, 2013|activities, and other animals., silly things|6 Comments

on the place of using metaphor to understand/describe God [part ii]

...continuing with an extract from the 'Why I am Mystical/Poetic' from Brian Mclaren's 'A Generous Orthodoxy' 'This mystical/poetic approach takes special pains to remember that the Bible itself contains precious little expository prose. Rather it is story laced with parable, poem, interwoven with vision, dream and opera (isn't this the best contemporary genre to compare to the book of Job?), personal letter and public song, all thrown together with an undomesticated and unedited artistic passion. [...]

By brettfish|2011-09-28T13:11:22+02:00September 28th, 2011|Uncategorized|1 Comment

the word church, 'church', church is a verb.

last nite at enGAGE (our sunday evening vineyard church congregation weekly gathering) we held an open mic vibe not after ‘church’, not on a different day to ‘church’, not instead of ‘church’, but as church, and it was great it was a celebration of some of the talents and giftings that God has placed in different people in our group and so we sat around tables and munched on chips and sweets and spinach and [...]

By brettfish|2010-05-24T07:34:25+02:00May 24th, 2010|church|0 Comments