i am not familar with ketman or milosz, atleast not by those terms. i do tend to forget names, sources etc and only retain knowledge instead.  i do believe that this phenomena, meaning the compulsion to indulge to inability to remove oneself from it, may be comparable to an actual addiction, and susceptibility to it may indeed be congenital. > there's a little bug in the brain that seems to be causing this. it's the delicate nature of language. language isn't just a system of squiggles and noises, it's an organism. it shapes your mind as much as your body -- any thought conceived of in that language, any word uttered in that language. from the contractions of your body necessary to articulate and accentuate through intonation and cadence and so on, to the concepts and principles unique to any one language. bad language (e.g.: propaganda) is parasitic, it consumes energy just for itself -- it greatly limits your perception and understanding of the world. good language is kommensal or even symbiotic, it may consume energy but does so very efficiently, whilst aiding your perception and understanding of the world (and yourself). dead languages are special in that learning them requires you to either have innate talent or an already great proficiency in multiple successor languages and knowledge about relations and histories of the people who lived them. i digress. language may be considered one of the most potent drugs in existence and the gateway drug to any other.
Germany