The Ebbing Language

Perhaps a better title would be "Differences between Dutch and English as seen through poetry", or something along those lines?

I have no idea what the title is supposed to mean. "Ebbing" appears nowhere in the text. There's a passing reference to a poem called "Eb", meaning "ebb" in English. It's not really about language "ebbing", much less a thing called by the name "Ebbing". It's certainly not about an Ebbing programming language, which is what I had assumed it would be given its placement on this site -- aside from the link to poetryfoundation.org.

Aside from that it is an interesting essay on the nuances of words and the challenges of translation. Especially for poetry, which depends on every aspect of a word -- its sound, its meter, the contexts in which it has been used.

Technology news is generally excited to predict AI language comprehension/translation/generation is just around the corner. I think it's true in some domains. But, for balance, I'm grateful for essays like this.

A lot of valuable written human communication is so nuanced and challenging, even for experts, and that makes it beautiful IMO. Bring on the artificial general intelligence. But good luck with poetry!

Unexpected and lovely essay. Thanks for sharing.