Nada Surf’s Matthew Caws isn’t big on organized religion, but when the spirit does move him, it always has a soundtrack. And that soundtrack has come a long way over the last 16 years. You’d be hard-pressed to discern so much as a whiff of snarky 1996 hit “Popular” amid the bracing, impeccably crafted power pop the trio hammers out with breathless efficiency on its new release, The Stars Are Indifferent To Astronomy (Barsuk). The transportive power of music is something Caws touches on quite frequently on Astronomy—that is, when he can tear himself away from more pressing concerns for our fucked-up planet. Caws will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new Q&A with him, and check out our cover story on Nada Surf in last month’s issue of MAGNET.
Caws: I have an idea for a new kind of language dictionary, one that would enable you to speak another language without doing any learning at all. The catch is that these dictionaries would be tiny, some containing only a few words, and you might not be able to say much. But still! The principle would be as follows: They would only include cognates,; that is to say words that are very similar in both languages in question, allowing only for slight variations in spelling and pronunciation. Put another way, these dictionaries would only include words that you already know. English and Spanish, for example, share a number of words. Multiplication is multiplicacion, fantastic is fantastico, doctor is medico but can also be doctor, airport is aeropuerto. And then of course, each dictionary would include all the “loanwords” that apply, things like taxi, jeans, internet, rock ‘n’ roll, etc. There could even be a warning page that would contain false cognates, like sopa, which means soup, not soap. Who knows, with a little gesticulation thrown into the mix, you might be off and running, and without a day of study. Plus they would be tiny. You could carry a dozen in one pocket!
Video after the jump.
