Hi Wheeler:
I am glad to see your zeal for Orthodoxy and your idealism with the masculine role. It takes some 'cojones' to speak up about this in our society.
Regarding linguistics, one might argue both for and against English being a good language for different uses. It is true that a vocabulary develops in response to cultural experience. The Byzantine Empire was saturated with Christian Orthodoxy and theological study. They developed a very accurate vocabulary to articulate concepts. Compare this to Arabic which has many words to describe sand while Inuit/Eskimo languages have only one but many more to describe different types of snow. How many words do you think that Arabic has for snow? The United States has developed a very extensive vocabulary for technical scholarship, i.e., engineering, science, etc. These words are rarely translated into different words in other languages-- they just use our vocabulary. You might say that English is very advanced in this area. Latin, known to be a very rich language has a dearth of words for different colors. Spanish has fewer words than English but is still a very rich literary language. Go figure. One more point on this, English comes from proto-Indo-European which has a very advanced set of verb tenses and moods (present indicative, present perfect, present progressive, present subjunctive, past conditional, pluperfect, etc.-- you get the point). Many languages that lack such an advanced systems yield different ways of thinking. Studies on children who have a maternal language without these constructs are often unable to think temporally or relationally in time. For example, they are unable to think abstractly about the differences between 2:00pm and 10:30pm without looking at the sky to see if it is day or night. In English, we can-- and we do so with a minimum of cognitive effort. Look up anything by Noam Chomsky-- he's the major linguistic scholar of our time.
Regarding male effeminacy, were you meaning to say that the traditional gender roles seem to be reversed in our time? I would say it looks like this is happening with the advent of militant and 'third-wave' feminism. For a very eloquent discussion of this, see a book called 'Man of Velvet and Steel' by Aubrey Andelin. I can tell you first hand that it does little good to bemoan the lack of manliness in today's American male (I speak in broad generalities here). It is much better to simply live a manly life. I can guarantee you that people will notice-- especially traditional women. The feminists will denounce you because you hit their sore point and because you are correct. Also, be very careful about equating military with manliness and college with effeminacy. The true measure of a man is not measured in the size of the muscles or the ability to shoot automatic rifles accurately. It is measured in integrity, faith, courage, and taking responsibility for one's family. I can tell you that some men who are crippled or dying are very manly while some military men are cowards at heart.
Keep up your studies in these two subjects-- you're on the right track.
In Christ,
Christopher
