Two Ways of Conceptualizing Natural Landscapes

Abstract

Landscapes, as natural phenomena of the environment, are not stable/unstable during the course of time. As seen from the perspective of those living in a specific environment, the dynamics of landscape are caused by inner and outer factors. Inner factors are permanent or temporary changes due to the global or local climate and degradation. By outer factors, we understand political or government interference and processes of migration. Whatever the reasons may be, according to our experience, the speakers of specific word cultures always tend to adapt their former systems of conceptualising landscape to new situations. For a historical linguist, the processes of adaptation remain visible in the records of landscape terminology and the underlying historical processes can be reconstructed on this basis. Therefore in this chapter we try to show, not only the contemporary dimensions of landscape conceptualisation of two Namibian word cultures, but also, in a historical perspective, the dynamism of adaptation to new environments, active in these languages.