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Comments:
elgan - 2006-01-30 16:24:07
I am so fascinated by the psyche of language, how speaking a different language hardwires your brain in a different behavioural way. German is a very rigid language, hence Germans in general seem to be very rigid people. French has certain convolutions we don�t see in English, and as a result, the French love bureaucracy and red tape. English cuts to the chase, and English speakers are rather blunt and direct as a result. I feel that in order to really understand different nationalities, we must learn their languages, for that is how they think.
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Ms. Brazil - 2006-01-30 16:41:35
Yeah, lately I've been wondering about something similar. How when we are teeneagers, then young adults, we are so self-centered. The later on we start to worry about other people. Is it age, or environent? That's my present mindmaze...
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Ms. Brazil - 2006-01-30 16:41:44
Yeah, lately I've been wondering about something similar. How when we are teeneagers, then young adults, we are so self-centered. Then later on we start to worry about other people. Is it age, or environent? That's my present mindmaze...
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cat - 2006-01-30 17:09:06
Very thought provoking entry H. I would say my awareness of the world was fostered by my mother, especially because I was inclined to remian locked inside my own narrow points of view. I remember - specifically - how she would often tell me to be grateful for the things I had (i.e., a roof over my head, three meals a day, a bed to sleep in, two parents who loved me, the ability to attend school instead of having to get a job at age eight like so many of the world's children). I also remember that she would often remind me of Judy Garland's practice of showing her children photos of kids from around the world - children who lived in abject poverty - so they would realize how lucky they were. (One more then I'll stop). Once - I believe I was around 12 - my cousins were visiting and acting extremely bratty, so Mom made us all sit down to watch a special report about Chernobyl on television. I remember being horrified and feeling terrible for what the citizens were enduring - and feeling absolute disgust and shame as my cousins sat alongside, laughing over the plight of their fellow human beings. Seeing my cousins behave that way, I finally understood why Mom had push so hard for me to step outside my own head and really *look* at the world; it's something for which I will be forever grateful.
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teranika - 2006-01-30 17:51:01
I actually thought of you in particular when I wrote that entry, because I knew that you had travelled much more as a child. I agree completely that it is the little things that make a foreign experience so foreign - and so thrilling! Thanks for writing this. You also made me think of the differences of language. Like you I was a inflection chameleon - I wonder if it relates to being musical. Although I successfully mimicked the pronunciation, I never captured the guttural nature of German. (and to this day, my in-laws-to-be think I'm a sweet little girl because of the transformation I undergo when I speak German!)
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lemming - 2006-01-31 12:02:36
Great post and ponderings.
I think for me it wasn't so much an awareness of the larger world as it was the awareness that other people had once lived here and others would be here long after I was no more. This probably explains my love of old cemetaries as well as my academic career path.
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