Coffee Table Declarations
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
Standing in line to order lunch today, I found myself repeating the name of the sandwich I wanted in my head so I would be ready when it was my turn. It wasn't a very complicated sandwich, but I was not overly excited about it so I kept spacing out while I was waiting and thinking about other things. I thought it would be funny if they got to me and I was like, "huh?"
Then I remembered how when I was little I was always nervous about interacting with strangers in public situations. I'd ask my mother, "what should I say?" and she'd get exasperated with me, "just talk to someone, ask a question, tell them what you want." And my favorite line was when she'd say, "you can speak English right? You can communicate just fine!" This always made me laugh because she did have a point.
It would be awful if you couldn't communicate intelligibly with people. For example, what if the person at the deli said, "can I help you?" and you opened your mouth to speak and the only thing that came out was garbled gibberish? Or what if all of a sudden, for no reason at all, your brain ceased recognizing the language you've known and been surrounded by for your entire life? Yes, these are the things I think about.
And speaking of fun with linguistics, I heard something really interesting on the radio this morning. They had a guy who could hear any word and immediately say it backwards without thinking about it. They gave him a bunch of hard words like, "transformation", "xylaphone", and "Constantinople". It was really quite impressive and a bit spooky.
They also had another guy on who could look at a word and rapidly put the letters into alphabetical order, but that wasn't so amazing. Anyone can do that. I started doing it with signs as I was driving. But backwards talking - that's just plain unnerving.
Then I remembered how when I was little I was always nervous about interacting with strangers in public situations. I'd ask my mother, "what should I say?" and she'd get exasperated with me, "just talk to someone, ask a question, tell them what you want." And my favorite line was when she'd say, "you can speak English right? You can communicate just fine!" This always made me laugh because she did have a point.
It would be awful if you couldn't communicate intelligibly with people. For example, what if the person at the deli said, "can I help you?" and you opened your mouth to speak and the only thing that came out was garbled gibberish? Or what if all of a sudden, for no reason at all, your brain ceased recognizing the language you've known and been surrounded by for your entire life? Yes, these are the things I think about.
And speaking of fun with linguistics, I heard something really interesting on the radio this morning. They had a guy who could hear any word and immediately say it backwards without thinking about it. They gave him a bunch of hard words like, "transformation", "xylaphone", and "Constantinople". It was really quite impressive and a bit spooky.
They also had another guy on who could look at a word and rapidly put the letters into alphabetical order, but that wasn't so amazing. Anyone can do that. I started doing it with signs as I was driving. But backwards talking - that's just plain unnerving.
