[m4w] this sounds so navajo (my borneo)

my worst grade in college was anthrolinguistics. however, it is possibly the class that has left the biggest impression. it just took that much longer to really sink in.

the concept that color, which I think of as exclusively visual, a univeral constant, is a perception deeply rooted in language, melted my brain. and those wacky navajo! everything is a verb to them!

everything is in a constant state of flux, a process, described best what it's doing. so, orange becomes "setting sun" or "dying fire" rather than, well, orange. you know, Orange.

every now and then I obsess over the grave error of having a monolingual society, starting to teach language 6+ years after the peak human capacity to learn a second language. (High school is simply too late. heck, I started Russian in 7th grade, took it for 7 years, still not fluent.) Too many of us just don't even know how to think in other languages or even have to deal with how choice of words determine our values.

Is that the root of why Americans end up so isolated? We can't really get into someone else's brain, or even grasp the colloquialisms of other societies, because we've never really had to.

This comes up a lot, since part of my job involves laying out medical briefings in French. I have to email someone in Belgium to make sure the word is being broken up properly, and spelled correctly for its current usage. Changing endings in a whole row of words (or where the accents fall) can completely alter the layout as well as the meaning. It's very important I don't punt. Every set of pdfs sent to the translators is n amount of money, so I find myself having to dig through old issues to avoid a second round of especially costly edits.

I don't speak or read French. I recognize most root words, but the whole declension thing, that a word is a worde is a wordo, (wordissimo, etc.) is just alien.

Maybe I'm overreacting, but such perfect English and salutations spoken by a native would smack of sarcasm. I feel like they're making fun of the dumb American. Does that never get old?

::

So today's entry is about regarding God as a process. I've never really bought the "Angry White Guy" image as anything more than a particular manifestation. (which means that some will classify me as an Atheist even if I do believe in... well... something that can manifest.) But, I guess I generally file God as something Static, a noun, unless I'm forced to really consider it. Try thinking of [deity of preference] as a verb.

::

rob brezsny suggests I use "mane and tail" horse hair products on my people hair, which I already do. so there.

::

Brian did not give me movie passes yesterday. Humph.

Purple came by anyway. We visited Planet Diesel-on-Tuesday, and then got pedicures. I realize it's no longer in fashion, because I remember fangirl715 mentioned it ages ago, but I really like the color I'm not really a Waitress (a shimmery red). Purple chose Chick Flick Cherry (an ever so slightly different shimmery red) in honor of the movie we didn't see. Afterwards, I succeeded in having buffalo meat with buffalo (wing) sauce on it! She really liked my holiday scrapbook, as well as select burning man photos of certain LJ friends, and that if you searched amazon for "Old Fart" yesterday, you'd get this.

::

currently possessed of a positive attitude about my posterior. so consider that attitude a convenient wet trout to slap me up side of the head with if when I get massively insecure again.

[m4w] this sounds so navajo (my borneo)

my worst grade in college was anthrolinguistics. however, it is possibly the class that has left the biggest impression. it just took that much longer to really sink in.

the concept that color, which I think of as exclusively visual, a univeral constant, is a perception deeply rooted in language, melted my brain. and those wacky navajo! everything is a verb to them!

everything is in a constant state of flux, a process, described best what it's doing. so, orange becomes "setting sun" or "dying fire" rather than, well, orange. you know, Orange.

every now and then I obsess over the grave error of having a monolingual society, starting to teach language 6+ years after the peak human capacity to learn a second language. (High school is simply too late. heck, I started Russian in 7th grade, took it for 7 years, still not fluent.) Too many of us just don't even know how to think in other languages or even have to deal with how choice of words determine our values.

Is that the root of why Americans end up so isolated? We can't really get into someone else's brain, or even grasp the colloquialisms of other societies, because we've never really had to.

This comes up a lot, since part of my job involves laying out medical briefings in French. I have to email someone in Belgium to make sure the word is being broken up properly, and spelled correctly for its current usage. Changing endings in a whole row of words (or where the accents fall) can completely alter the layout as well as the meaning. It's very important I don't punt. Every set of pdfs sent to the translators is n amount of money, so I find myself having to dig through old issues to avoid a second round of especially costly edits.

I don't speak or read French. I recognize most root words, but the whole declension thing, that a word is a worde is a wordo, (wordissimo, etc.) is just alien.

Maybe I'm overreacting, but such perfect English and salutations spoken by a native would smack of sarcasm. I feel like they're making fun of the dumb American. Does that never get old?

::

So today's entry is about regarding God as a process. I've never really bought the "Angry White Guy" image as anything more than a particular manifestation. (which means that some will classify me as an Atheist even if I do believe in... well... something that can manifest.) But, I guess I generally file God as something Static, a noun, unless I'm forced to really consider it. Try thinking of [deity of preference] as a verb.

::

rob brezsny suggests I use "mane and tail" horse hair products on my people hair, which I already do. so there.

::

Brian did not give me movie passes yesterday. Humph.

Purple came by anyway. We visited Planet Diesel-on-Tuesday, and then got pedicures. I realize it's no longer in fashion, because I remember fangirl715 mentioned it ages ago, but I really like the color I'm not really a Waitress (a shimmery red). Purple chose Chick Flick Cherry (an ever so slightly different shimmery red) in honor of the movie we didn't see. Afterwards, I succeeded in having buffalo meat with buffalo (wing) sauce on it! She really liked my holiday scrapbook, as well as select burning man photos of certain LJ friends, and that if you searched amazon for "Old Fart" yesterday, you'd get this.

::

currently possessed of a positive attitude about my posterior. so consider that attitude a convenient wet trout to slap me up side of the head with if when I get massively insecure again.