октомври

Winter is here in full force, or it at least felt that way in my apartment last week. Knowing I only had two more weeks in the apartment (I move to a different residence, same location next week), it seemed a bit excessive and not very Peace Corps-ish of me to carry an electric radiator across town. I got over that pretention after seeing my breath indoors. Now, with the radiator next to my bed, life is much improved.

Although it’s probably not winter yet, it’s definitely Fall. The leaves have turned yellow and red and the days are growing noticeably shorter. Running before work is no longer an option, the sun doesn’t rise until well after 7. This fact was reinforced on Friday when I was hurrying down the street to catch the 6 am bus. Seeing an oncoming car, I moved toward the sidewalk. However, due to my early morning lack of recall of the road construction underway, my feet did not take me to a sidewalk. Instead, I walked directly into a hole. Despite my dark clothes, the driver had spotted me and pulled over to help me out—the hole came up to mid-chest. I was mostly okay, just incredibly embarrassed and very muddy.

The previous paragraph makes me think of the RadioLab podcast on 'Falling.'

Did you know there are (according to the podcast) 14,932 ways to use the word ‘fall’? There are some neat ideas in this episode, like the discussion of the sensation that, when ‘falling,’ time seems to slow down. Studies of this have shown that, perception of time doesn’t change, but your minds ability to process its environment increases. Instead of slowing down to see, hear, experience everything more clearly, you are actually opening up your mind allowing more sensations to be imprinted in your memory. Time didn’t slow down when I fell in the hole last Friday-I almost missed the bus.

Language and its effect on our lives and understanding of the world has become all the more interesting to me as I continue to learn and now teach a foreign language. For example, multiple meanings of words are much more relevant during a conversation on traveling when you must explain that ‘catch’ can be used catch a bus, train, or flight in addition to catch up, catch a cold, catch a fly ball, catch a suspect, catch your coat in the door, etc.

I wonder, if there are no words for certain concepts in a language, do not exist? How do the emphases of different grammatical structures in language affect the way we process information? The other day I was in a guesthouse practicing English with a high school student. She attends a language school in Montana during the week and is only home on weekends. Although her primary language at school is German and her secondary is Russian, her English is easily intermediate/advanced. It was remarkable to watch: she spoke to me in English, replied to a guest’s question in German, and then translated the reply for her mom in Bulgarian. She’s 14. Does her knowledge of these different languages change the way she thinks about other things? By having more than one lens through which to think about the world, can you see it more clearly?