July 10, 2007 || Taking a Break

The fact that I've got to spend so much time online to do this report is both a blessing and a curse--it means I have more chances to add things online, but also that I get distracted from doing my work, so I have to spend twice as much time on it.

For the past few posts I've basically been running through and saying "I went here, I went there!" but there's so much more to living in a foreign country than that--in some ways, those records are the least important of all. It's what you learn by living here (I think) that is the much harder to capture and more important aspect of life abroad. I'm not sure if I'm changing to suit the country or just becoming more aware--and sometimes I think that maybe these are the one and the same--but when I really notice it or think about it, this is more interesting to me than learning new verb forms.

I still can't fully describe what it is I'm trying to say, but I'd like to give it a shot. For starters, language itself. Pretty simple subject, on the surface, but languages have always seemed so tantalizing to me. I remember being young at Immaculate Conception, when we had a brief set of Spanish lessons--I never learned the words well (although I can still remember some colors and numbers), but I remember being delighted at rolling them around in my mouth, making some new and strange sound jump off my tongue. In high school, French was consistently my favorite subject--nothing seemed more satisfying than being able to use new words to describe my same old thoughts. In the beginning, French was just a secret code--you trade this word in English for that word in French, and you've got a prettier way of saying "How are you?" But early on you're forced to stop doing that, exchanging things word for word (even though of course, I kept trying); for example, in French, to say how old you are, you say "J'ai __ ans." Literally, this translates out to "I have ___ years." So in that case, it's impossible to just substitute English words for French ones. The French word "gourmand" forced the point further--there is actually no word in English for a "gourmand." So, after a certain point, your mind begins to think a little differently--after a certain point, in your head, you don't translate your teacher's phrases into English anymore; you just hold them in your head in French, and understand them in French.

This is all so very hard to describe. If anyone wants to help, please feel free to jump in and leave a comment.

I have a friend at school, Mike (big surprise), who mentioned once how the language of philosophers was at one point French, and how it made them actually THINK differently. I could comprehend what he was saying, but I didn't fully empathize with it until a few weeks later when, after a cram session for a French test, my brain was stuck in la langue de l'amour, and I had a thought that was somehow... different. I'm sure it was an arbitrary thought, but it was formed in French, and so in this thought, or sentence, were comprised little nuances that it would've been impossible to imply in English... and so, I actually THOUGHT in a different way.

I've been trying to get to that point with Russian, and I hope I'm getting close. I can definitely think in Russian, and I'm starting to change up my mental word order like a Russian, but I haven't quite hit the point where I'm actually thinking like a Russian.. I'm starting to comprehend like one, though.

Here's another example (of what, I'm not exactly sure; maybe just that languages have these incredible subtle intricacies that are fascinating and crucial to understanding culture as well): Curtis and I were briefly discussing this, and he understood: "I know what you mean. I'm where I understand that when my teacher says "три часа," she doesn't mean "3 o'clock," but "три часа." " It's imperative to really learning a language to not translate it word for word--you've got to learn to just be content with its original meaning, in its original language.

This in itself can be a struggle... more than once I've found myself in class, drifting off. Now, according to an old high school teacher of mine, I've got a great "short-term memory," so I can normally recall what's just been said. Coming out of my daydream or whatever, the teacher's last sentence replays in my head in Russian, and I understand what's going on. But if I don't catch myself in time, I'll try to translate it into an English equivalent, and in that moment I lose my understanding entirely.

Part of the problem is how Russian minces words so differently from English--sometimes, they "break" one of our words into a hundred different ones. For example, verbs of motion:
идти = to go one time, by foot; to go by foot, stressing results (ie. The car was broken, so yesterday, I walked to school.)
ходить = to go many times, by foot; to go by foot, stressing process (ie. Normally I go by car to school.)
ехать = to go one time, by vehicle, to go by vehicle, stressing results (ie. Last weekend I drove up north.)
ездить = to go many times, by vehicle; to go by vehicle, stressing process (ie. Every day I go by bus to work.)
прийти = to arrive, by foot, one time, stressing results (ie. They arrived from America 5 weeks ago.)
уйти = to leave, by foot, one time, stressing results (ie. They will leave Russia in 3 weeks.)
войти = to enter, by foot, stressing results (ie. He walked into the room right as the clock struck 7.)
выйти = to exit, by foot, stressing results (ie. She stepped out of the room to smoke a cigarette.)
>> And so on, with more prefixes stressing process or denoting movement by vehicle and different aspects of motion (going up, going down, going behind, in front of, stopping by, starting out)

And sometimes, a thousand different meanings get "bundled" up into one word, like давай, which is literally the imperative form of the verb for "to give," but can also mean "Let's go," "Let me see," "Get outta here," "Hurry up," "That's all," and so on.

Language is key to understanding culture, too. Homophobia is rampant in Russia; some attribute it to the fact that AIDs (currently on a sky-high rise in Russia) is still seen as a "gay," disease, and there are tons of different interpretations, but in any case it will take quite a struggle, in my opinion, to get most Russians to even accept gays. The whole concept of two men or women loving each other and living together is a foreign concept to the language--the Russian meaning "to be married" is based on gender. For men, женат (жена is the gender-bound word for wife), and for women, замужем (this literally breaks down to "behind her husband"). Since marriage isn't gender-neutral, how hard must it be for an idea like gay marriage to penetrate the social subconscious? I ran across this same question when talking to Curtis about Arabic--this general idea of language influencing culture. In Arabic, the word for "thanks" is literally something like "Allah Be Praised" -- no wonder the idea of a secular system has such trouble taking hold, when even the most basic words have religious connotations.

Ah geez, look at the time... I'm going to see if maybe I can turn out a little bit more, and then I want to have a post entirely about food. =)