Re: Four things: Was: Comparison of philosophical languages

On 22 Jan, David Stokes wrote:

>At first when I arrived I was overwhelmed by the language. Most
> of the time I didn't know what people were saying, and had no clue as to
> how to figure it out. After 2 or 3 weeks a remarkable change happened,
> literally overnight for me. Suddenly, when someone spoke something I
> didn't understand, I heard a string of Russian words. Before, I had
> heard just a rush of sounds I didn't understand. After the change I
> could ask "What does this word mean" and thus figure out what they said,
> where before I just said "I don't understand" a lot.
     I underwent a similar process in acquiring Hebrew.
Except that I had a sort of "anti"-realization:
For a long time, I used to watch the evening news
on TV with rapt attention trying to pick out the few words
I knew from the rush of speech. Then, one day,
I suddenly realized that I had been listening with only
"half an ear" and had  more or less tuned out the newsreaders
because, after all, today's "news" was mostly the same old
politicians saying the same old things about each other
that they had said yesterday and the day before that!
    At that point I realized that I truly comprehended the lang!
( And I've been more or less tuning the newsreaders out
ever since!  ;-)   )

    Dan Sulani
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likehsna rtem zuv tikuhnuh auag inuvuz vaka'a

A word is an awesome thing.