What culture are you from? | 129 comments (129 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

I have to admit to still feeling English inside, even though I have lived more than half my life in Finland.

While I work and communicate in Finnish, and to a certain passive extent in Swedish, my thought processes remain in English.

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Wed Nov 15th, 2006 at 10:51:56 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: It is interesting (4.00 / 4)

i feel that way too, and i've lived almost 2/3 my life outside rainy albion.

anyone know of the use of 'to english' as a verb?

what does 'body english' really mean?

i watch a lot of english and american tv, and have always been a voracious reader, so keep my english fresh and up-to-date.

i just love the linguistic bastard kinkiness of english, and adore puns and double meanings, black gallows humour, (league of gents!!!) and all the odd twisted archaic lanes of the language,

shakespeare staggers me still, he used verbiage like beethoven used notes...

where the continent produced better painters and composers, english's morphing into world language pleases me aesthetically no end.

italian may be prettier, but english has a deeper spell on my imagination, and i'm very grateful for its perverse beauty and orneriness.

it takes on so many splendidly comic guises, too, from john cleese's merciless parodies of cut-glass, to the sonorous, fruity english of nigerian diplomats, peters sellers indian-english, the multiple pronounciations in the u.s.a...

it changes into so many forms...

language as OS... facilitating multiple open source applications, or dialects.

my favourite patois is how black folks speak in louisiana, it's like warm honey in the belly....

what i love about understanding other languages, are the 'cracks' that exist between lingos, and trying to use those as a way to study regional psychologies, or myths.

words that migrate untranslatably into english reveal much about the english mentality, and vice-versa.

such a fascinating conversation over at ET these last days, i'm dead impressed by the intellectual acumen and stimulating banter.

what a wonderful way to learn...thanks to you all great bloggers, yay!

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Wed Nov 15th, 2006 at 02:08:45 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Rain (4.00 / 5)

Good Albionesque example.

Where many Finns get grumpy when it's raining. I just LOVE the rain. Rainy days are my favourite. I love being inside with an excuse to 'löhö' or chill, I love driving or being driven in the rain (especially in a bus), and walking in the rainy forest if suitably garbed.

And when the sun comes out after a shower, and all the smells are fresh and colours deep, and the birds rejoice - then so do I ;-)

Snow is a different matter. It's when I get grumpy...

And as for scraping thick ice off the windscreen while still half asleep and late - yeeeech

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Wed Nov 15th, 2006 at 02:46:09 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Rain (none / 1)

yeah i love rain too, but only because finally i found a climate that has the right amount of it!

i remember saint swithin's day, and the predictions that if it rained that day it would rain for 40 more in succession, and one year it didi!

i used to watch drops wending theit way down my window pane for hours, as a kid.

it was so magical how they joined up...

and the capricious way they'd slow down, then trickle faster...

then 16 years on the wet side of the big island of hawaii, rainbowland...

and one memorably soggy night camping amid the candlenut trees on the slopes of kauai's sleeping giant mountain, the world's wettest spot.

the hawaiians have 200 words for rain, iirc.

yup, rain has been a constant companion and ally much of my life.

monsoon in tamil nadu, i had no idea rain could fall like that!

when i moved to california, with its crisper temps, i immediately noticed how dry the air was, even in santa cruz by the ocean.

guitars ring better, and fingerboards aren't wet when you take the guitar out of its case, or furry even, if you've left it more than a couple of hours!

living on a northfacing hill, i really value dry air, and being a modest collector of instruments, humidity is very definitely NOT my friend.

so i actually prefer snow to rain...it's the surreal mantle of silence that i love the best, i think, and the strange 3d geometry of icicles and tree twigs girded with fairy lace...

but with global warming and water being a big issue in the future, i count every drop that does fall as a pure blessing!

perhaps the 'spin' in the ball terminology is similar to the spin in british politics....perhaps hypocrisy has flown to new depths on the wings of the english language...

ther is a disturbing grain of truth to that snark, or maybe, as always, it could be my image-in-nation.

orwell certainly gives me the impression he felt that way, but perhaps he didn't know any other languages, i dunno...

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty

by melo (melometa4(at)gmail.com) on Wed Nov 15th, 2006 at 04:10:17 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Rain and guitars (none / 0)

If you ever move to somewhere more humid, you might check out these fantastic guitars.

http://www.flaxwood.fi/main.site?action=siteupdate/view&id=2&set_language=eng

I admit to a vested interest, having played matchmaker to the communications director and their ad agency, and in helping to define their strategy.

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Wed Nov 15th, 2006 at 04:20:12 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Rain (none / 1)

Snow is a different matter. It's when I get grumpy...

Has anybody ever suggested, just by the way, that you might possibly be living in the wrong country mood-wise ?

keep to the Fen Causeway

by Helen (lareinagal at yahoo dot co dot uk) on Wed Nov 15th, 2006 at 04:12:34 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Rain (4.00 / 3)

Naah - grumpy is good. I have what might be called a North-Polar Disorder - 8 months of sweetness and light, two months of sullen darkness (november - december's equinox) and then 2 months of chilly optimism as I adjust to the cold and welcome the light. ;-)

I'm happy today because we are melting...

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Wed Nov 15th, 2006 at 04:26:54 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: It is interesting (none / 1)

That spin (in reference to ball throwing) is sometimes called english in USA.

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Wed Nov 15th, 2006 at 02:47:38 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: It is interesting (4.00 / 3)

The mother tongue. The language we learn at our mother's knee, con la leche, I believe places an indelible stamp on who we are and how we think. I understand the Sapir-Worf hypothesis has somewhat fallen out of favor in linguistic circles these days, but I take it as gospel. I think the first language we learn as children, when the patterns of language-using synapses are first laid down in our brains, shape and color and define how we see the world, and ourselves in the world, in ways that are forever a part of us. Learning other languages may expand and enrich, but never supplant, those original patterns. I think the luckiest of all may be those children of bilingual or multilingual households. I would love to see studies of the linguistic and cognitive abilities of such children.

We all bleed the same color.

by budr on Wed Nov 15th, 2006 at 06:19:11 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: It is interesting (none / 0)

Learning other languages may expand and enrich, but never supplant, those original patterns.

Here I think I know counter-examples -- people who were children when emigrating to the USA, and for whom English clearly became the first language.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Thu Nov 16th, 2006 at 01:55:42 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: It is interesting (none / 1)

While I work and communicate in Finnish, and to a certain passive extent in Swedish, my thought processes remain in English.

At what age have you moved to Finland? I ask because despite continued predominant exposure to my mother tongue, my thought processes are also in German and English. I noticed I'm switching in the middle of stream-of-consciousness sentences.

_{*Lunatic*, n.

One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

by DoDo on Thu Nov 16th, 2006 at 01:54:17 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: It is interesting (none / 0)

Same here. And I didn't even travel to an English-speaking country before I was 16.

Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Nov 16th, 2006 at 02:04:48 AM EST
[ Parent ]

What culture are you from? | 129 comments (129 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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