By LERA BORODITSKY
The Gallery Collection/Corbis
‘The Tower of Babel’ by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, 1563.
(Please see Corrections & Amplifications below.)
Do the languages we speak shape the way we think? Do they merely express thoughts, or do the structures in languages (without our knowledge or consent) shape the very thoughts we wish to express?
Take “Humpty Dumpty sat on a…” Even this snippet of a nursery rhyme reveals how much languages can differ from one another. In English, we have to mark the verb for tense; in this case, we say “sat” rather than “sit.” In Indonesian you need not (in fact, you can’t) change the verb to mark tense.
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Ok, so I heard yesterday Michael Krasny talking Sapir Whorf and related concepts with a Stanford professor named Lera Boroditsky. At Foothill I sussed around on their computer for a little more info: a link to a Stanford Alumni Magazine article, including a picture, a link or citation to an anthology that was in Palo Alto Main and at Foothill right there, and a little more.
I actually read the article, wrote one word of notes, on my hand, or three memes that is
porm
ru
raaw
–it’s a place in Northern Australia where Aborigines live; she studied their language.
The only other thing I looked up, because it seemed important — is “Tower of Babel”. There was a crossword puzzle completed on the desk of the reference station; it took me a mere minute or so to find that the puzzle was based on a painting by Brueghel.
So just now, back at my main computer hook-up place, I typed the professor’s name again and the main citation I found is a well-read (200 comments) article from the Wall Street Journal that used as an illustration, the same Brugel painting.
Is it a c0incidence, synchronicity or what?
I was not conscious of the connection between my two searches.
I did, on the other hand, beyond hearing Boroditsky:
a) nearly buy a second copy, because it was remaindered and cheap — a bargain — of Elif Batuman “Possessed”, about her travels in Russian lit academy, at Dog Eared Books in SF; the clerk teased me that the author would give a sheet about my anecdote about why I started following her; the clerk is also Alison Faith Levy the musician, I had booked years ago at Cubberley, but I really digress.
b) borrowed the day before — I am forgetting chain of events — a compact copy of Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” that looks like a pocket bible. I have only read a few pages. From Foothill.
c) chat up a clerk at the Foothill Bookstore a Russian emigre, Anna, about poker.
d) chat up the day before a Ukranian librarian there; I think she is a Mila; I tried to explain to her “the pale”, “beyond the Pale” — which are relatively new to me;
e) I thought about recommending to all of the above: “Ego and Hubris” by the late great American Splendor creator Harvey Pekar, about a weird Russian he met.
f) I was in the city to meet with Beth Custer who asked me to help promote a screening of “My Grandmother” a 1930s Soviet Georgian film, for which she will be performing a live original score that was originally commissioned in recent times at least by Pacific Film Archive;
9) because Beth was digging Stew “Making It’ I took that as a sign and rang up Bill Bragin who I worked with as Stew’s manager back in 2003 and who said he would consider Beth’s project for Lincoln Center programming;
10) I have half a mind to ring Lera Boroditsky and invite her to Beth’s show, which is May 4 outdoors at Villa Montalvo in Saratoga, California.
11) Had opportunity to remember for Beth and mention that I have a copy of Truman Capote’s essay about “Porgy and Bess” in U.S.S.R circa 1959.
The term “coinky” is an original coinkage meaning “coincidence” unless Herb Coyne had it first. (Herb Coyne from Scharpler and Coyne, Coyle I guess I don’t mean). I’m going from bad to wurster.
You say “blew it” and I say “bleu it”
Robin’s egg and indigo
Let’s call the whole thing neuf!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7sYNptYjsE&feature=fvwrel
edit to add: beth custer and i saw Stew and The Negro Problem recently -today is March 19 — and I have to get going on Beth at Montalvo which I think is actually May 25 not 5/4:
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 
kind of reminds me that a couple years ago, it was 2008, I ended up seated next to a young lady at that French cafe (now the site of Baume “bow me” — expensive but good) on Cali Ave a PhD candidate named Tamar Shinar and we talked a wee bit; I went into my Paul Cohen schpiel — or szpiel as they said in Poland — and her name, I learned then and was reminded of today, references the same biblical Tower.