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( posit: )
( ...and extrapolate: )
...I think I was going somewhere with this, but I don't seem to have gotten there. Just something I've been thinking about, anyway; there are a lot of those at present, so I thought I'd spill a bit out into "print" as it were.
But I was going to say earlier-- I took Kim and Oliver Twist with me on the train (in a long string of attempts to read "Great Books" I haven't gotten around to yet by taking them with me when no other books are to be had) and made the tactical error of reading Kim first. And it was fabulous-- on the long list of things I wish someone had known to tell me years ago is that Kim is a spy novel. And Kipling is so egalitarian... I mean, he's obviously not unprejudiced across the board (there's that line in "How the Leopard got his Spots", for instance...) but he's got this very clear view of different societal standards and expectations (between English and Muslim and Hindu or Buddhist), and how they can or can't appreciate each other. The Indian native casually swears a creative blue streak and gets up in people's faces, and that's just how they interact; the Englishman (I think it was:) "uses one word" in a sort of understated swearing, and doesn't understand the values of the native peoples much at all. And there are all the class interactions between types and sorts of people and it just rings very true. With Kim, sponge of a cheerful atheistic street child, in the middle, soaking up all the culture(s) available to him.
[[for those of you who haven't been listening to my father the past 5 or 6 years as he worked on the Iraqi language & culture trainer for the military, a couple factoids: body language is a huge part of human language, including personal space. Arab men in the US usually end up with american girlfriends because their personal space is smaller, and they'll keep trying to move in closer because that's the right distance to have a conversation. Most americans will back up, and most women will think they're being hit on... nine out of ten will think that's creepy, but one in ten will flirt back.
In standard conversation, one pauses occasionally for feedback (you can hear it if you listen for it-- people stop just long enough for you to say "uh-hu?" and then move on.) In English, the length of the pause is (I'm not remember my units right-- maybe 5 milliseconds?) whereas in Japanese, it's only 3. When they attempt to talk to each other, the native Japanese speaker gets the impression the English speaker isn't really paying attention, (why are you taking so long to respond?) while the English speaker feels like he's being rushed by the other's constant "go on, go on, get to the point" speed of response.
Fully multi-lingual people will often find they have different personalities depending on what language they're speaking, because of the character of the language.]]
It was beautiful. And to go from that to the sweet, oppressed, virtuous proto-Christian Oliver Twist, martyred by Dickens' moralistic objectives in writing the book, was a bit much. I like Dickens's tongue-in-cheek long-winded writing style (ok, except for Great Expectations, which I despised) but there's only so much of that one can take before giving up and going back to lighter reading.
---heh, and I thought I was going to make a doll dress this evening. Shows what I know...
( ...and extrapolate: )
...I think I was going somewhere with this, but I don't seem to have gotten there. Just something I've been thinking about, anyway; there are a lot of those at present, so I thought I'd spill a bit out into "print" as it were.
But I was going to say earlier-- I took Kim and Oliver Twist with me on the train (in a long string of attempts to read "Great Books" I haven't gotten around to yet by taking them with me when no other books are to be had) and made the tactical error of reading Kim first. And it was fabulous-- on the long list of things I wish someone had known to tell me years ago is that Kim is a spy novel. And Kipling is so egalitarian... I mean, he's obviously not unprejudiced across the board (there's that line in "How the Leopard got his Spots", for instance...) but he's got this very clear view of different societal standards and expectations (between English and Muslim and Hindu or Buddhist), and how they can or can't appreciate each other. The Indian native casually swears a creative blue streak and gets up in people's faces, and that's just how they interact; the Englishman (I think it was:) "uses one word" in a sort of understated swearing, and doesn't understand the values of the native peoples much at all. And there are all the class interactions between types and sorts of people and it just rings very true. With Kim, sponge of a cheerful atheistic street child, in the middle, soaking up all the culture(s) available to him.
[[for those of you who haven't been listening to my father the past 5 or 6 years as he worked on the Iraqi language & culture trainer for the military, a couple factoids: body language is a huge part of human language, including personal space. Arab men in the US usually end up with american girlfriends because their personal space is smaller, and they'll keep trying to move in closer because that's the right distance to have a conversation. Most americans will back up, and most women will think they're being hit on... nine out of ten will think that's creepy, but one in ten will flirt back.
In standard conversation, one pauses occasionally for feedback (you can hear it if you listen for it-- people stop just long enough for you to say "uh-hu?" and then move on.) In English, the length of the pause is (I'm not remember my units right-- maybe 5 milliseconds?) whereas in Japanese, it's only 3. When they attempt to talk to each other, the native Japanese speaker gets the impression the English speaker isn't really paying attention, (why are you taking so long to respond?) while the English speaker feels like he's being rushed by the other's constant "go on, go on, get to the point" speed of response.
Fully multi-lingual people will often find they have different personalities depending on what language they're speaking, because of the character of the language.]]
It was beautiful. And to go from that to the sweet, oppressed, virtuous proto-Christian Oliver Twist, martyred by Dickens' moralistic objectives in writing the book, was a bit much. I like Dickens's tongue-in-cheek long-winded writing style (ok, except for Great Expectations, which I despised) but there's only so much of that one can take before giving up and going back to lighter reading.
---heh, and I thought I was going to make a doll dress this evening. Shows what I know...