Chasing down food envy

[susandennis]

machupicchu is a huge fan of grilled peanut butter and banana sandwiches. He writes about having one for dinner nearly every day and every time I read about it, I want one.  But, I never have bananas.  And often no bread.  But today the earth aligned.  The green bananas I bought on Sunday are perfect for eating and I have bread and I am enjoying the most delicious sandwich.  I did not grill it and I did add mayo. My own take on perfection.

I just got the nicest note from Marci who teaches the class I take at the gym on Thursdays.  I decided to skip it again this week and give my knees 7 more days of heeling.  I left her a note this morning letting her know but she sent the email before she sent the note.  She's planning on taking the class outside today anyway and I decided not to do that any more so it all works out.  I would have stayed behind and done the treadmill exactly like I did it this morning.  She also said that she's been reading some of these entries.  Hi Marci!!

I forgot to do my crunches for several days and held kind of a make up session with myself yesterday.  Today I totally get the value of doing them every day instead of saving them up.  Ouch.

My work today has taken me to Portugal and Sweden with a brief stop in Japan.  Working in languages you don't know can be very tedious.  And our tools don't make it easier.  It's interesting, however, to get heads down in a foreign language for a couple of hours.  

I am fairly fluent in English (not British English or New Zealand English but strictly American English).  I know a teensy bit of French.  I can't speak it and can't really understand much spoken French but I can read it after a fashion. And nothing else.  The rest of the world's tongues are a mystery to me.

I cannot imagine what it would be like to be fluent in more than one language.  How does the brain do it.  When you stub your toe, what language does the FUCK come out in?   What language do you dream in? Do you get to pick?  I think it would be amazing and so complicated.

My sandwich was just as delicious as I suspected it might be.  Time now to get back to work.  Up next, Brazil!!

Comments

[kayre]

My husband's favorite sandwich is something he calls a "Snoopy"== peanut butter, mayo, bacon and dill pickles! None for me, thanks! :)

[laciann.livejournal.com]

I speak two languages - sorta, with English being my mother tongue. My default is English - unless I'm very immersed in the second language for some reason. If I'm in that environment, exclamations, dreams etc can be either one, depending on which is closer to the surface at that moment, I guess! I no longer have to mentally translate everything into English, it computes in both languages.

[mikeybill.livejournal.com]

I found learning another language (Turkish) incredibly enriching. it took 2 years of living there for my brain to switch over, but it did. and when I stubbed my toe I'd swear in turkish

[susandennis]

wow. turkish! If you stubbed your toe tonight, would you still swear in turkish?

[mikeybill.livejournal.com]

Well I did live there for 8 years, so I thought it only polite to get to grips with the language, although some ex-pats never bothered.

Now my first recourse is swearing English, unless I don't want people to know what I'm saying - I still read Turkish papers online etc, and sometimes I'll swear in Turkish, it has some very good expressions "I shit in your mouth" being one of my favourites.

[susandennis]

Oh i like it!

when i stub my toe

[henare.livejournal.com]

it comes out in english. my next language (in which i used to have decent fluency but i've stopped speaking it) is spanish, and i have a smattering of dutch, german, french (enough to ask important questions, like where is the toilet).

isabel allende is often asked about this and she replies something like "the question ought to be 'in which language do you make love?" ... but i think the toe-stubbing example gets it right.

Re: when i stub my toe

[susandennis]

really? i would think the answer to the make love question would have a lot to do with the other person unless of course there was no other person and then... yeah, i'm sticking with the stubbed toe.

you have bits of all those languages in your head? yikes! i cannot imagine.

Re: when i stub my toe

[henare.livejournal.com]

yes ... but just bits. not enough to conquer the world with or anything. less by the day, too--google chrome has a plugin which will detect non-native-language pages and wll offer to translate them on the fly.

outside of english and spanish i don't have enough of any language to have a conversation ...

[machupicchu.livejournal.com]

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This entry brings back a memory from high school, when I was in a class with a foreign exchange student from Mexico. I asked her questions of this nature then. I remember asking, "What language do you think in?" She thought for just a split second and said, "Right now, English."

I took three years of Spanish in high school and then minored in it in college. I never once got close to being fluent, and I'm certain it's because I was never immersed in it. I didn't finally gain a revelation until after I met Shobhit that would have been very helpful at the time: a new language is learned much faster if you're not always basically solving math problems with each word and translating in your mind ("word in X language = word in Y language"). This is why immersion, which I never got in school, is so much more effective: you associate the word with the actual thing or concept rather than with a translation. That lends itself to thinking in that language. It's much more like how you and I learned English as children.

I couldn't hold a conversation in Spanish right now to save my life. Although I do know that if I were suddenly plopped down in, say, Argentina, I'd certainly pick it all up again far faster than anyone who doesn't have the same background I do. But being in the environment is key.
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[dizzdvl.livejournal.com]

My first thought of peanut butter and mayo was Gross! But then I remembered that I make a peanut butter burger (regular burger with all the trimmings (no tomato for me) and real bacon crumblies) and a smear of peanut butter. Yummeh! So maybe I'll try this peanut butter, banana and mayo creation.

[mixter11nm.livejournal.com]

My friend Johan knows five different languages quite fluently. He still says FUCK in just exactly that way whenever something goes wrong. I'm guessing it's the same in every language. :o)