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#but then i look at myself and my half-remembered linguistics degree and every hobby i've ever had and i go hm. hmmmm
itwoodbeprefect · 3 months
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just had the experience of succesfully sounding out แว่นกันแดด in my head, recognizing those sounds ("waen kan daet") as something i'd seen in transliterated script, confidently going "zonnebril!", and then seeing it translated as sunglasses and going wait?? that was wrong?? for a whole two seconds before remembering that no, those words actually do all fit into the same mold, i was just pouring a different language into it by accident
#i made a pancakes-for-dinner sort of sunglasses when they should have been pancakes-for-breakfast sunglasses#is there a paper somewhere on third or fourth language acquisition through a second language? i bet there is. there should be#anyway. there is this (anecdotal? but i assume widely shared) phenomenon i've been thinking about a lot#in which a person hears (or says or thinks) some words. two seconds pass. they can't remember what language the words were in#you remember the content just fine! but the way it got to your brain? who knows#happened to my mother recently when we watched a dutch movie and afterwards she recalled it as 90 minutes of english#because there was a gun in it. which felt american to her#happened to ME recently too in fact. when i had to think hard after being told the boy and the heron had english subtitles in our theater#as we were walking out of the theater!! and the only way i got to a place of going hey yeah! was by remembering a moment#while watching the movie. of consciously going 'huh they chose to translate some of this japanese as 'ain't'. interesting'#and ain't ain't dutch!! definitive proof they DID show that japanese movie with english subtitles in our dutch theater!!#this wall of tags isn't (ain't) going anywhere except. i think the zonnebril confusion is a version of this happening but maybe. like.#with a faint zonnebril echo still in my brain. sunglasses sounds different but for a moment there i didn't realize that's not because#it's a different concept. but because i had pulled the wrong language string attached to this one concept. or something#*#you know what sometimes i kid myself into thinking i don't think about language much more than the average person#but then i look at myself and my half-remembered linguistics degree and every hobby i've ever had and i go hm. hmmmm
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