Love is Deafness

I assume most people are familiar with the expression that "love is blindness". When you're in romantic "love" with someone, you fail to see their flaws and see only the positive traits and are "blinded" by love. While I don't believe romantic love with a significant other can last for more than a few years (5 years would be the maximum, I'd say, in terms of the psychology and scientific explanations, since release of neurotransmitters adrenaline, dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, vassopressin, etc. all return to "normal" levels after as early as 2 or 3 years but also as late as 5 years) I never thought that it could be the same for languages. As in a previous entry, I noted that language learning is like being married. My love affairs, flings, and short-lived romances with foreign languages I never married and my eventual polygamous marriage to the current languages I'm learning are extremely parallel to the psychology behind human relationships!

I find this realization fascinating. English is my native language so I suppose this language isn't a marriage at all. It's perhaps like a mother to me. I don't love in romantically, but I do appreciate the language and I love English when it's spoken not with an American accent, but with a foreign accent (British, French, German, Irish, Polish, Romanian, Russian). Swedish and Korean were my "second" languages, due to my ethnic background. I was exposed to these languages since infancy, so these are like my "siblings". My siblings in real life I love dearly (in a platonic way, of course. Kar and Ken know I love them =) Love you guys!) But as for my language "siblings" my feelings for them are pretty neutral. I don't hate them, but I do feel appreciative of them and find them interesting sometimes. Needless to say, I do not feel "passionate" about either language.

Then come the real "foreign" languages in my life. Spanish was an arranged marriage. At one point, I hated Spanish since I was being forced to learn it. After having spent a good chunk of my academic life and sacrificing countless hours to learning it, I feel an obligation to be "married" to it. It would be a waste of time and energy if I were to forget it or "divorce" it now. In fact, I've really come to like the way "Castellano" sounds, perhaps because my roommate in New York was a Spaniard from Madrid? I'm not sure.

French was my first love. As a 5-year-old at the JFK airport waiting for my father who was coming back from his military assignment in Germany, I first heard French as an airport announcement while with my pregnant mother and infant brother. The soothing sounds of French enticed even my puerile ears. "What language was that?!" I asked, fascinated by my new discovery. 

"That's French," she replied, while putting a hand over her 8-month pregnant belly. 

"Oh!" I exclaimed. I didn't say the rest aloud, but I clearly remember thinking, Wow, I want to learn French! After this airport discovery, I rummaged through our family library to find an old atlas, looking for France on the world map, discovering its capital, learning about the Eiffel Tower... 

It took 13 years to finally learn French and go to France for the first time. My first few years of being "married" to French were wonderful. It was like a childhood dream that finally came true. Everything about the language captivated me entirely and I devoted innumerable hours to it. My love for it felt endless and limitless. Meeting French people and speaking French with them made my heart beat faster with excitement. These were the blissful early years. 

Now I've come to realize this excitement is gone. It's now been nearly 5 years since I've been "married" to French and the initial burning passion I have for French seems to have waned to a flicker. No longer do I feel so excited and my heart doesn't beat any faster at the prospect of speaking it. Perhaps it's even further killed by the fact that I live in France where everyone speaks it. Not only that, but I've come to realize that French isn't always so beautiful as it sounded to me before I learned it. I love Parisian French. The Parisian accent is by far my favorite. The Alsatian accent (I live in Alsace) in French does not sound very nice. Most people speak standard French here (especially the younger generation) but the older generation and people from villages have strong Alsatian accents which I find unattractive. Québécois, the French spoken in Canada, sounded beautiful when I didn't know a word of French. Now, I really dislike this accent. Sometimes even standard French sounds unattractive depending on the speaker and the way it's being spoken on the streets. Before, everyone who spoke French seemed to me to have beautiful voices and spoke beautifully. Now, I find some peoples' voices to be annoying at times. Before everything sounded beautiful, now, now that I know French relatively well, it doesn't always sound so beautiful and it's a little sad that this initial passion is virtually gone. 

It's not just French either. German was the second language I married for love and even with this, my passion is slowly waning. Before I knew a word of German, all German speakers sounded the same. Now, it's not the case. I know which accents in German I like the best. Standard German I still like very much and I definitely like the northern German accent and the Eastern German accents the best. The southern German accents (Baden-Württemberg and  Bayern being the most notable examples) and the Austrian accents are not very attractive to me anymore. Sadly, the city next to Strasbourg, Kehl, is in Baden-Württemberg... so they all speak German with a rather unattractive accent.

What is insane about French and German now is I even have a preference for people speaking with a French or German accent in English! I didn't think this was possible, but it is. For instance, a Parisian speaking English with a French accent sounds a lot better than a Marseillaise speaking English with a French accent. Sound insane? Maybe. It's worse for German, actually. I really like Germans from northern/eastern (esp. Sachsen) German who speak English with a German accent but really dislike the German accent when someone from Baden-Württemberg or Bayern speaks English with their German accent. All Austrian accents and Swiss-German accents, in both German and in English with German accents, don't sound very nice to me. Strange, since I'm not as picky with French when it comes to the Belgians or Swiss speaking French. But with German, I've developed extreme preferences.

Actually, in the past few months, I've come to realize that my love for Russian has surpassed my love for German. I'm still a beginner in Russian so that passion and excitement is still strong and burning. Everything is so different in Russian that it's fascinating. It's different from French in that while I loved Russian and that's why I decided to learn it, I didn't love it as much as I loved French when I started it. It was my 3rd favorite language when I initially attempted to learn Russian, resulting in the lack of motivation at first and my on and off relationship made it difficult to make progress, especially as I focused on my French or German. Last year, however, I realized I'd begun to like Russian more and more. The more I learned the more it became interesting. It equalized in terms of interest level with German and now I'm sure that I prefer Russian over German. I mean, French was so easy to learn (for me, it was the easiest language I've learned so far) that while I felt satisfied in the early stages, that feeling of satisfaction is virtually gone now. Russian is a little different. It's so hard to learn that I sometimes wonder why I'm so masochistically attracted to this language. Still, the satisfaction level is amazingly high, higher than it ever was with French.  It makes me wonder, though, will I also develop such preferences for Russian once I speak it well? Five or ten years from now, will the passion I have for Russian die just as my passion for French?

Don't get me wrong. I still love French. But the feeling of being wildly and "madly in love" is gone. French is still my favorite language but my love for French isn't growing anymore. Meanwhile, my love for Russian has been steadily increasing. I'm a little afraid to admit it, since I've loved French for such a long time (nearly 18 years) but I think it's a possibility that maybe in the future, my love for Russian will surpass my love for French.

As for Italian, I used to love it almost as much as Russian when I started out but my love for it hasn't been increasing or decreasing and it's been pretty level. Satisfaction levels for Italian are not that high since it's not so difficult to learn, especially not after French and Spanish. I love it a lot more than Spanish, but less than French, Russian, and German.

Maybe I'm just an extremely picky person when it comes to serious relationships, whether with a human or a language? For instance, I even have preferences for the genders of speakers. My favorite speakers for each language are different. For French, I really prefer French when it's spoken by a woman. I don't know why, but it sounds nicer when a Parisian French woman speaks French than a Parisian man. Even in English, I prefer listening to a Parisian Frenchwoman speaking English over a Parisian Frenchman. The language sounds so much nicer to me when it's spoken by a woman. For Russian, I definitely prefer it when it's spoken by a man. I don't have accent preference or anything but I just like it when it's spoken by a man with a nice voice. For German, I prefer it being spoken by a man from northern or eastern Germany. Italian, I prefer when women speak it. I'm not fluent enough to have accent preferences, but I usually prefer listening to Italian being spoken by a woman rather than by a man. Spanish, I guess I just prefer anyone from Madrid over any other city. I'm pretty gender-neutral when it comes to Spanish since it wasn't out of love that I started this language. My preference for the Madrid accent probably comes from the fact that I lived with a friend who spoke with that accent.

Hm, I'm actually not picky but I'd prefer the term sound-sensitive. Out of the 5 sense, if I were forced to give up all other senses and keep only one sense, it would be to have my sense of hearing. Sounds are amazing. Music is capable of stoking emotions. Languages can seduce you. For me personally, the extent of what can be expressed through sound and speech is astonishing. I know I'm not alone in this since my siblings agree with me. They might not choose the sense of hearing over all other senses (the sense of sight is more important for some. For me, the sense of sight comes second after hearing, so sight is also very important), but they're also very sound sensitive. Both my siblings want to date people with a nice voice, in addition to nice looks. I suppose for me this has evolved into accent preferences within language preferences, while it's not the case for my siblings.

Today's Random Picture: 

Rodent Dumbo? Still pretty cute =)

Weirdest Phone Call Ever

This entry will be much more lighthearted than the past couple entries =).

Imagine you're a Muscovite, perhaps back from work, on a otherwise normal Wednesday evening. Then you get a phone call. You answer the phone to hear this:

Добрый вечер! Извините, но у меня есть вопрос. Когда я говорю по-русски, можете ли вы мне сказать, из какой я страны?

(Good evening! Excuse me, but I have a question. When I speak in Russian, could you tell me, which country I am from?)

After hearing that my accent in Russian was неизвестный (origin unknown), I was determined to figure out what other Russians had to say about my accent... except it wasn't always objective. Russian speakers have always known I was from the U.S. and those whom I asked in France randomly have only guessed "French" or "I don't know." Equipped with an international phone card, after receiving the country code and Moscow area code number, I set out to discover objective answers to my question.

Unfortunately, most of the numbers I attempted to call didn't even exist or no one answered the call. The handful of people who did answer the phone either laughed, reprimanded me, were completely confused, or engaged in a friendly conversation with me. Two people said they couldn't name a country I was from, of which one old woman laughed at my question saying she couldn't even guess since there were many countries where people spoke Russian. (This actually made me very happy since she didn't guess the possibility of me being from a non-Russian speaking country!!!) Some people sounded very confused... their confused responses and intonation forced me to stifle my giggles. One very old man was actually extremely upset and angry at me! He thought I was a Russian kid playing pranks since, through his angry, rapid Russian being pelted my way, I understood phrases like, "Что?! Из России! Что ты хочешь?! Где твоя мама!" (What?! From Russia! What do you want? Where is your mom?" The rest of what he said, I didn't understand until he angrily hung up. But this didn't really upset me at all, actually. He thought I was a Russian kid, which means my accent isn't that strong! Yay!

Thus far, the tally is: 

Canada - 1 person

Canada/USA - 1 person 

Russia - 1 person (The old man who thought I was a Russian kid)

USA - 2 people

Uzbekistan - 1 person 

"Unknown"/неизвестный - 2 people

Uzbekistan?! That was the funniest response of all, I think! I did manage to entertain a few 3 to 5-minute conversations with some of the people who guessed that I was from the U.S. After I said, "Да! Вы прав! Я американка" they started talking in English, at which I responded. One such random person said that the phone call was probably one of the weirdest things to happen to him. Hm... I guess he might be right. How would you react if you got such a phone call? Would you be angry? Annoyed? Surprised? Disgusted? Amused? Confused?

I still have some credit left on my phone card, about 5 euros or so, so I might try calling a few more random numbers tomorrow to get a better/more complete tally =D. I haven't done this (calling random people) since I was a child! I feel like a little kid again, except, what I'm doing now is very different from what I did when I was 7 or 8 years old, when my friends and I would call up random people in the U.S. and ask things like "Is your refrigerator running? Then you'd better go catch it!" 

UPDATE
Canada - 1 person
Canada/USA - 1 person
Russia - 1 person (The old man who thought I was a Russian kid)
USA - 3 people
France - 1 person
Uzbekistan - 1 person
Poland - 1 person
Africa - 1 person
S. Africa - 1 person
Yugoslavia - 1 person
"Unknown"/неизвестный - 5 people

I called a few more people and used up my phone card credits! Poland??? Yugoslavia??? LOL!!! There was an old woman, who guessed I was American, who gave me her cellphone number and said she'd show me around Moscow should I come to visit!!! Then there was a Russian student who studied French-Russian translation (the one person who guessed I was from France),  who also gave me his cell number and told me to feel free to call should I visit Russia. Sweet! This is why I love people.

Today's Random Cartoon: 

Panarin Predicts the End

Doomsday prophecies seem to be the trend these days. The world ending in 2012, global warming becoming irreversible if progress isn't made by 2025 thus melting the polar icecaps and eventually resulting in the end of the world, my sister saying that the world will end in 2060 according to some weird formula she came up with herself. In any case, of all of these outrageous claims, I found one particular doomsday prophecy particularly outrageous. A Russian professor, Professor Игорь Панарин (Igor Panarin) has been predicting the "moral and economic collapse" of the United States for the past decade or so. He predicts that the United States as we know it today will be obsolete by 2010. As if things aren't bad enough for America already, what with the recession, the financial crisis, banking crisis, housing market crash, the falling dollar, and now... this? Seriously???

Panarin, an ex-KGB analyst, is now allegedly spreading his outlandish prophecy across the Russian media, getting interviews, even giving lectures on what he claims is a hypothesis based on cold, hard facts. What ultimately leads the U.S. to disintegration? According to Panarin, a combination of economic decline, mass immigration, moral and social degradation will in turn trigger a second American civil war and the complete demise of the dollar. The end result? The break-up of the United States by mid-2010 into some 6-odd regions. Of course, Panarin couldn't stop and leave it at that. Not only would the U.S. break up, but these sub-regions would be controlled or absorbed completely by foreign powers.

Sound crazy enough? I personally think this is Panarin's own way of "getting back" at the U.S. and the West in general and their displays of schadenfreude at the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. The U.S. and the West watched the Soviet Union collapse with a sort of surprised satisfaction as communist dictatorial rule ended in ultimate failure. Is this Panarin's way of saying "it's going to happen to you too", even though it's not? What surprised me particularly was that his so-called "hypothesis" is actually somewhat popular in Russia. So maybe it's true that the Kremlin in Russia harbors some anti-American sentiments? Even though his theory is far-fetched to outright ridiculous, Mr. Panarin isn't regarded as some lunatic in his home Russia. In fact, he's the head of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s academy for future diplomats and he's also one of the talking heads on Russian (state-run) TV whenever US-Russian relations are the issue.

What exactly he hypothesizes can be summed up in this map:
* "The California Republic" comprised of the West Coast and states west of the Rockies would be taken over by China or fall under Chinese influence.
* "The Central North-American Republic" made up of the Midwestern/North central states would be absorbed by Canada or controlled by Canada.
* "Atlantic America", my home region, consisting of much of the Atlantic coastal states, would eventually attempt to join the European Union
* "The Texas Republic", which is the "Tex-Mex" area as well as a handful of other southern states would fall to Mexico or under Mexican influence.
* Alaska (or Аляска) would return to Russian possession
* Hawaii would be taken by Japan or China

China having control over Hollywood? Unlikely, since California is one of the richest American states and would be in the top 20 richest countries on its own. The Canadian Maple Leaf flag flying at the Gateway Arch in Missouri? Hardly imaginable. A European Union Institute residing in the heart of New York City or Washington, D.C.? Impossible. Mexico taking over the die-hard patriotic state of Texas? Not without a horrific massacre of some sort. Ok, Sarah Palin and the citizens dumb enough to elect her can go to Russia and as for Hawaii going to Japan or China? I doubt it, but maybe that's not as impossible as Canada taking over a huge chunk of the U.S.

While, as an American myself, I found Panarin's claims blasphemous, he refers to political scientist Emmanuel Todd, who predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1976. “People laughed at him" [too], he implies a similar vindication as he's quoted saying at an interview for this Wall Street Journal article. If you really think about it though, you can't even begin to compare the break-up of the Soviet Union with a possible break-up of the U.S. The Soviet Union wasn't really a voluntarily united country. It was transitioned into a Union from its original Imperial form (The Russian Empire conquered many foreign regions, obviously not a union with their consent). So a lot of people were discontent and there were several preexisting nationalities already within the Soviet Union. Can you really compare an Azerbaijani and Uzbek in the ex-Soviet Union and make similar comparisons to a Californian and a Wisconsinite? I don't think so, because in times of crisis, as 9/11 events showed us, Americans stand together and patriotism is rekindled. There is no way that could happen. Not only that, but his arguments are founded on untrue "facts". Economic decline and during the "Great Depression" didn't do anything to question U.S. unity. Our current "crisis" isn't nearly as bad as the media tries to scare us into thinking. Mass immigration? What mass immigration? U.S. immigration levels have been relatively stable and it is only recently that our immigration levels are matching that of the 1800s. As for moral degradation and the falling dollar, well, that's something we'll have to live with and work through, but it certainly won't cause another civil war.

Oh, I guess I should add that Panarin does try to buffer his claims with some insurance by saying that this is only 50% likely to happen. He adds that if in fact it did, it would be great - for Russia, that is. What I think he's missing out is, yeah, sure, even if Russia gets back its precious Аляска, the break-up of the U.S. would actually be more detrimental to Russia than it is beneficial, since the U.S. is one of Russia's most important trading partners, which closely ties the two countries together economically. End result: Russia would experience some serious economic turmoil of its own if the U.S. were to break up.

This case is similar to the apocalyptic prophecies of religious eschatologists and we can only wait to discuss and laugh about this next year, in November 2010. If President Obama is still the president of the U.S., I'm sure Panarin will retreat with his tail behind his legs and no longer make such rash proclamations. Of course, I'm confident to say that his prophecy is wrong. If it turns out to be true, then I guess he can put his foot in my mouth.

Today's Random Quiz:

You Are Send

You are confident, assertive, and a real go-getter. You like to take action. You know that things won't get done unless you do them, and you're always willing to take the first step. You're the type of person who applies for jobs you may not get and initiates friendships with strangers. You believe that life can be full of wasted opportunities if you're not careful. You rather do too much than do too little.

What Email Function Are You?

Russian and German

I've done it!

Recently, I'm slowly realizing the significant impact I'm having on my siblings, or at least, my brother. I'd bought my brother a ticket to Poland for his 18th birthday. I hadn't given it much thought at the time but he's missing school for a few days while there (although today was a snow day so he's only missing 3 days). He left early on Friday to fly over to Warszawa. Arriving on Saturday morning, he dropped off his bag at a youth hostel in Warszawa and went sightseeing for 2 days. Monday morning, he bought a ticket to Kraków and met with Tomasz, who showed him around then they went over to Katowice, where he is now. I received an e-mail from him today letting me know all was well and he'd safely gotten to Katowice. Apparently Tuesday was spent sightseeing in Kraków again, Wednesday will be exploring Katowice, then and he'll be headed back to Warszawa on Thursday morning to catch a flight back that night. He'll be back in the U.S. on Thursday night, so just in time to go back to school on Friday.

Apparently, he shared a room in his hostel with some Russians and Germans, who he found to be amazingly friendly and nice. He now wants to learn Russian and/or German!!! Yes! So my brother won't become a monolingual American!!! He apparently can't decide which one to start first. I personally can't give him any advice on that. French has always been my favorite language but as for my second favorite... it used to be German for a long time but now, I'm not so sure anymore. Now, I've really begun to appreciate the way Russian sounds more and more... maybe I like Russian better than German now? But right now, I think I like them both equally.

You know what I noticed though? People who like German almost always like Russian as well, and vice-versa (I'm talking about non-German-speaking and non-Russian-speaking people). For instance, in college, everyone I met who was studying German really liked or were also studying Russian. Russian language students were once German language students. I like both languages and so does my brother. Same goes with the random French language partner I talk to; he liked German then suddenly realized he also likes Russian. Why is that? I know these are completely different languages. One is Slavic while the other is Germanic. Yet, even when I'm studying or speaking German, I tend to mix it with Russian these days. It's so strange! Just a random observation... I'm really not sure if there's an explanation for that or if these languages even sound similar (which I don't think they do at all). Is it because they both have 3 genders? Kind of puzzling, but just thought I'd throw that out there in case someone had a theory as to why these languages seem to go hand in hand.

Today's Random Picture: