3:40 LOST IN TRANSLATION
Dr. Boroditsky speaks of tenses and verb changes in languages. I had no idea that it referred to evidential information. As I learned French as a child, I knew that the verb could change due to a number of factors, but I was unaware that it can be altered based on your relationship with the action. I had to replay this clip many times to fully understand what she was saying as the ideas were often overlapping. Inference seems to be terribly important in language, and that does make a lot of sense. This point extends to the difficulty in translating a simple sentence into other languages as numbers and colours may not be similarly identified in various languages. The note she made about direction was covered extensively in the article about how language shapes thoughts. I found it fascinating to read about the Aboriginal community that uses the cardinal directions for everything. This gave them a greater spatial understanding and altered the way they ordered and categorised lists. This made sure that they are well oriented and knew where North is at all times. (Boroditsky, 2011) This simple task isn’t so simple for a room full of scholars or event participants, as was the case in the lecture. On a personal note, I closed my eyes and tried to identify South-East by pointing where I thought it was… my compass app told me I was pointing North-West, the exact opposite direction!

10:56 TIME – BACK TO THE FUTURE?
Dr. Boroditsky analyses time and its relationship with language. The physical example of the future and the past was interesting as it brought to attention the gestures we made and how they relate to the words we are using. The Aymaran people gesture behind them for the future and in front for the past. At first, this seems nonsensical, but Dr. Boroditsky explains that they do this because the future has yet to be seen so it should be behind us. This is a different interpretation of the words and logically, it makes more sense to me. This example was referenced in the article as well. While this would be confusing to follow at first, I could see myself getting used to this logical interpretation of time and gesturing. 

21:00 ME TALK PRETTY ONE DAY
Dr. Boroditsky is speaking about gender and their role in language. She mentions a short story and this was a fun reference as I belong to a short story club and the David Sedaris short story ‘Me Talk Pretty One Day’ was a hit at our club. I was actually thinking of this story as she began talking about the German and Spanish languages and how masculine and feminine switch based on the word. This story was a comical way to look at learning another language and the pitfalls that come. Sedaris also explores various words in the English language and societal stigmas towards them. In his story, his main character notes that “the word therapy suggested a profound failure on my part. Mental patients had therapy. Normal people did not” (Sedaris, 2000). This hit home for me as I have someone in my life that should look into therapy but refuses because of the societal stigma surrounding it.
After continuing with the lecture, I have come to the conclusion that I will never learn Russian! The amount of masculine and feminine choices that must be made is astonishing. I have only met one person who learned Russian as an expat and it took her six years of living there to become bilingual. It’s also not the most pleasant sounding language to the ear. On that note, I find it odd that there are “romantic” languages, such as French, Spanish, and Italian, and harsh languages, such as German, Russian, and Norwegian. Vowels tend to soften a word and some of the harsher languages go long periods without using a vowel.  

24:44 WHAT ABOUT HURRICANE BOB?
Dr. Boroditsky made an amusing comment about the naming of hurricanes and the severity of the storm may have been downplayed by the feminine sounding name. This was a fleeting and small comment but I’ve always wanted to better understand why they name hurricanes so I went on a bit of a deep dive to discover more. Here’s what I discovered:
The way hurricanes and tropical storms were named has gone through some big changes over the years. Back in the day, from about 1953 to 1979, all the tropical storms in the United States were given female names.
In the early 1950s, they made a decision in the United States to only use female names for these weather events. It’s not entirely clear why they chose to do this, but some think it had to do with maritime tradition, where the sea was often referred to as female (Galindo, 2021). Because they named storms after women, some weather reporters started talking about these storms as if they were real women. Sadly, this sometimes meant using sexist stereotypes to describe how the storms behaved. This didn’t sit well with many people, including female meteorologists and feminist activists.
Eventually, after some successful campaigns, things changed. In 1979, the United States decided to start using male names in the naming system again. But not everyone was on board with this change. Some argued that storms with male names might not sound as scary as those with female names. In fact, there was even a Washington Post article in 1986 that suggested male names might not make people feel as urgently concerned. This is fascinating as Dr. Boroditsky noted that the female names perhaps tempered the severity of the storm in the eyes of the public. If you were wondering, that first male named tropical storm was named Bob. I don’t know about you but Hurricane Bob isn’t exactly terror inducing!

34:00 I SAW THE SIGN
I’ve often thought of math as a universal language, so when Dr. Boroditsky began speaking on this topic, my interest piqued. I had no idea that there are cultures that don’t have set numbers, but they rather approximate based on the amount of something in front of them. This vague calculation boggles my mind as there are surely times in their days that specificity matters. The lecture then turned to deaf signers that didn’t learn numbered sign language and are now deficient in basic counting skills. This led me to another thought I’ve had for decades. I always assumed that sign language was, much like math, a universal language. Since it is not reliant on wording, I wrongly assumed that a signer from America would be able to perfectly communicate with a signer from anywhere else in the world. I was very wrong! It seems obvious now but I had no idea that there is American Sign Language (ASL), British Sign Language (BSL) and many more around the world. I see that a sign in America could be deemed offensive or aggressive in another culture, thus the sign must change.
On a personal note, whenever I think of sign language and someone who is of-hearing trying to communicate to a deaf individual, I think of this emotional scene from the film Mr. Holland’s Opus. I love how this shows the emotional connection between a father and a son and how he is able to give the gift of this song to his boy. 

56:48 TO TEXT OR NOT TO TEXT
An audience member offered a great question to Dr. Boroditsky in the Q&A after the presentation. She asked if texting is changing the way we think. Judging by the approving murmur in the crowd, you could hear that this was a question on many people’s minds. I was pleased that Dr. Boroditsky has an optimistic view on this topic, referring back to history where we thought the printing press and teenagers were destroying language. Language evolves. What a beautiful sentiment. While I’m not pleased when a student hands something in with words like ‘you’ spelled ‘u’, I am fascinated at how efficient the younger generation has become with communicating to each other. There is more shorthand in the texting vocabulary than ever before. Full sentences are whittled down into a series of single letters. OMG, BRB, TTYL, the list goes on and on. I’m impressed with the speed in which my students text and the sheer volume of social media sites they can be on at once.

I chose to make explicit connections and integrate what I have learned so far directly into the six statements above. I do want to add my thoughts on the tap dancing TEDx Talk. Alexander McDonald cleverly addresses the idea of oral tradition through his tap dancing. The way he spun the story around his interest in the medium and his desire to learn by emulating the greats and the story they tell through their soles, or is it their souls, was excellent. He is a storyteller of the highest order, and his passion for the arts shone through when he concluded with, “if science and art have made it possible for us to live longer, it is the arts that make it worthwhile” (MacDonald, 2016). I couldn’t agree more with this statement. This was a well-rehearsed and expertly delivered Ted Talk and I almost went and bought a pair of tap shoes, but I decided against it, for the sanity of my downstairs neighbour.

References:
McDonald, A. (2016, February 26). Oral tradition in the age of smart phones | Alexander Macdonald | tedxfulbrightdublin. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egO_46P894k&t=730s

Boroditsky, L. (2011). How language shapes thought. Scientific American, 304(2), 62-65.

Galindo, S. (2021, June 16). Breakdown: Why hurricane names used to only be named after women. https://www.actionnews5.com. https://www.actionnews5.com/2021/06/16/breakdown-why-hurricane-names-used-only-be-named-after-women/

SAR School for Advanced Research. (2017, June 7). Lera Boroditsky, how the languages we speak shape the way we think [Video]. YouTube.

Sedaris, D. (2000, May 2). Me Talk Pretty One Day. The New York Times. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/sedaris-me.html

YouTube. (2010, January 17). Beautiful boy (Cole). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0IMASimhRo