The use of language has always fascinated me. We are born without it but relatively quickly we start communicating with those who speak the same language and what's amazing is the vast number of languages, dialects and accents that exist and show little sign of becoming obsolete despite the 'shrinking' of the world through the access to technology. Languages get modified and through shared words, eg 'iPad', do show some signs of convergence but attempts to introduce universal languages , like Esperanto, have failed miserably.
My early experimentation with language, or rather accent, came at the age of thirteen when I moved with my parents from London, UK, where I was born, to Manchester, UK, which was where my father had taken on a new job. Changing schools at that age is never easy for any child and isn't helped if you don't speak the same as your peers. I tolerated the jibes about my southern accent for a while but gradually, over a period of a couple of years, I changed my accent to an almost perfect Mancunian drawl. If I'd chosen an acting career, I might have got a part in Coronation Street! At the age of eighteen, higher education took me to the south of England. I retained my accent for a while, which some members of the opposite sex seemed to find attractive! But gradually I reverted to my native tongue. To this day, I don't have difficulty mimicking any UK regional accent and I am usually able to determine which part of the UK someone comes from by listening to his or her accent.
So what my early years taught me was just how easy it is to modify the way we speak. In fact children who move to a different country at a young age usually have no difficulty speaking a completely different language very quickly. If only it was that easy when you get older. I now live in Turkey and I soon realised that I wouldn't learn Turkish just by exchanging pleasantries with the local shopkeepers, so I decided to embark on one-to-one lessons. It's hard! I console myself by assuming it is difficult to teach a new language to an old brain but I am not sure that's true, particularly when I see old brains learning new languages and many more picking up trendy lingo - which brings me on to 'You know....'
Throughout the ages there have been trendy words and phrases. 'No way', 'look' and 'huge' are examples and most recently 'you know'. I am not going to name names but 'you know' is prevalent amongst UK and US politicians although certainly not exclusive to political circles. Here's how it might be used:
"You know society needs strong leadership at times like this and you know a good leader needs a vision. You know visions don't grow on trees and the electorate deserves better........"
As illustrated, 'you knows' can sometimes be used more frequently than full stops! The Urban Dictionary has a rather graphic way of defining 'you know':
"Something that jackasses say EVERY FUCKING OTHER WORD! You know! You know! You know! No I don't know cocksucker, why don't you fucking tell me!"
Picking up trendy words and phrases by mature people shows how adaptable the brain is at ages when you might think it would be more set in its ways. So there's hope for me yet with my aspiration to learn Turkish! But YOU KNOW as my Turkish improves there is a danger YOU KNOW that I might YOU KNOW get out of touch with trendy English lingo and thus lose a source of knowledge for future blogs....... YOU KNOW!! :-)
Tuesday 18 December 2012
Wednesday 12 December 2012
Farewell little friend
As well as our resident two dogs and a cat, we have many non-human visitors to our home and some are from my point of view, more welcome than others. My wife's caring and compassionate attitude to all creatures great and small, is to be commended and as an example, when we discovered a massive hornets nest in the loft last year, she was insistent it was removed without harming the hornets, which we managed to do. I did, however, have to wait until the winter months when the insects were no longer active!
Other creatures that have literally become part of our home are the geckos. These reptiles are part of the lizard family and the ones that co-inhabit our residence are mediterranean house geckos. They are frequent visitors and the picture is of one in our living room that is eyeing up a tasty morsel! Unfortunately some are not so lucky, which leads me into my main story.
In the region where we live in Turkey, the summers are long and hot. For several months the temperatures are in the mid 30s and can exceed 40 degrees C. So air conditioning is highly desirable. The winter temperatures, whilst somewhat higher than central and northern Europe, can nevertheless be in single figures particularly at night. So the air conditioners are often used 'in reverse' to provide room heating. A couple of weeks ago when I found it necessary to warm the bedroom, I was disappointed to discover the air conditioner didn't work. I contacted the local service centre who promptly sent a technician to our home. He diagnosed the problem to be a faulty fan motor and later returned with a new unit. He connected it up, only to find it wasn't the solution to the problem. He then decided it must be the control card, a sub unit that takes in the mains power, as well as the command signals from the remote controller, and generates all the necessary outputs to the heating and cooling units. He returned a couple of days later with a new control card, installed it and we now have a working air conditioner. But what was interesting and sad was why the old card had given up the ghost. When the technician removed the old card he noticed that part of it was badly burnt and connecting two contacts that shouldn't be connected, was a stiff and lifeless gecko!
My wife's reaction to the incident was predictable. She felt very sorry for the gecko. I have to admit that my own immediate reaction was less compassionate as I was presented with the financial consequences of the gecko's action - a bill for 140 Turkish Lira. Upon reflection, however, I do believe the tragedy might have been avoided as I will now explain. There are two parts to an air conditioner, one inside the house and the other mounted externally. Between the two units there is a hole in the wall for the interconnecting cables and pipes. The technician pointed out to me that the geckos were using the hole as the entry point to our home, via the internal unit. I have since siliconed the holes for the unit that was repaired and the other units in our property so hopefully the geckos' hazardous entry points have been blocked, although I am sure they will find other ways in, which hopefully will be less risky.
So farewell little friend, you will not be remembered as a martyr but your tragic end has perhaps removed one man-made risk to your species' future survival in our home.
Other creatures that have literally become part of our home are the geckos. These reptiles are part of the lizard family and the ones that co-inhabit our residence are mediterranean house geckos. They are frequent visitors and the picture is of one in our living room that is eyeing up a tasty morsel! Unfortunately some are not so lucky, which leads me into my main story.
In the region where we live in Turkey, the summers are long and hot. For several months the temperatures are in the mid 30s and can exceed 40 degrees C. So air conditioning is highly desirable. The winter temperatures, whilst somewhat higher than central and northern Europe, can nevertheless be in single figures particularly at night. So the air conditioners are often used 'in reverse' to provide room heating. A couple of weeks ago when I found it necessary to warm the bedroom, I was disappointed to discover the air conditioner didn't work. I contacted the local service centre who promptly sent a technician to our home. He diagnosed the problem to be a faulty fan motor and later returned with a new unit. He connected it up, only to find it wasn't the solution to the problem. He then decided it must be the control card, a sub unit that takes in the mains power, as well as the command signals from the remote controller, and generates all the necessary outputs to the heating and cooling units. He returned a couple of days later with a new control card, installed it and we now have a working air conditioner. But what was interesting and sad was why the old card had given up the ghost. When the technician removed the old card he noticed that part of it was badly burnt and connecting two contacts that shouldn't be connected, was a stiff and lifeless gecko!
My wife's reaction to the incident was predictable. She felt very sorry for the gecko. I have to admit that my own immediate reaction was less compassionate as I was presented with the financial consequences of the gecko's action - a bill for 140 Turkish Lira. Upon reflection, however, I do believe the tragedy might have been avoided as I will now explain. There are two parts to an air conditioner, one inside the house and the other mounted externally. Between the two units there is a hole in the wall for the interconnecting cables and pipes. The technician pointed out to me that the geckos were using the hole as the entry point to our home, via the internal unit. I have since siliconed the holes for the unit that was repaired and the other units in our property so hopefully the geckos' hazardous entry points have been blocked, although I am sure they will find other ways in, which hopefully will be less risky.
So farewell little friend, you will not be remembered as a martyr but your tragic end has perhaps removed one man-made risk to your species' future survival in our home.
Thursday 6 December 2012
Beyond Borders
"Nature (and that includes us) is not made of parts within wholes. It is made up of wholes within wholes. All boundaries, national boundaries included, are fundamentally arbitrary. We invent them and then, ironically, we find ourselves trapped within them."
These are the profound words of Peter Senge, founder and director of the Society for Organisational Learning and a senior lecturer at MIT. Here's another pearl of wisdom:
"When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world."
That came from John Muir, the naturalist. The point I wish to extract from these two quotes is that we live in a world of interconnections and interdependencies. It's nice to think we can break down problems into small chunks and deal with them individually but it doesn't always work. And yet it feels natural to think in 'straight lines' of cause - effect - cause - effect - ........ It's called linear thinking. Whereas in reality things tend to happen in circles rather than linearly. In short we live in a non-linear world where the results of well-intended actions, although seemingly successful at the time, can come back to bite us!
To make things more difficult for ourselves, we add constraints in the form of man-made boundaries. These occur in every aspect of life, the obvious one being territorial. But religion, race, politics, personal mindsets, organisations........ are all subject to artificial boundaries. There are always conflicts on this planet and at the time of writing these include, Israel/Palestine, Egypt, Syria, the economies of the Euro zone, UK and US, rising levels of poverty, ........ to name but a few. On each of these issues, so called 'experts' appear on the media and announce quick-fix solutions. Let's take as an example the UK economy and I will try not to portray myself as a quick-fix expert! The Chancellor's (not very) quick- fix solution to the country's malaise is 'austerity'. Drive down the debt by increased taxation and reduced public expenditure and if that doesn't work blame factors beyond your control! But the factors beyond the Chancellor's control are a fundamental and integral part or the UK's fiscal problem. So by trying to separate the UK as a 'chunk' and dealing with its income and expenditure in isolation, is tackling the symptom of the problem rather than the fundamental problem.
There are those who would go further with the 'chunk theory' and separate the UK from the rest of the world, starting by severing the link with Europe. As well as those who would separate Scotland from the UK. But why stop there? Most of the UK's wealth is generated in the south east of England so perhaps the citizens of the home counties should be pushing for independence!
I would suggest the logic for such reductionist thinking is flawed. We need to think beyond the boundaries we have created and succeeded in trapping ourselves. Despite numerous man-made boundaries, we are ONE species, homo sapien. Our ingenuity, compared with other species on the planet, has been unrivalled. Bur our naivety, in terms of survivability, is scary. To believe in perpetual growth on a finite planet, one must be mad or an economist! That is what we are doing and continue to do. What's more, through the creation of artificial divisions within our species, some parts of the planet have benefited from growth, whilst other parts haven't. The developing (another word for 'poor') part of the world now, unsurprisingly, wants to catch up. But this can only happen if the developed (another word for 'rich') part of the world gives something up because the world's resources are limited and some commodities, like fossil fuels, are fast running out. In my humble opinion, that is the fundamental problem facing the planet and other 'parochial' problems are symptoms of this underlying malaise.
So we need to think beyond borders, which means remembering we are but one species as part of many, co-existing on one planet. We need to think about DEVELOPMENT, which means getting better, rather than GROWTH, which means getting bigger, because the latter is unsustainable. If we agree with the previous two sentences then traditional boundaries - territorial, religious, racial, and so on - become less relevant and therefore more manageable.
This blog isn't going to change the world but I am convinced radical change will happen although regrettably it will probably take a few more disasters - climatic, political, economic, social - before common sense will prevail. Sad isn't it?!
These are the profound words of Peter Senge, founder and director of the Society for Organisational Learning and a senior lecturer at MIT. Here's another pearl of wisdom:
"When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world."
That came from John Muir, the naturalist. The point I wish to extract from these two quotes is that we live in a world of interconnections and interdependencies. It's nice to think we can break down problems into small chunks and deal with them individually but it doesn't always work. And yet it feels natural to think in 'straight lines' of cause - effect - cause - effect - ........ It's called linear thinking. Whereas in reality things tend to happen in circles rather than linearly. In short we live in a non-linear world where the results of well-intended actions, although seemingly successful at the time, can come back to bite us!
To make things more difficult for ourselves, we add constraints in the form of man-made boundaries. These occur in every aspect of life, the obvious one being territorial. But religion, race, politics, personal mindsets, organisations........ are all subject to artificial boundaries. There are always conflicts on this planet and at the time of writing these include, Israel/Palestine, Egypt, Syria, the economies of the Euro zone, UK and US, rising levels of poverty, ........ to name but a few. On each of these issues, so called 'experts' appear on the media and announce quick-fix solutions. Let's take as an example the UK economy and I will try not to portray myself as a quick-fix expert! The Chancellor's (not very) quick- fix solution to the country's malaise is 'austerity'. Drive down the debt by increased taxation and reduced public expenditure and if that doesn't work blame factors beyond your control! But the factors beyond the Chancellor's control are a fundamental and integral part or the UK's fiscal problem. So by trying to separate the UK as a 'chunk' and dealing with its income and expenditure in isolation, is tackling the symptom of the problem rather than the fundamental problem.
There are those who would go further with the 'chunk theory' and separate the UK from the rest of the world, starting by severing the link with Europe. As well as those who would separate Scotland from the UK. But why stop there? Most of the UK's wealth is generated in the south east of England so perhaps the citizens of the home counties should be pushing for independence!
I would suggest the logic for such reductionist thinking is flawed. We need to think beyond the boundaries we have created and succeeded in trapping ourselves. Despite numerous man-made boundaries, we are ONE species, homo sapien. Our ingenuity, compared with other species on the planet, has been unrivalled. Bur our naivety, in terms of survivability, is scary. To believe in perpetual growth on a finite planet, one must be mad or an economist! That is what we are doing and continue to do. What's more, through the creation of artificial divisions within our species, some parts of the planet have benefited from growth, whilst other parts haven't. The developing (another word for 'poor') part of the world now, unsurprisingly, wants to catch up. But this can only happen if the developed (another word for 'rich') part of the world gives something up because the world's resources are limited and some commodities, like fossil fuels, are fast running out. In my humble opinion, that is the fundamental problem facing the planet and other 'parochial' problems are symptoms of this underlying malaise.
So we need to think beyond borders, which means remembering we are but one species as part of many, co-existing on one planet. We need to think about DEVELOPMENT, which means getting better, rather than GROWTH, which means getting bigger, because the latter is unsustainable. If we agree with the previous two sentences then traditional boundaries - territorial, religious, racial, and so on - become less relevant and therefore more manageable.
This blog isn't going to change the world but I am convinced radical change will happen although regrettably it will probably take a few more disasters - climatic, political, economic, social - before common sense will prevail. Sad isn't it?!
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