It’s been raining most of the day, and heavily at times, with thunder and lightning. But there was a break in the morning, perfectly timed for me to go out on a run. I decided it was time to do another 5k effort, and I also decided that the oval track is so boring that I preferred to do my street route, even though it is quite hilly. I managed to complete the distance just a few seconds slower than last week’s 5k on the oval, so that was pleasing, if exhausting. And I just got home as it started to rain again, so the timing was ideal.
For lunch I drove over to a friend’s place, where he made us some food, and we played a couple of board games: 7 Wonders Duel, and Wingspan. I managed to win both games, which was pleasing. I really wasn’t sure about Wingspan until the final points tally.
At home I wrote the class plan for this week’s new ethics topic, on extraterrestrial intelligence. It’s basically exploring the questions arising out of the prospect of receiving a radio message from an alien civilisation. There’s plenty in just that to last for a full class. I’ll probably do another class later on about different scenarios such as physical contact. I ran the first three classes tonight, and it was very interesting because I got a very wide range of responses from the students. That’s always a lot more fun that everyone agreeing.
New content today:
thinking about when babies start to learn a language, and how they soak up different languages, including sign language, if the parents talk to them early enough.
considering each language is just a random set of sylables to non-native speakers, I suppose babies would learn the metaphore language the same as any other language. If “momma” = “The relationship that Penelope is to Telemachus”, it’s still 1 word in that language, and doesn’t have to be that long either (that’s just the translation to english). it could be “go-da-me-si-po-tu” or any other combination (including ! or other weird sounds that a non-human vocal box can produce). the baby would start with random noises, and work its way up to meaning.
If you think english words have less cultural baggage attached to them, think again – you know a lot of words that are the same word with different meaning in different countries – like Torch, douche, amber… a lot of examples from all over the world, and that’s just english speakers – if you want to check out “false friends”, different languages have even weirder meaning to the same word, and sometimes even the same original source.
A language composed of metaphores would be simpler to learn…