September 21, 2004

My Best Friend

It never ceases to amaze me how experience is linked to language and how mastering a foreign language can open up a brand new dimension of one's life.

For example, I often use words such as 'love' or 'beautiful' where I would hardly ever use their Czech equivalents. One of my friends, on the other hand, though very polite in Czech uses 'fuck' in English all the time. This comes as no surprise to me. While my English comes from England and Scotland, his originated in the USA...

However, there are two more important things worth noting.

First, it is fairly clear that translation is inevitable for language learners for as long as they have no direct experience.

Second, it occurs to me that there is also this 'partial nontransferability' (WOW!) between languages. The following sentence from my best friend underpins the conjecture:

"jo potrebuju sumavu a totalni vykyd tam v ty hospode se srsnema a ozralym venkovanem s chlebem...probrat zivot."

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