Today I watched the movie Temple Grandin twice, the first time with commentary, the second time "straight up." Perhaps I should've done that in reverse, but oh well. In between the two showings I worked on an article about the media's influence on our perception of autism. I'm almost done with it. I should finish in the morning. At the moment, I'm exhausted. I'll also write a better review of the movie, but for now I'll just say that Temple Grandin was an autistic woman that hated French class. In French there's a lot of the use of the phrase "ils est" which she visualizes as "eel ate" -- overwhelmed, she asks, "Why are there so many fish in France?!"
Of course even my limited French (I took 1 year in high school and a semester in college) tells me that "ils est" means "he is" in English, and "fish" is actually poisson -- which always reminded me of poison. Bread, of course, is "pain." If I play word games in my head, I wind up associating fish and loaves with poison and pain. Is there a secret meaning in this, like true generosity involves sacrafice?
But I digress. I'm sure the actual fish in France are just fine, and eating bread is far from painful. But still, I wonder at times why there is so much cross meaning in different languages on these seemingly so far from each other. Temple said she connected pictures in her mind. Can we do the same with words? Even words in different languages? It's worth exploring.
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