The personality of people who are bilingual changes depending on which language they use, lending credence to the Czech proverb “Learn a new language and get a new soul”.
Is this for real? Looking at my own experience, I am reminded of how I used to sense myself as though I were a different person according to the language I spoke, English or Romanian. Over time, an integrating effort took place and now this 'split' is no longer there.
I put it down to culture, though, not so much language. Going to the shrink must have helped, too. :-)
Here's the
link of interest.
You only need get burnt once to learn
Andrei Plesu is a pretty cool guy. He writes nonchalantly, elegantly and sometimes incisively about current affairs, but is fundamentally a man of culture. One story that sprung to mind today while reading about European funding coming to Romania over the next few years was a reflection of his on recent Romanian politicians' names. While old-timer Communist-era politicians had pretty grim names (such as Pacoste, loosely translated as
Ill-Fated), we moved on after 1989 to non-descript names the likes of Iliescu and Roman. Sometimes we'd get a finance minister called Ciumara (a word related to the plague) or a prime minister called Vacaroiu (
Large Cow, more or less). Examples abound.
Today's story comes from yesterday's
Curierul National. It talks about how European funding coming to Romania will have to be used up at a rate of roughly 5.2 million Euros per day. That's OK, I think we should manage if we get the clever people on it but this isn't my point. My point relates to the General Manager of the Ministry for European Integration: it's about his name, to be precise.
The name Gabriel Friptu for this GM is, to me, a wonderful and positive message. It means
Gabriel The Burnt One, literally. Now, what does that suggest to you?! A reference to St. Gabriel, whose responsiblities include (is this right?) testing mortals' faith? Or perhaps more simply, this is a model of tomorrow's typical Romanian politician and businessperson: we got burnt. (Expectedly, we'll be more careful next time.)
The question is--how did he get burnt? Because he did something wrong and got caught, or because he tried to do right and they 'burned' him? :-)
A few weeks back while walking around in the Departures lounge at Brussels Airport, I passed one of those car exhibits that manufacturers put up. A car in a funny position with displays and information around it, actually. I was intrigued by the whole 'hybrid' thing that was coming up on the displays, so I stood and watched. Became interested. Left there 25 minutes later convinced to look into this further.
Suffice it to say I'm hell-bent on one of them hybrids, not even so much for the fuel efficiency thing as for the gadget factor! It's all electronic, everything computer-controlled and it's really, really quiet. Given the fact that my previous car fetish would have been the Mini Cooper S (some 200 horse-power in a small package, fuel consumption irrelevant)... well, I don't know what that says about me but this is it.
Links:
A South Park episode about smug hybrid drivers;
A brief presentation of the Prius from Toyota.
