October 19, 2016

They pointed to a map on the board with two continents. “Do you ever wonder why North America and Europe have the same shape?” they asked. The two landmasses kind of resembled a Europe that was squashed vertically and stretched along a slight curve. They answered their own question, “they were shaped by the wind and Earth’s rotation over time.”

–

Someone was outside of the classroom door and they asked me a question from the other side of the frosted panel. They wanted examples of “long” and “short” sentence forms. I suggested that a “long” sentence was “I am being x…” or “I know x…”

“No, that’s not it.” I still couldn’t see their face and I wasn’t sure who they even expected to be on other side of the door.

“But it’s like an ongoing action” I added.

“Have you taken linguistics before?” they asked.

“Well… it’s kind of like when you’d use -ている in Japanese.”

“Oh you’ve taken Japanese. How cool. So you think Japanese is like American, huh?” A third, rougher voice from beyond the door asked.

“No… it’s just the conjugation-” I couldn’t finish my thought as I felt overwhelmed by how little I knew what I was talking about.