Second Meeting 9/8

            In my second meeting with Denily, we talked a lot about sports and her home culture. I had several stereotypes overturned during our conversation; first, I learned that Venezuelan food is very mild, and almost never has anything spicy. This was a little bit of a surprise, since I thought most cultures would have at least one spicy thing in a meal, but Denily assured me that she doesn’t enjoy spicy food at all. I tried to do a little research (Wikipedia!) to see if any region had spicy food, but came up with few results, although the article did mention one spicy food. Maybe she is just in the wrong part of the country for spiciness. Another stereotype that was overturned was that soccer is the most popular sport in Venezuela. I always thought that Central American countries tended toward baseball and that South American countries tended towards soccer. Apparently though, according to Denily, they are both about equally popular, although the internet says baseball is generally more popular. A final misconception I had about Venezuela was that it was a hot country, temperature-wise. Thinking this, I figured the Texas heat was pretty typical to her, but she told me she couldn’t stand the heat. In fact, I compared the temperature data for her city to some of the “perfect weather” cities in California and was surprised to find that the temperature in her city is even more consistent than most of California.

            We met again on Saturday to watch a football game; she and a friend from Venezuela both came to the game against Grambling State (yes, this is being written much too late), where I tried to explain how football is played. As I did this, I realized how complicated football really is to someone who has never really watched it. Even the basics of it were difficult to explain. On certain rules, I actually realized I had no idea why certain things happened. Denily asked why the play clock sometimes counts down from 25 seconds and at other times from 40.

            It was a good second meeting. I’m enjoying learning all about another culture. That’s one of my favorite things about college, the ability to hang out with people from all over the world. More meetings to come soon enough!

Response to The 50 Funniest American Writers

-->

What in the world did I just read?

Today for class, we read 5 short stories from the book “The 50 Funniest American Writers”. Unfortunately, after reading these stories, I think I could edit the book to “The 46 Funniest American Writers”. We read from the authors James Thurber, Dorothy Parker, E.B. White, Peter de Vries, and best of all, The Onion.

            I enjoyed the first story by James Thurber, but it really was not too funny. The story describes a family where several occurrences cause the wife to think her husband is insane. The first occurrence was perpetrated by Roy, one of the kids, who wakes his dad in the middle of the night, calls him Buck (not his name) and returns to bed before his dad can find out what was going on. While the idea of a prank like this was humorous and enjoyable to think about, the humor from that point on was somewhat stale.

            After enjoying the first story, I was surprised by how much the next three stories disappointed me.  I think the stories may have just been too old for me, but I had trouble even following the E.B. White story. I’m honestly not even sure what happened in it or what the purpose was. From the beginning, there is almost zero context, and everything that happens is confusing from that point on. In retrospect, this story seems like one where such random things happen that it almost needs to be seen on a stage or screen to understand it. Either way, I strongly disliked this story.

            Of course, the highlight of all of the readings was the article by The Onion. I have been a fan of this satirical news source for a long time, and was excited to get to read another article. It did not disappoint. The article talks about the future effort of the U.S. government to deploy thousands of vowels to Bosnia in order to make their names and cities understandable to Americans. The idea was great from the beginning, including fake quotes from people like Grg Hmphrs: “With just a few key letters, I could be George Humphries. That is my dream.” The absolute absurdity of it is humorous to read, but of course, the understanding that the story is not real is necessary to get a laugh out of it. 

John Morreall's Comic Relief

-->

After trudging through the dense, somewhat unorganized pages of the book “Comic Relief “ by John Morreall, I was glad to have finally finished the reading. The book explores many of the theories of humor through the centuries, and although there were parts that were interesting, I failed to fully enjoy it, unfortunately.

However, there were a few things I did learn from the book:

1)   Humor was, at one point, thought to be a negative contributor to society. This idea was strange to me at first because I cannot imagine a society where humor, or even laughing or smiling would go against social mores. I absolutely love laughing and smiling, so when I read that humor was viewed negatively years ago, I wondered how this could happen. After reading some of the reasoning behind this belief, I understood the logic, at least. It made sense that humor can cause ridicule and emotional pain, but the old ideas of humor did not realize the potential humor has when it is not used for these things.

2)   Humor allows people to do things they are usually not allowed to do. With humor, you can imitate different aspects of life and essentially ridicule different things. In everyday conversation, it is not appropriate to ridicule something, but for a strange reason, ridicule in a humorous fashion is more accepted. Morreall gives several examples of humor that ridiculed a cultural practice, a powerful position in government, and others. This type of humor can be harmful, but some of it can sometimes actually reveal a truth that needed to be heard and accepted.

3)   Cognitive shift is usually the method of humor or laughter. I had not really considered the exact reason I laugh until I read the book. It made me realize that the things I find funny are funny because of what Morreall calls cognitive shift. When I laugh at the short Monty Python “Fish Club” skit, I laugh because the actor (from the official “Board of Irresponsible People”) begins the skit acting normally, but very quickly tells the audience how to feed your goldfish a good meal, including sausage, potatoes, and bread. While he explains this, we see him stuffing the fishbowl with this food, and it catches you off guard, making you laugh. I am much more aware of why we laugh now.

 Watch the Fish Club skit below. It's only 52 seconds!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJlBYvkRiHk

First Meeting 8/30

            I met my conversation partner, Denily, for the first time on Thursday. It was a great experience to just sit down and learn about another person and culture for an hour. Denily is from Venezuela and has worked at a news-station there for about 5 years after college in her hometown. She decided to come to TCU to learn English for job security and to gain another skill for use in her job.

            It was very interesting talking to someone from a completely different culture and hearing some of her reactions to American culture. One of my first impressions was that Denily speaks English very well, practically flawlessly. When I asked her how long she had been in the U.S., she looked at the date and casually said, “almost four months”. I was impressed to say the least. She had little prior training in English before she came to TCU, other than basic knowledge and an English course at one time, and was already speaking smoothly and fluently.

            One part of our conversation that was most interesting to me was our discussion of language. We first talked for a while about idioms. Some idioms translated perfectly from one language to the other, while others did not. In Venezuela, they have the phrase,

“El loro viejo no aprende a hablar,” which translates, “The old parrot cannot learn to speak.” This idiom is very similar to our idiom, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” While the actual words were different, they both communicated the same idea. On the other hand, the Spanish phrase, “hablar por los codos,” does not translate to English well, as it means, “to talk through the elbows,” or to talk a lot. It was interesting exchanging things like this. I also discovered that it is difficult for many Spanish speakers to pronounce words with the ‘th’ or ‘thr’ consonant combination. It was something I didn’t really think of as being difficult, but looking back, I can remember being 5 years old and saying something costs “free dollars” instead of “three”, so I guess I can relate.

            Our first meeting was fun and enlightening. We are planning on meeting again a week from today, so stay tuned!