Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Strange Ways of the Brain

I just discovered a fascinating aspect of how the brain works, or, at least, how my brain works. Very disconcerting.

While working through the Les grandes fugures de l’histoire section of the Easy French Reader, I noticed that I was automatically translating the French sentences that were written in present tense into past tense in English. Let me explain with an example …

Les Gaulois ont une civilisation guerrière. Ils aiment les batailles, et ils aiment aussi bien boire et bien manger.

In my mind, I translated this as: The Gauls were a warrior culture. They loved to fight, and they loved to drink and eat, when clearly ‘ont’ and ‘aiment’ are in present tense. It is as if the brain automatically places the sentences in past tense because I am reading history. Strange!

By the way, the above example sentence also points out to the fact that Asterix comics are culturally accurate!

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