We spent last night with our neighbors, Gerhardt und Andrea and Andrea's cousin, Raresh. I made an antipasto (went over very well) and three different kinds of pizza (I'm known throughout the Maritimes, Mississauga, Southern NH and Stoneham, MA, for my pizza). Between the antipasto and the southern red pizza, Raresh mentioned that he played piano, bass and guitar in his church. As we had all three, I invited him to play.
Soon he and Andrea were singing Romanian Christmas carols and Gerhardt was playing along on one of my guitars. It was glorious and reminded me of being back home in Nova Scotia where people often gather just to play music together (aca Ceilidgh, ans a Gaidhlig). They asked me to join in on the sax but I was busy cooking and besides, why ruin a good thing?
But what really got me was the language "class" between dinner and Andrea's honey-nut dessert cake.
At one point Andrea mentioned that she can curse in lots of languages but most either make her laugh or mean nothing to her, they're just words. But when she curses in Romanian? Oh, she truly feels the import of what she's saying. I agreed. I can curse in English but it means so much more when I curse in Italian. The others shared similar experiences.
This got me to thinking about where and how the brain stores languages learned later in life, and that the neural wiring for native-languages is more closely tied to our emotional wiring than our higher thought centers.
And that got me to remembering some research which pertains to off-shore call centers and how to make them more effective. (more to follow)
» Music, Language and Making Offshore Call Centers More Effective, Part 2 from BizMediaScience
Quick Fix for Making OffShore Call Centers More Effective [Read More]
Tracked on: January 2, 2007 9:01 AM | Permalink to Trackback