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Numbers are funny. When I lived in England, I got one or two calls for the student who'd been in my room before me. "I'm sorry, is this Five-Three-Six-One-Double Four?" the caller would ask, and I would say, "I ... don't know," while translating to the American in my head, five-three-six-one-four-four, "Ah-hah! Yes it is! But sorry, I'm not Susan."
The next year I worked as a community organizer and youth minister at a church with Puerto Rican and Mexican parishioners. They would give me their phone numbers in Spanish, in double digits: Nine-Eighty Three -Twenty Seven-Fifty Two. It was months before I was able to think of my own phone number that way - in English.
"How could it possibly be easier," I asked myself in frustration, "to read off numbers with double zeros and twenty-fives instead of a simple Three-Six-Nine Eight-One-Two-Five?"
Today I traveled a bit across to town to meet with a partner community organization and the local police. It was a follow-up from late December, when they had presented the police with a list of places that needed more patrolling and problems they had noticed in their blocks and buildings. Today the precinct commander went over their list of problem address, rattling off a sea of numbers: "We had thirteen such-and-suches on One-Two-Five."
"Slow down, slow down!" I thought. "How could I possibly know that One-Two-Five was One Hundred and Twenty-Fifth Street?"
I guess this observation is really not that profound. It's just funny the little things that make us realize that our ways are not superior, just the ways we are used to.
1 comment:
Very profound indeed! You've captured a unique angle on semantics, language as understanding, and how the human thought process is completely inseparable from forming ideas around our own language. In this case, cultural perspectives on number series are absolutely critical to how we build those "codes" inside our own mind. Great observation! ... But I also just love the photograph! The subway tile that is so iconic for the city, and even the font that is used for the numerals; it speaks to the way that that number set is experienced. (ie, as a place marker, or amongst a crush of pedestrians, or on a platform for a train, or as a designator for an entire neighborhood.)
For a really thought-provoking film on fonts (yes, fonts), you should seriously see the documentary "Helvetica." It will definitely change the way you see signage, advertising, graphic arts, etc.
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