Though I’m technically still on summer break from teaching duties, it’s definitely time to start gearing up for the semester and plan my courses. However, I’ve been having a hard time transitioning my ‘summer brain’ back into activity, and so I decided to throw down a gauntlet at my own feet.

They are completely ignoring my gauntlet! What's so interesting about a camera strap, anyway?

This is a post that I originally published on 26 January 2010. It’s a piece about how learning other languages may or may not have influenced the way I think. As I was writing, I realized that it was growing beyond the confines of a single post, so I published when I’d gotten to what felt like a natural stopping point. I finished relating my experiences with languages and left off when I started exploring the question of their influence on my thought.

As you can see, that was a year-and-a-half ago. The second part of this post has been languishing as I was researching and getting distracted by the thousand other topics I’d love to write about, not to mention being occupied with teaching and, you know, general living. This then will be the challenge I give to myself this week: finish Part Deux!

So here’s ‘le premier part’ once more to get things rolling (I’ve made a few minor edits and added some pictures.) And then, finally, we’ll get to the long overdue sequel by the end of this week. Hopefully after meeting this challenge, the mental transition will be complete and I will have awakened my brain from its estival hibernation. Continue reading →