The Semantics of Blame. I Am Soliciting Your Opinion.

In Russian, "it is my fault," is translated as "я виноват”. However, "fault" in English, meaning a deficiency, is best translated separately, out of context, as "недостаток", whereas "виноват" is best translated as "guilt" or "blame" (consider "виноватый", meaning guilty, or "винить", meaning to blame, etc.). In other words, in contexts where English speakers say "it is my fault", meaning something bad happened because of a personal shortcoming, Russian speakers say "I am guilty", or "I am to blame", with shades of a higher power passing judgement.

The interesting question is, who cares? (If the answer seems clear to you, and the answer is, "not me," then no need to read any further -- there are no funny anecdotes later in this post, just more of the same.) Does this indicate an actual difference in the attitudes towards responsibility for undesirable incidents? I think it's unlikely that the language reflects the culture, since cultural attitudes change so many orders of magnitude faster than language does. But the reverse seems at least plausible - that it affects a person's psyche subtly to say "blame" instead of "fault" (or vice-versa) all their life.

As tempting as it is to relate a list of anecdotes supporting the fact that it does, I think the only way to really address this question is to look at our own attitude towards the word "fault". When we say, “it is my fault”, does the alternate meaning of “fault”, that is, “deficiency”, echo in our minds, or has “fault” acquired a separate meaning here, that is, only “I did this bad thing” with no semantic overtones? I’m interested in your opinions.

Personally, my vote goes to no overtones, that is, that “fault” is a word borrowed from earlier times to fill a different semantic need, and this whole observation is meaningless. But I’m a calloused engineer, and I’m interested to hear the opinions of this blog’s literary readership. Does this blog have any literary readership?

Mr. Ryan Very Order Man Because His Parents So Educated.

I did an exercise with my 10th graders where everyone gets a blank piece of paper, on the top of which they write one sentence about what they did yesterday. They then pass it to the right, and that person writes why they did that, then they pass again and write the reason for the reason, etc. Here's one of the results:

1) I did homework yesterday.
2) She did homework because she is clever girl.
3) She was clever girl because her teacher Mr. Ryan.
4) Mr. Ryan like order.
5) Mr. Ryan very order man because his parents so educated.
6) His parents so educated because their parents so educated.
7) Their parents so educated because they finished many universities.
8) They finished many universities because they knew a lot.
9) They know a lot because they are very clever.
10) They are very clever because they learn a lot.
11) They learn a lot because they want to go to America.
12) They want to go to America because they fans of Eminem.

Culture Clashes On Womens' Day.

March 8th is Womens' Day in Kazakhstan. Here are some of the features of this holiday:

- We get the day off school.
- Men give women presents and congratulate them on Womens' Day.
- Volunteers get asked many many times if we celebrate Womens' Day in the USA, and when we answer no, the response is always, like clockwork, over and over again, exactly the same accusation: "But we call it 'International Womens' Day'!"
- Volunteers accidentally congratulate men, who respond incredulously, "not my holiday".

My weekly English-language math club fell on Womens' Day, so I tried to have a talk about why there are so few female mathematicians. For me, and for everyone, I think, it was a very stressful, antagonistic experience that I almost regret. Besides me, there were three men, two Turkish and one Kazakh, and three women, all Kazakh. These women, at least, are just as good as the men in question at math. However, the "discussion" was dominated by the Turkic men waxing about how women are not as good at quantitative things as men are, that they are made for softer, more humanitarian tasks, that this is the way God made us and the way it has been since the days of cavemen, etc., and me arguing against them. That is to say, however you slice it, the whole thing was dominated by men, myself being a man as well. I tried to coax or cajole the women into the conversation, but they mostly stared at their shoes or confirmed the accusations levelled against their gender.

The mood darkened as I grew exasperated against my will, and finally, when one the Kazakh said that no matter how good a woman might be at math she will never be better than a man and one of the Turkish men said that there have been no great female physicists or mathematicians of any kind, we got into the math lesson, which was about Sophie Germain primes (the most accessible significant contribution to mathematics by a woman that I could find). Most of the six got stuck on the definition (a pair of Germain primes are two numbers such that n and 2n+1 are both prime), and I think everyone left frustrated and unsatisfied.

I think it was out of spite, then, that I selected the song "For Today I Am a Boy" by Antony and the Johnsons for today's music club:

"One day I'll grow up and be a beautiful woman
One day I'll grow up and be a beautiful girl
But for today I am a child
But for today I am a boy."

One of my Turkish friends even excused himself immediately after reading the lyrics (though he often leaves early, and he may not have left because of this song), and there was tangible discomfort in the room as I put the recording on. However, the music carried the day, and to Antony's great credit by the end, everyone -- men and all -- were singing happily along. And this is how it happened that an artist who claims Boy George as one of his greatest inspirations carried Womens' Day in Kazakhstan.

More Neighbors.

Returning from work, I ran into a drunk acquaintence outside the front of my apartment building. I had headphones on, and so he staggered up to me and, without any greeting, said, "Let me listen." Without a word, I handed him the headphones (keeping a hold on my Ipod), and having put them on, he closed his eyes and swayed back and forth with an ecstatic expression on his face. "Is it American?" he asked. "It is," I answered. (It was Ben Folds Five.) "Give me money," he said, handing back the headphones. "Sorry, man, I don't have any for you," I responded, and he walked away.

One night, there was a party in the stairwell. Since I and another volunteer had a friend visiting from abroad, and he wanted to meet my neighbors (about whom he had read on this blog), we stepped out to make their acquaintance. They were friendly and forthcoming with declarations of brotherhood, which we translated for our visitor. I decided to go into my apartment to get some cognac so that we could take a shot together. For convenience, I poured all the cognac I had into one drinking glass, intending us to share it, according to the custom in my stairwell. The glass was about half-full of hard liquor. I brought it out, and one of my neighbors, (Little Bird's older brother), took it happily. "Is this for me?" he asked. "No, I thought we'd share it," I said. "Share it?" "Yes," I said. "All of us?" "That's what I thought." "Share?" "Yes." "Well, let me say a toast," he said. And he launched into a two-minute, fairly repetitive ode to brotherhood. At the end he raised the glass and one hand with a showman's gesture, and announced, "In honor of this, I will...drink the whole glass!" And he downed the entire half-glass of cognac in one gulp. We applauded. A babuskha shuffled out into the stairwell and told us all to shut up.

I ran across Dyadya Kolya and Little Bird in the stairwell a couple days later. "We're leaving," they said. "Where to?" I asked. "We're going to Russia forever," they said. "Really?" I asked, a little sad. "When?" "Tomorrow," they answered, "we're going to buy a car." A shot of vodka was passed around, and the talk turned to hunting. "Have you ever been hunting?" they asked me. I answered that I hadn't, and this changed the plan from using the car to leave for Russia forever to using the car to go hunting with me. "We'll have to get lots of girls," said Little Bird, kissing his fingers and saying, "vot takie!" They made a list of ten more people to invited, and then it occured to Dyadya Kolya that we would have to make kebabs, which meant we had to make a kebab stand. The discussion then turned to how they were going to fit all the girls and the drinks and the guns and the vodka bottles and the kebab stand into the car, and I excused myself. They probably won't be leaving for Russia anytime soon.