perhaps it says something that you were able to comprehend me when I was being incomprehensible.
This is a bit of an embarrassing confession to make, but when I'm tired my ability to focus is not so good, yes? What happens with language comprehension at such time is that I read without seeing the details. (Somewhat like that little study that went around showing that as long as the first and last letters in a word were in the correct order people could still read the sentence even thought the rest was scrambled. It only works for certain languages of course.)
So instead of reading a sentence and translating it mentally (because I don't think in English when I'm tired or otherwise stressed) I sort of "apprehend" the meaning, all in a block. It's usually completely accurate, ironically, as it was in this case where I "knew" what you meant. It was only when I saw ms_daisy_cutter's reaction that I stopped and asked myself "what did I miss, surely it's not just the condescending nonsense from that fellow in the linked article". It's true that I sometimes miss crucial details this way, but since my comprehension is largely based on general context I'm rarely completely wrong. A friend of mine tells me I understand people "using the Force" rather than language.
It's not ideal, but that's simply how my brain works and it's not like I can exchange it for something else. The alternative is a very laborious word by word process of translation, and when I'm tired enough that I automatically "apprehend" I don't have the energy to go back to such basics. The alternative is that I simply give up and try again later. If you ever see me miss the point of someone's comments this is likely the cause, and if so please correct me and draw my attention to what I missed. Correction is actually most helpful in increasing my skills, and I appreciate it instead of taking offense.
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Date: 2010-01-16 04:45 pm (UTC)This is a bit of an embarrassing confession to make, but when I'm tired my ability to focus is not so good, yes? What happens with language comprehension at such time is that I read without seeing the details. (Somewhat like that little study that went around showing that as long as the first and last letters in a word were in the correct order people could still read the sentence even thought the rest was scrambled. It only works for certain languages of course.)
So instead of reading a sentence and translating it mentally (because I don't think in English when I'm tired or otherwise stressed) I sort of "apprehend" the meaning, all in a block. It's usually completely accurate, ironically, as it was in this case where I "knew" what you meant. It was only when I saw
It's not ideal, but that's simply how my brain works and it's not like I can exchange it for something else. The alternative is a very laborious word by word process of translation, and when I'm tired enough that I automatically "apprehend" I don't have the energy to go back to such basics. The alternative is that I simply give up and try again later. If you ever see me miss the point of someone's comments this is likely the cause, and if so please correct me and draw my attention to what I missed. Correction is actually most helpful in increasing my skills, and I appreciate it instead of taking offense.