Several days ago I attended the World Biomaterial Congress in Chengdu (pandaz!) and spent quite a bit of time with two lab mates who also attended. Somehow, between lively discussion on the conference topics, we got to singing the ABC song. Everything was fine until we got 12 letters in, when there was a sudden rhythm mismatch.
My whole life I've heard (each line represents one measure):
A B C D
E F G
H I J K
LMNO P
Q R S
T U V
W X
Y & Z
But the Chinese sing:
A B C D
E F G
H I J K
L M N
O P Q
R S T
U V W
X Y Z
ooh, it hurts even to type.
Of course, I immediately scoffed, "ha ha! That's not how it's done!" It just sounds weird to start the fifth measure on "O" instead of "Q."
But... then I got to thinking about it. In the Western version, you end up with four letters squashed into the first beat of the fourth measure. Little kids may think, "what the heck is the letter 'Ellemennopea'?" At any rate, it's probably harder to pronounce that many foreign sounds in one beat. Then at the end of the song, Westerners have the letter "&" thrown in there, which is rarely seen- not even teens who trim language down to single letters in text messages use "&."
Anyway, this experience was a nicely packaged example of many of my experiences here. Each of us is so used to what we're used to and we carry around years of biases, assumptions, and opinions so that when we encounter something that deviates from our unique set of group-centricities, we're too easily judgmental and dismissive. Really, we could all use some open-minded evaluations of other groups' traits to find goodies.
Though I might be on to something with the letter "&". "The gr&d c&ned p&da is bl&d." It's a keeper!
My whole life I've heard (each line represents one measure):
A B C D
E F G
H I J K
LMNO P
Q R S
T U V
W X
Y & Z
But the Chinese sing:
A B C D
E F G
H I J K
L M N
O P Q
R S T
U V W
X Y Z
ooh, it hurts even to type.
Of course, I immediately scoffed, "ha ha! That's not how it's done!" It just sounds weird to start the fifth measure on "O" instead of "Q."
But... then I got to thinking about it. In the Western version, you end up with four letters squashed into the first beat of the fourth measure. Little kids may think, "what the heck is the letter 'Ellemennopea'?" At any rate, it's probably harder to pronounce that many foreign sounds in one beat. Then at the end of the song, Westerners have the letter "&" thrown in there, which is rarely seen- not even teens who trim language down to single letters in text messages use "&."
Anyway, this experience was a nicely packaged example of many of my experiences here. Each of us is so used to what we're used to and we carry around years of biases, assumptions, and opinions so that when we encounter something that deviates from our unique set of group-centricities, we're too easily judgmental and dismissive. Really, we could all use some open-minded evaluations of other groups' traits to find goodies.
Though I might be on to something with the letter "&". "The gr&d c&ned p&da is bl&d." It's a keeper!
