To begin with: Something I wrote in my review of a new joint called...

Languages do not hear the same. For example, the way English hears the bark of a dog is not the same as it is heard in Shona, a language spoken by blacks in southern Africa.

In English, it is woof woof; in Shona, it is imbwa, which is also the word for "dog" (Shona has lots of onomatopoeias—my fave: "bhanan`ana" is "thunder"). If you repeat imbwa over and over, you will hear what Shona people hear when a dog is barking at them. Another example, this one taken from Wikipedia: The sound a clock makes is tick tock for the speakers of English and katchin katchin for the speakers of Japanese. Also, the Japanese hear the sound of thinly sliced beef being dipped and stirred in a bubbling broth as shabu shabu, whereas those in the English language hear it as swish swish. And, indeed, this is exactly what I heard when I, an English speaker, visited Shabu Chic, a new Japanese restaurant in the ID, and dipped with chopsticks a raw slice of beef in a hot pot: swish swish.


To end with: Today, as you can see and feel, is cold. Summer is no more. The sun takes forever to rise and sets too soon. The clouds are slow, grim, and massive. Now is the best possible time to sit in a small Japanese joint and stir meat and vegetables in a hot pot of broth.
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