Languages, Photography → Pidgin Rain
Language:
Two days of sustained torrential rain followed a long week of scorching hot temperatures.
Well, that’s summer in Xi’an. One day, very hot and humid, and the other day, refreshing torrential rain.
I’ve had this project in mind for a long time already… to take pictures while holding an umbrella, which gives the viewer a feeling of being inside the photo, under the rain, breathing the cold, damp air.
Getting off an overhead bridge.
My two year studies in China are now finally over. I will report on this later, when I am back in Montreal. One of the things I will miss most from my life in China is the diversity of people I met here. They were Brazilians, Russians, Ecuadorians, Italians, French, Americans, Australians, Canadians and, obviously, Chinese.
One of the most interesting phenomena that I experienced here was with the Latin students, those whose language belongs to the Latin languages family (e.g. French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese). We could manage to understand each other by using some sort of bastardized form of Spanish, more or less so, depending on the Spanish level of the speaker. Each one would speak Spanish, adding some words from their own native language into it. For instance, Daniele, an Italian, would always say “troppo” (too much) and “ancora” (again; still) instead of the proper Spanish words “demasiado” and “todavía“. But for a French speaker as myself, I could easily pick up those words as they sounded and looked like their French counterparts (“trop” and “encore“). Besides, when talking to him I would use the French word “demain” (tomorrow) instead of Spanish “mañana“, because it sounded more like the Italian “domani“. While the Brazilians would use a more correct Spanish, they would still make some substitutions, for example, the articles “el” and “la” (the) would often be rendered “o” and “a“, as in Portuguese. Sometimes we would even directly speak in our mother tongues and understand each other. (But unfortunately, even if French words look the same as other Latin words when written, they are pronounced so differently that it made French the most difficult language to understand in our group). We made our own pidgin, that is a simple dialect; the first step towards creole. I think that if we were all lost on a remote island, our pidgin would become, after a few years or generations, a full fledged language!
July 10th, 2010 at 9:57
two year studies is a long time,you must have so many thoughts during this period. I wish you treasured every moment with your classmates here!
but what I regret is not meet with you. and I think we could meet you in the future some day. wish you be back China soon!
I hope you have a happy flight finally! we could contact with gmail and this blog! see you then!
July 10th, 2010 at 19:17
把伞设计进照片里确实让人有身临其境的感觉。
July 12th, 2010 at 19:56
I like the pictures too. Enjoy life back in the homeland. Take it easy.
July 12th, 2010 at 21:54
What about Kazakhs and Australians? Plenty of the former, and at least one of me for the latter. ;-)
I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of mutual intelligibility between languages. So I thank you for the description you’ve related here!
July 13th, 2010 at 5:32
superbe shoots. belles couleurs.
Temps de merde xi an hein?
July 13th, 2010 at 21:37
Cool les photos! C’est vrai que le parapluie les rend plus intimes. Bonne idée!
Bon voyage Alexandre!
July 15th, 2010 at 9:33
Hey Alex!!!!
Así que te vas de China. Tienes planes de regresar??
July 15th, 2010 at 9:35
Ahhh! Y me encanta el concepto de las fotos bajo la sombrilla o paraguas!!!!
July 16th, 2010 at 21:59
Kugoochen: I hope to meet you some time.
Richard: Thank you. Do you have any plans of going back home?
秦沛: you are right and I corrected it. But even if there are a lot of Kazakhs in Xi’an I never met one outside of the classroom because of the language barrier.
Olivier: ça allait, Xi’an, il commençait à faire moins chaud quand je suis parti!
Alejandra: Gracias por pasar. El vinculo a tu sitio no funciona y me olvide de la dirección. Quiero volver a leer tus historias de Shanghai.
July 20th, 2010 at 20:50
Hi, Alex! Have you already passed your education in China? Or you will continue it in autumn?
July 20th, 2010 at 21:20
Hey Lilia!
Yeah.. I’m done with my education in China. I’d like to come back in September, but I have some things to do here in Montreal first. :-(
July 26th, 2010 at 16:08
But, anyway is still great, that you have opportunity to live and study in China 2 years!
August 4th, 2010 at 17:56
Alors, l’espagnol c’est une langue «centrale» dans le groupe des langues romanes, la plus proche à toutes les autres? Qu’est-ce que tu penses du roumaine que tu as rencontré en Roumanie et en Moldavie ? J’ai vu des textes en catalan qui semble être quelque chose de moyen entre le français et l’espagnol.
August 6th, 2010 at 20:49
En effet, le catalan est très facile à comprendre et ressemble beaucoup au français ou à l’espagnol.
L’espagnol était une langue centrale entre nous, étudiants “latins”, mais c’était probablement dû au fait que nous avions déjà tous appris l’espagnol au préalable (sauf l’étudiant italien).
Les deux seules langues latines mutuellement intelligibles sont l’espagnol et le portugais. Elles font partie de la même branche de l’”arbre linguistique”. Bien sûr, cet arbre exclut les dialectes qui sont très compréhensibles, comme le catalan. Donc un touriste brésilien n’a pas besoin d’apprendre l’espagnol pour voyager dans le reste de l’Amérique du Sud. Au Chili, je voyais beaucoup de touristes brésiliens qui parlaient directement en portugais et se faisaient répondre en espagnol.
Je ne comprenais pas grand chose du Roumain… le seul mot que j’ai pu comprendre ressemblait à “drept” qui signifiait “droite”. Je l’ai compris par le contexte, je demandais le chemin à une locale.