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01/15/2002 Archived Entry: "Rap"

It's interesting listening to how people speak. I was strolling around Cambridge city centre yesterday afternoon, just trying to kill time, when I found myself following a group of people whose conversation I'd picked up in mid-sentence. The interesting thing was that I'd started listening in the middle of a word, and despite the fact that I later found out they were speaking in English, it sounded like a completely foreign language until my brain had enough information to process what was going on.

When listening, it's easy to think that English or indeed pretty much every language consists of words and pauses of silence in between words. Yet when you listen to a foreign language, generally they sound like incomprehensible streams of sound without pauses. What the brain does is parse the sound into packages, based on grammar and context and so on (lip-reading almost certainly plays a role here as well) and so the experience you have is of discrete words.

Anyway, it was a profitable afternoon out since I discovered that Konami have released Dancing Stage Euromix Platinum for the Playstation, which I'll be buying fairly soon; I also picked up a twisted ficus plant for my room - not only do they brighten up rooms but they also soak up toxins in the air, notably free radicals.

Just spent a few minutes lounging around in a friend's room listening to French rap, which was amusing.