Speaking in Tongues - May 30 and 31

Went into the city last night for a final hurrah. Chilled with Eric, drinking beer and watching basketball until Josh and Sam made it over (Kira paid us a visit part way through the night). Then went out to George Keeley's on 83rd and Amsterdam. A kind soul deposited $10 into the jukebox (which were sitting next to) and told us to put on some good music. The Band and Radiohead didn't seem to go over so well, but Kelly Clarkson was a hit. Mosied over to The Gin Mill on 81st and Amsterdam for a rousing game of beer pong (not actually, but it was fun). Went on back to Sam's, and stopped at a Middle Eastern food truck on 94th and B'way. I was drunk enough to attempt to speak Arabic with the man serving us (I had heard him in conversation with the customer before us). Unfortunately I can't do much more than marhaba, hamdulah and shukran these days, but even that seemed to entertain him. It's incredible how friendly people become when they see you make an effort to speak their language or pay respect to their culture and heritage in some other way (he ended up giving Sam and I free donuts with our main orders). It was a great experience, and it makes me wish that I had taken a language at Yale. Maybe I still will next year. It's not like I have much else to do, and it may be the most 'useful' way to spend my time. I'll think on it.

Earlier this afternoon, I was reflecting on language in a different way. Specifically, I was contemplating the T9 function on cellphones, and what it implies about what we say to one another nowadays. The fact that an application can predict so infallibly what we say in our messages speaks poorly of the extent of the average person's vocabulary and, more disturbingly, to the banal nature of what we say when we communicate. The form that these messages take (i.e. the words used) - which is what T9 actually predicts - doesn't NECESSARILY correlate perfectly with the substance of the messages, but I would argue that the whole is, in many ways, not much more than the sum of the parts, and if the parts are so mundane that they can be so easily predicted, the whole itself must be unoriginal. This sort of ties in to a concern that I've had for a few years. How much of what we say to each other is actually of consequence? How much is just a set script that we follow everyday, or lists of what we've done that no one really pays attention to? How much of conversation is just empty, and unimportant except for the fact that conversation was had? I find the notion that when we speak we actually say nothing pretty terrifying.