I didn't even get into names. I'm much worse with names, unless the name's been reinforced by seeing it in writing -- like on email, or on caller-ID. Which I suppose is sort of amusing, if I distance myself, to know that I have a speech pattern of simply never calling anyone by name, just to avoid the chance of screwing up.
When I watch television/movies or read books and characters call one another by name, I'm always startled, and more than a little impressed. (And envious, because if somewhere wrote a script for me, that had all the names, that'd be so awesome! Like, cue cards or something.) In cultures where the language decrees you're supposed to use proper-name rather than pronoun, I go through that recoil/envy thing all over again. If it's hard to get around name-forgetting in English, I can't even imagine the stress of name-remembering in a language where you can't avoid the name-use, and at the same time, I wonder if I'd be better at names if my language had name-use embedded in it from the very beginning.
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Date: 2 Dec 2010 09:54 pm (UTC)When I watch television/movies or read books and characters call one another by name, I'm always startled, and more than a little impressed. (And envious, because if somewhere wrote a script for me, that had all the names, that'd be so awesome! Like, cue cards or something.) In cultures where the language decrees you're supposed to use proper-name rather than pronoun, I go through that recoil/envy thing all over again. If it's hard to get around name-forgetting in English, I can't even imagine the stress of name-remembering in a language where you can't avoid the name-use, and at the same time, I wonder if I'd be better at names if my language had name-use embedded in it from the very beginning.