From Icelandic Review: Unexpected Odin and Lamb Soup

[lwood]

In today's icelandreview RSS round-up, the following article:

Feature of the Week: Tongue Untied.

The sufficiently Odin-inclined will find several elements of interest in this pleasant interview of a highly mathematically inclined savant and synaesthete who learned Iceland in two weeks (!!). I, like many, find a certain Odin smell around highly intellectual people in general, particularly if they've got an unusual perspective. However, this particular gent is speaking, cheerfully, of the relationships that are apparent to him between mathematics and spoken languages...it can make a girl light-headed, it can!

But what made me nearly bust out laughing at my desk were two things--one, I knew, the other--well, come and look:

This was the not-new one:

Icelandic is much more visual [than Finnish]. Like how the word tölva [computer] is a combination of "number" [tala] and "witch" [völva]. And sími for "telephone", which comes from a very old word for "thread". I can’t think of any other language that does that.

BUT WAIT!

There's more!

JM: From zero to 10,000 you claim that each number has a distinctive shape and feel. What’s it like to be in such an involved relationship with numbers?

DT: It’s difficult for me to understand when people say, “Oh! I hate numbers. I can’t do any calculations at all. I have to use a calculator for everything.” I think, wow, you’re missing out on a lot. Numbers are everywhere. Barcodes and telephones. If you don’t have any connection with them whatsoever then it’s a big part of the world you’re missing.

JM: What about your boyfriend, Neil? Are there any numbers you associate with him?

DT: Probably nine because he’s tall. It’s a tall number. And dark blue. Sometimes people ask me if I associate love with any number, but I can’t. It’s just too complex to associate with any one number.

JM: Is there any number that sets you on edge or gives you some kind of solace?

DT: Six I don’t like so much. It’s a small number—tiny, in fact. So it’s the converse of nine, which is big and blue. Six is tiny and black. It’s a cold number and hollow. I get very few feelings from it, so I don’t like it. When I was younger and couldn’t understand a concept like sadness, I would imagine myself inside a number six.

I found it a pleasant feeling from an unusual angle: "oh, by the way, here's a strongly Odin-associated number, and it comes in a Odin-associated color". What a lovely thing to have with my morning coffee!

---

Also in this week's collection from IR is a "recipe" (we are using this term loosely) for kjötsúpa--clear broth of lamb with root crop, herbs and beans. This mightn't be a bad thing for Hrafnar's Disablot in a couple weeks...

Edit to Add HAI I CAN HAS LINK NIAO? Wow, Lorrie, when you tempt people with lamb stew, give them a link to the recipe, why don't you? Sheesh.

-- Lorrie

Comments

[kaffee-spinne.livejournal.com]

That's fascinating, b/c I was always terrible in math after starting learning long division, b/c I could not apply the emotional/social-relational reasoning to the computations as I did as a younger child.

I could describe to you the personalities of numbers 1-20+ and the social reasoning behind how they do what they do. It was all very intuitive and complex. Numbers had genders, definately, and ages.

Being continually sent out into the hall in Catholic school math class for not completing my division homework b/c it overwhelmed me, and instead laughing/giggling with classmates over humorous stories and jokes we made up...this earned me a D in 4th grade math.

But I don't think I ever shared with teachers or anyone academic my own style of arriving at the answers I came to in studying addition/subtraction, etc. which I did better at.

I was also very good at languages, despite the fact the the ones I wanted to study I had to wait til college (ie Japanese) so my skills aren't remotely what they should be.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

I've never had any trouble with math--or almost any purely intellectual skill once my interest had been piqued.

Acquiring that interest could be hard--but if it grabbed me, I ate it up. 8-)

-- Lorrie

[witchchild]

This is the day for language posting, apparently.
And omg dark blue 9 WIN! <3

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Squee!

-- Lorrie

[wodandis.livejournal.com]

That is really neat. :)

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Yis. 8-)

[lferion]

I quite like the fact that his boyfriend is mentioned perfectly matter-of-factly -- and there is extra fun in that that is the question that invokes the Dark Blue Nine :-)

[lwood.livejournal.com]

That too, that too!

-- Lorrie

[ivy]

On my to-read science list: "The Hidden Sense: Synesthesia in Art and Science". (I tend to unknowingly date synaesthetes -- I think it partly comes from my preference for creative folks. Both my current partners process like this, and I would love to understand it better. It's so cool! I love brains.) You might also be interested; I'll let you know what I think after reading it, but must finish "Zen and the Brain" first.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

I think it's a fascinating way to cross apparently disparate inputs--I've known a couple synaesthetes too--there're one or two on my flist. 8-)

-- Lorrie

[netik.livejournal.com]

They're leaving out an enormous amount Daniel's story here.

Daniel is a rarity - a socially functional autistic savant who experiences numbers in a form of synaesthesia. When he recalled PI to 20,514 digits, he said it was like walking through a world in his mind. Each number was a physical object he passed by.

Interestingly enough, he was once asked to make numbers out of clay (by neuroscientist V.S. Ramachadran), and he was extremely consistent in his production of number shapes. His autism manifests itself in a peculiar way, giving him highly advanced symbolic manipulation skills, applicable to math, language, and music.

He's been studied by many scientists, and featured in a Discovery channel show called Brain Man, where he goes to meet Kim Peek, the real Rain Man. His Iceland trip is also covered in that documentary.

I don't speak your crazy moon language, so I don't know how this relates to Odin, but I do know that he's pretty amazing.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

In my crazy moon language, that makes him even more awesome. Thank you!

-- Lorrie

[shantak.livejournal.com]

I saw that discovery special it was fascinating. The new bits make me smile though, and add much to his personality.

-SMK

[faeryl.livejournal.com]

HA! :-)

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Hee!

-- Lorrie

[walkyrja.livejournal.com]

Hokay. Give "recipe" for personal adoption of same.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

*headsmack* Was pre-caffeine and did not give a link to the recipe (http://www.icelandreview.com/icelandreview/features/multimedia/?ew_news_onlyarea=&ew_news_onlyposition=12&cat_id=29473&ew_12_a_id=298993). Entry edited. :)

-- Lorrie

[mordantcarnival.livejournal.com]

Funny... I'm mildly synasthesic myself, and although I don't have anything like this chap's mad skillz I've always been quite good at maths. Individual numbers have colours and feelings (nine, for me, is a deep dried-blood red); moreover, negative and positive numbers have different colours (positive are reddened, negative get a chalky-white scumble) and numbers raised to a power undergo subtle changes depending on the colour of the power (anything squared picks up a little of 2's eau-de-nil hue). It all sort of boils down into mixed-plasticine mushy brown if things get too complicated though.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

mmmmm, blood-red nines.

*cough*

I mean: Fascinating!

-- Lorrie

[ravenvitki.livejournal.com]

"Odin and Lamb Soup" does not sound like a taste sensation. Damn misreading.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Well, see, what you do is, along with the soup bones, you ask for a sheep eye (or even one per person). When you serve the soup, you plop the eyeball into the bowl so it stares up at the diner...

Hm. Still sounds more ravenish than Odin-y. Have to work on that.

-- L

[ravenvitki.livejournal.com]

Raven-y suits me just fine.

Or you could put the lamb on skewers.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

nono, you dry-age it by hanging it out of a tree, then skewer it the better to fish it out of the broth with.

THEN garnish with eyeball.

*nodnod*

-- L

[wednesday]

Man. My synaesthesia is not his synaesthesia. I can't even imagine.

Numbers scary. Make brain poof.

[lastwaykeeper.livejournal.com]

Number synaesthetes always interest me, cause mine is in people-sensations, as, oddly enough, are the two other synaesthetes I know personally, though one also has a thing with music. :)

I'd love to be able to have that connection with a language...

[illuviel.livejournal.com]

I admire Daniel, and all the more with increasing interviews.

On beyond everything else, his own language, Mänti contains this word:

kellokült: lateness or tardiness (literally 'clock debt' or 'clock guilt').

Sigh.

UNESCO has declared 2008 the International Year of Languages. (Last year was The Year of Rumi... and I missed it, dangit.) I think I shall declare it the year that I really get serious with language learning. Even if it does take me longer than a week to become fluent in Islenska (and Deutsch, and Gaelige and all the others on my 'yesplsthx' list).

I won't know how many languages the brainmeats can hold until I try. :)