i turn on NPR in the mornings and sometimes they do a report on China. in the background there are the murmurings of a language that i grew up with- heard in the womb, learned as my first language, travelled in China to chase in earnest.
i hear the familiar accents and tones but don’t always comprehend. i think about flowers for algernon, and how similar i feel when i realize that my grasp of a language has slipped without my noticing.
it’s such a strange feeling, to look back on theses and papers and letters that i wrote with my own words, but not be able to understand them.
i’m sure i could write more elaborately on this. but it’s just a thought.
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