I'm Excited vs. Je suis excitee

Or, alternately titled: The things we have vs. the things we are.

In Spanish, there is this idea that there are two ways to be (ser, estar); a permanent way of being and a temporary way of being, respectively. For example, one can be temporarily tired (estoy cansada) or even temporarily married (estoy casada) but permanently an American woman. (Yo soy una mujer. Yo soy de los Estados Unidos.) In Spanish, we acknolwedge that there is a difference - however much it is mired in cultural assumptions - between that which you are experiencing transiently and that which you permanently are.

Neither French nor English have this characteristic, but French has another way of grappling with this. One can either be something or have something. (The same is true in Spanish.) For example, one has hunger (j'ai faim), has thirst (j'ai soif); they are a seperate entity that one is carrying with them for some period of time - we get the sense that you can let them go - as soon as you eat sheeps brains or drink water. There is also plenty of room to BE something temporarily: for example, "Je suis tres excitee!"

I posted this on my email lately thinking, "Oh. It means, 'I am very excited [for my trip].'" But it was called to my attention by my French-speaking friend Alan that what I was really publicly proclaiming was that "I am very horny."

This was not the case.

I realized (see first entry) that just because the word in French is simply one added e or so different from the word in English doesn't mean they are the same thing. In English, "excited" basically refers to the state of looking forward to something. In France, it seems, the only thing anyone ever looks forward to is sex. Of course, in English, "excited" can of course refer to a sexually aroused state of being, but one would not necessarily assume so. You could say, "That man is excited," and depending on the man in question you would not automatically assume that he was specifically looking forward to sex. Or, we could say, "That electron has been excited," and most people would either (a) not know what you're talking about or (b) think the electron had jumped from one orbital to a higher orbital, presumably not to have electron sex. So imagine my surprise when I discovered (after already having sent an email to another french-speaking friend containing said phrase, of course) what it was I had been implying.

How embarrasing.

In English, of course, we have our own slang: horny. If one were to say, "That man is horny," we would not assume that he had horns proturuding from his skull. In French, if I say, "L'homme est cornu" (The man is horny) they would look at me funny and wonder: Why are Americans such religious fanatics? I would have to correct myself and say "L'homme est excite." And then, being French, they would snicker.

But I digress somewhat. (Apologies: I only wanted to make a point, and for those of you who have read the first entry, you'll understand the significance of added "e" sounds. Also, those of you looking forward to your visit to France should be careful how you express that.)

My point, originally, was this. In English, there is no implied sense of temporarily being something (as in Spanish) or of simply having something (such as hunger) for a transient state of time. One simply is. One is hungry. One is thirsty. One is tired. One is married. One is divorced. One is a woman from America. Of course, you could say, "I am temporarily hungry" or "I will be thirsty until I drink a sufficent amount of liquids" or "I am married until I get tired of it" but there is no built-in implication of permanence or transience. It's all the same word.

And if there's one thing we've learned today, its that built-in implications are IMPORTANT.

So as an amateur linguist, I wonder: What does this built-in impermanence imply about a culture? Obviously, Americans practice impermanence. They just don't necessarily accept it linguistically. Is this denial? Or something we simply inherited long ago? I don't recall Latin having a permanent or impermanent form of the word "to be," but perhaps that should serve as a warning sign for languages that don't accept impermance. Those languages, ironically, perish.

We shall explore in more depth as the trip progresses. I look forward to your thoughts on all these matters. Together we will get to the root of these questions: I hope we are all excited.