[Note: still having difficulty uploading photos. I’ll try again in the next few days]
I have a special love of crows. I love their intelligence. I love their family dynamics. I love the glossy sheen of their feathers. I love their cry. But let me be a little more specific: when I say crow – when I think crow – I think of the American Crow. The crows in West Australia aren’t American crows. They’re Torresian crows, and they sound completely different from American crows.
The first time I heard a crow cry here, I thought it was a child’s play scream. I jumped up and looked around, and my Person laughed at me and said it’s just a crow.
Just a crow? I thought. That’s not a crow. I know crows. There’s a family of them that live in the trees on our land. I see them every day. I hear them every day and that is not what a crow sounds like.
But the Torresian crow looks similar to our American crows even though they sound like our crows got into some helium. I don’t know what else an English-speaking person could call this big, black crow-like bird that doesn’t sound like a crow.
All this has gotten me thinking about specificity. In writing, specificity is crucial for conveying to the reader exactly what you mean. One of the examples Brandon Sanderson uses in his teaching is the word “Dog.” He asks his students if it’s specific or non-specific. The correct answer is non-specific because everybody thinks of something different when they think “dog.” People will think of poodles, or great danes, or chihuahuas, or mutts, but no two people will picture the same type of dog upon reading the word “dog.” So, when you write about dogs, you have to be specific.
I’ve never thought about being specific in describing a crow. Now, I wonder if I’ve ever read a book by an Australian author (probably Garth Nix, in this case) that mentioned crows and I drew my mental image from the reference point of an American crow when the Australian author drew from the reference of a Torresian crow. They make such different sounds that any scene using crow cries for ambiance/mood would be completely changed depending on if the author was thinking of one crow or the other. This whole thing is kind of making me question my understanding of some of my favorite books.
It feels silly to be so fixated on the difference between these two types of crows. They look very similar. They have similar habits. They occupy the same niche in their respective ecosystems. Why should I be so hung up on the difference in their cries? I’m not sure. Maybe because it’s something I’ve never thought of before, or maybe because the difference in sound is so striking, or maybe it’s because I miss the sound of my crows, the sound I hear every day and every time I hear the cry of the Torresian Crow it’s a stark reminder of how far away from home I am.
Thank you for reading.
What little differences have struck you profoundly when traveling?
The little difference while traveling that I thought of first was the phrase, “Are you okay?”
When I was traveling in the UK in 2015, servers in restaurants, staff at train stations, everyone it seemed…would often ask, “Are you okay?”
I associate this question with someone noticing something is off. Someone looks angry: “Are you okay?” Someone is tearing up, about to cry, “Are you okay?” So every time a stranger would ask, it threw me, and I wondered, “Can they tell I’m traveling? Did I just do something ‘ugly American?’ Do they know I’m having a hard time? Can they TELL?!?!
I became more than a little paranoid. Then a new friend-of-a-friend did it, and I finally asked her, “What’s the deal with ‘Are you okay? Do I seem not-okay?'”
Turns out, that’s just a common phrase for, “Is everything alright? Need anything else?” From food, to accommodations, and all other services, I wasn’t broadcasting myself as a nervous first time traveler (or at least, not as often as I worried I was). I was just encountering a language difference.
It never stopped being a little weird, but when I realized I wasn’t being asked a personal question answering once again became second-nature. “Great, thanks. Delicious, thank you very much. Yes, you’re very kind.”
And worrying less, being “in the know” made the travel more comfortable. Much more fun.
It’s so interesting how many regional variations there are when asking how someone is. In Australia and New Zealand, people ask “How you going?” where I would usually say “How’s it going?” It took me a while to get used to Chris saying it and now I’ve noticed that I’m starting to say it too.