From a mailing list comes a quote from an interview in the spring issue of “Boulevard” (not available online). The interview is with Ha Jin, “a writing professor at Boston University and the winner of an enviable list of awards — including the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the Hemingway/PEN Award, and the National Book Award…” (What, no Heissman Trophy?)

Chinese is very rich in describing feelings. For sadness there are some words English doesn’t have. So too for taste. … [But] there are some abstract words that Chinese doesn’t have, such as ‘truth,’ ‘identity,’ and ‘solitude.’ Obviously, English is a more speculative language, whereas Chinese is more earthly, closer to things.

This would sound like an urban myth if it didn’t come from such a durn good source. Amazing how different we can be while still being the same.

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