- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
A businessman from Tokyo, on his first trip to London, received a text from his British colleague: “Meet me at the bank at 3. We’ll discuss the deal.”
He arrived at a financial institution on High Street. Waited. Nobody came.
He texted: “I’m at the bank. Where are you?”
Reply: “I’m at the bank too. Don’t see you.”
Ten minutes of confusion later, it emerged: the colleague was at a park bench by the Thames. The river bank. Not the financial bank.
“In Japanese,” the businessman said later, “river edge and financial institution are completely different words. ‘Kishi’ and ‘ginko.’ They share no syllables. You can’t confuse them.”
“In English,” the colleague admitted, “we use the same word. From the same root. Because banks originally were just benches at medieval fairs where moneylenders sat. The bench became the bank. The river’s edge was also a bench — a shelf of land. The word branched. Never fully separated.”
“So a bench for money and a bench for water are the same word.”
“Also: to bank a plane — to tilt it. To bank on something — to rely on it. To bank a fire — to cover it with fuel. A data bank. A blood bank. A snow bank.”
The businessman was silent.
“So when I say ‘meet at the bank’…”
“You could mean a river, a financial office, an airplane maneuver, a data center, a medical facility, a pile of snow, or a preposition indicating reliance.”
“Yes.”
“How do you function as a society?”
“We don’t, really. We’re just very good at pretending we do.”
Log in to reply.