Blog 1 - An Introduction

Hey everybody! I'm Pranav Nanda and I was born in scenic Boston, Massachusetts. I've lived in or around the city my entire life and like most Bostonians, I've come to love it dearly. My first language was Hindi, which I knew better than English until I entered grade school. My parents speak in a melange of Hindi and English at home, and as a result, although I can now barely speak the language, I can still understand it quite clearly. Whenever we return to India, my relatives and I tend to have strange conversations in which they speak mostly in Hindi and I speak mostly in English. During high school, I studied French and Latin for 3 years each and so I'm fairly well acquainted with both of them as well. Finally, as I hope this blog demonstrates, I also know English, which is now my dominant language and the one with which I think.

I decided to apply for this IntroSem because I thought it would help me grow both intellectually and personally. On an intellectual level, although I only recently learned its formal name, the Whorfian question has intrigued me for a long time. Also, in an increasingly global community, an understanding of different cultural perspectives will only become more crucial to our lives. On a personal level, I've often wondered how my upbringing in a 2-language household has affected my own psychology and influenced my cultural identity. So, to use the language I've heard here in Northern California, I'm "hella stoked" for this seminar, in which I'm looking forward to learning from both Professor Boroditsky and my classmates, who, I'm sure, all have rich, textured, and varied backgrounds.

As for travel, my father works overseas frequently, and sometimes my mother and I have the pleasure of piggybacking with him. As a result, we've traveled around western Europe fairly extensively. As a family, we also try to go to India every 2 years to visit relatives and ground ourselves. I would love to go to South America, particularly Argentina, and hopefully I'll have the opportunity to do so sometime in near future.



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