speech

did you know (yes, probably) that if you and I were to have a conversation, completely lucid, even simple, something about cooking tortillas or our childhood dogs, and we were to transcribe this conversation, and give it to a third party, say, someone named fred, fred might believe that you and I are actually insane; not because we're making him read a conversation about tortillas and dogs, but because the syntax of human speech is so radically different from the syntax of written speech -- we interrupt ourselves, drop thoughts, leave out articles, engage in serious parataxis -- we sound terribly unstable. I'm sure I've heard this somewhere before, but I've never seen it until today. I'm transcribing a conversation between m. robinson and p. auster, and I simply can't get over how two intelligent human beings can sound so intelligent and read so unintelligibly. I feel like my whole view of language is topsy-turvy! sideways! it's wonderful!