April 8th, 2011: I'm again drawing heavily on this sweet paper by Lera Boroditsky (PDF), which I recommend you give a read - it's very accessible and extremely awesome! This comic is fully covered in her introductary paragraph alone.
The Turkish 'how I got my information' thing is called the inferential mood and it is FASCINATING. That Wikipedia link talks about how the inferential mood is used even when there's no doubt about what's being talked about, simply because the speaker wasn't there. It also mentions how newspapers generally use the 'I was there and saw it' mood in headlines even though generally reporters get their information second-hand, which I imagine helps with to maintain an air of authority.
Bottom line: I am prepared to declare this SUPER AWESOME.
– Ryan
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