The other day I heard someone call the bushfires in Australia “brush fires”. Because that made more sense to him. He’s American and Americans don’t call any fires in America “bushfires”.
People have been using maps of their home countries to convey the size of Australia to give context to the current fires in Australia.
I once heard a waitress at a Chinese restaurant explain to my friend that mu shu pork was “like a burrito.” That’s sort of like saying that Indian food is “like Chinese food” because both are cooked in pots and served with rice. The flavors are totally different. But the waitress knew that my friend probably knew what a burrito was.
So it seems that the easiest way to understand something new that you’re unfamiliar with is to look at in the light of something that you are familiar with. But how can that be? This new thing is something that you don’t know. It’s new and different from what you know. Take a minute to figure out how and why. Not everything is the same as or similar to something that you already know.
An apple isn’t a red orange.