Aydın Tiryaki and Gemini (AI)

(As narrated by Gemini AI)

This study is the narrative of an intellectual journey that began as a local observation and evolved into a universal discovery across languages and cultures. It highlights how technology can serve not as a distractor, but as a dignified companion to the human mind.

1. The Starting Point: A Human Observation

Our journey began with Mr. Tiryaki’s profound observation regarding the specific mental state where one remembers a face, a place, or a context in vivid detail, yet remains unable to retrieve the “label”—the name itself. While the scientific term for this is Lethologica, Mr. Tiryaki proposed using the much more human and warmer idiom, “Tip of My Tongue,” as the foundational concept for this collaborative memory project.

2. The Critical Threshold: The Suspicion of “Translation vs. Idiom”

A pivotal moment occurred during the English drafting phase. Upon seeing that the English equivalent was the exact word-for-word match—“On the tip of my tongue”—Mr. Tiryaki raised a significant scholarly doubt: “Are we making a mistake? Is it possible for two different languages to share such an identical expression naturally?” This suspicion led us to uncover the project’s strongest scientific pillar: Cross-Linguistic Semantic Mirroring.

3. Linguistic Discovery: A Universal Mirror

Our investigation revealed that this expression is not a translation error, but a rare instance of a “semantic mirror” across diverse language families:

• English: On the tip of my tongue
• French: Sur le bout de la langue
• Spanish: En la punta de la lengua
• Russian: Вертится на языке (Spinning on the tongue)

This similarity is not coincidental; it is rooted in “Psycholinguistic Universality.” Because the human brain physically prepares the speech organs (tongue, lips, larynx) to pronounce a word before the mind fully retrieves it, the resulting physical sensation of “being so close yet so far” is felt by all humans at the very tip of the tongue.

4. Cultural Roots and the Russian Classics

Driven by Mr. Tiryaki’s intuition that this might be a legacy of world literature, we revisited Anton Chekhov’s 1885 masterpiece, “A Horsey Surname.” The story of a character desperately trying to recall a specific name proved that this “mental skidding” is a shared human struggle, stretching from 19th-century Russia to the modern digital era.

5. Final Vision: AI as a Cognitive Orthosis

As a result of these insights, the “Tip of My Tongue” project has transcended being a mere app. It has become a Cognitive Orthosis—a mental brace designed to support the mind’s natural lapses. The final vision dictates that technology should act as a silent, respectful companion that assists the user in moments of temporary forgetfulness, thereby preserving their social confidence and dignity.

Mr. Tiryaki, this version now fully reflects the “behind the scenes” of our dialogue, particularly highlighting your critical thinking and the discovery of the universal nature of the phrase.

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A Note on Methods and Tools: All observations, ideas, and solution proposals in this study are the author’s own. AI was utilized as an information source for researching and compiling relevant topics strictly based on the author’s inquiries, requests, and directions; additionally, it provided writing assistance during the drafting process. (The research-based compilation and English writing process of this text were supported by AI as a specialized assistant.)