faire le ménage ou apprendre quelque chose?

One small layer of my brain says I should be cleaning - I'm doing some laundry - I should be baking more madeleines because I'll eat them, but there are no eggs (except under chickens) as they were all boiled and fed to dogs.   Instead I'm practicing my French to Spanish, because I keep reaching 'through' the French to get the Spanish from the English... and that is just how my brain is set up.  I will be doing my Russian lessons later, as well, but for now, this seemed to be the rubber-band effect I needed in my brain.

Spanishdict.com : using that for 'blind' retrieval of Spanish words from English - and that is hard - spelling them and not grabbing the French word.  When I consistently keep reaching for the French, I've been writing it down on a list of things to practice, to connect the three angles of the triangle (French--English--Spanish) a bit better.

Mark made me the extra colors of the pushpin magnets I was asking for - the red for French a week or so ago, and now the blue for Spanish - and I've been putting them to use this morning putting up the words I have a hard time grabbing the Spanish word (blue) for from the French (red).  And as I was reaching through this brain network I sat down and drew a little map of some of what it feels like where languages are stored.  Of course, the more I work with a language recently, the more it takes up more space and connects in with other things.  That 'pool' of blue for Spanish isn't completely a good thing - because it is pooled there half isolated and hard to retrieve.  But there is always the base of French, ASL And English that were there in my infancy.. wrapped and flowing through everything - and everything else gets connected and shoved in and around it like a big squishy purse or drawer where the files are not well organized.

(separate thought : perhaps Latvian shouldn't be such a tiny dot, I recognize and can insert words on Clozemaster far better than I do many of the others - although I get 10/10 on French there, and 9/10 on Spanish, getting 7/10 on Latvian, which I've barely studied, is nothing to sneeze at, and I do a pretty good job on BaltoSlav languages on Latvian words and Ba ba dum has Lithuanian that is closest, flag striped yellow/green/red : I have played a bit more on Bern Istaba as well, the children's site for Latvian similar to the English site Starfall Esme used to play on)

But I have swept and put the rugs in the laundry - I'm afraid perhaps the valve is leaking again, but we have to pull everything out to look at it, take the screws out of the wall and shut off the water - I've cleaned the floors in several places, looked in the fridge for anything to chuck out and so forth... with the truck not easy to get to town in, I don't want to get into a plumbing job or other major project.  If the valve is leaking, it is a tiny trickle that I have only barely noticed from a low spot in the garage floor that holds the water there if it gets there...  So many more things need to be dusted and cleaned, it is neverending.  And this is my first day off that didn't automatically come with 'ten other things' planned for me to do, so I've been sort of drifting from one thing to another and not held fast onto any one big thing I have to do today.  I haven't done a shred of art in a long time, well maybe a sketch or two, and the language map above probably counts in some way.

I did go look at the garden - everything has been very wet and is wanting warmth and sunshine, maybe even some fertilizer.  I pulled some weeds, fed the chickens, gave them fresh water - and Mark and Esme are doing things with the greenhouse plants.

bits

 yesterday was a very long day, with almost ten hours of driving out on a route - not the one I had been assigned to at the start of the day, but an emergency situation where I had to pick it up for someone else - and another carrier came after their route and helped me with the last half hour of it, which would have been another hour otherwise, so that helped some...  Esme had her wildlife competition for the year, she placed seventh in the region for high schoolers, and that makes a wrap for this school year

As I was driving, sans radio, because it was all unfamiliar and I didn't know where the next thing was most of the time - thoughts came to me that I had forgotten most of the Czech words for clothing, although I remembered them for French (of course) and Spanish

So here:

https://www.czechclass101.com/czech-vocabulary-lists/clothes

and this:

vocabulary : Welsh, French, Spanish, Czech

shirt : crys, chemise, camisa, košile

-----dw'in hoffi'r crys

-----j'aime la chemise

-----quiero la camisa

------líbí se mi tato košile


shoes : esgidiau, chaussures, zapatos, boty

    esgid ( singular), chaussure, zapato, bota

pants : pants, pantalon, pantalones, kalhoty

jeans : jins, jeans, vaqueros, džíny

socks : hosan (sanau, hosanau(singular))

    chaussettes, (chaussette (singular))

    calcetines (medias), (calcetin, media (singular))

    ponožky (ponožka (singular))

hat : het, chapeau, sombrero, klobouk

dress : ffrog, robe, vestido, šaty

coat : cot, manteau, abrigo, kabat 

clothes : dillad, vetements, ropa, oblečení

 

Yesterday's language clock, with the split sleep, and a little bit of Spanish (on my mobile) put in during my mandatory ten minute lunch break

Two workdays language geek

 

As a part-time postal carrier my work week revolves around the weekends, when the full-timers are usually off.  I work during the week sometimes, sometimes I work the entire week with no days off... but it's all sort of up in the air and week to week I'm not sure of anything except - I'm usually working the weekend unless I arrange for something else to happen.  Also - I passed two years on DuoLingo streak the other day... but since the hearts upgrade I'm still quite unhappy with how sensitive the spelling and such is and how much that stagnates my progress.

 

So, this is Saturday and Sunday.  My daughter's birthday was on Saturday but we did things for her on Friday because I knew Saturday was going to be a full day with getting dark early etc etc..

 So I got home, we made dinner and watched a movie and did the dishes and I did a minimum amount of a few languages and crashed.  That is a typical Saturday.. yes. 

 

Sunday I run Amazon packages, and it starts a little later.  It was also Daylight Savings Time so my animals had me up 'early'.. and I got a little language work in because hey, I was up anyway.  Made dinner after work, watched some tv episodes on DVD, did a few language things and played a game, then crashed.. took a Welsh grammar lesson in the middle of the night when the dog had me up, but I failed it by two questions and have to retake it when my credits on that site pop back up. *sigh*  One 'cat's tail' apostrophe in the wrong place or a ddim () nawr instead of a erbyn hyn and it goes down.

I haven't been called in yet on Monday, and my chart is up in the other screen.  I only do the charts for a little bit, and it gives me an idea what my 'average' is... and how much I switch off for variety.  It's also been a stressful few weeks and I realize I fall back to doing more in French at times when I have stress - the grammar level is much much higher than the Spanish or the Japanese, but still, my brain likes it better and starts sub-translating more again as below:

On the route - aucun côté ou autre côté?  Ah!  Na ça va... ça va a ci.

I have no idea why I think aucun côté instead of something like 'ce côté' or 'mon côté' or even 'pas du côté' but it's in my brain that way when I don't have to go the other side of the vehicle and I think it's a mnemonic thing that the two terms 'aucun' and 'autre' feel right and left handed pair to me...

language processing

Just a little note mostly for myself.

I have noticed when I am listening to languages that most foreign languages process into my audio 'eye' instead of my actual audio 'ear'...  This might be because I am synesthetic (synesthesia, senses blending together) or because I am also dyslexic or  maybe it is how the two meet in the middle.

When I hear most foreign languages I 'see' the words in my head and that is how I process them, from the 'sight' of the words transferred from what I hear.  However, this makes the recall of what I just heard slower and it has to go through layers to remember what words I heard in what order.

English and Welsh, surprisingly both process through my audio 'ear'.. as in, I remember in an audible recording in my mind what was said instead of a visual picture of what was said.  If you had said something to me in English while I was listening to something else I can 'pick up an echo' of what I heard and respond to you.  People do it all the time.  And I've noticed that if I heard a sentence in Welsh I can use this same channel for Welsh.  It is there for me to 'echo' as I heard it, and then try to pick it through if needed but usually the words I know translate over almost immediately and the others are left to visualize.  With other foreign languages, almost the entire thing is visualized first, with the audio being lost until I try to pronounce the words separately.

I'm not quite sure what it means, but it is pretty amazing to me.  Each time it hits me I feel : 'This is the way it should be.  This is why this comes faster to me than other languages.'

French is in between -I know many things but the sentences need to be rearranged to match English's sentence rhythm and pattern.  Things that are 'so French', like 'je ne sais quoi' are there, but not other phrases. 

I also notice a lot of 'back and forth' feeling with the French as if I am visually hopping back and forth over the sentence to rearrange it for myself before translating.  But even listening to some children's stories I was able to work it out quickly enough to understand without having to pause over and over.

With Welsh, the hopping and back and forth happens like a skip recording on a tape player, and 'echoes' when I ask it to, without a visual overlay of words as an automatic part of the information.  I think this is a much more 'natural' way - the way children learn a language - so it has been easier for me to pick up phrases and get the accent for Welsh than it ever has been with any other language.

I've described trying to listen and respond in Spanish as 'rolling down a hill'.. I feel like everything is crazy wrapped up and spinning and I'm not sure of enough of what is happening to do anything but hold on tight until it stops (which in real Spanish conversations, it hardly ever does) and then I can sort it and try to figure out what I heard and try to answer.

This is why I couldn't learn to speak and hear Spanish the many times I have taken a try at it.  Although I've succeded in being able to read it on a n elementary level.  I've tried with Esme when she wanted to learn - but it just never will be useful for me in conversation and I definitely couldn't teach her.  She didn't want to learn French.. although I tried that and had a bit more success with her, she just started saying she only wanted to learn Spanish.  She still says she wants to learn it - but she won't stick to any program to try.

bits

We went to the library yesterday - and then on to work for me.  I need to close again tonight...this week is just too long...that six day stretch.  But, on to the bits.  I finished reading 'Girl with All the Gifts'...scary as heck..I bawled about a third of the way through...disgusted with 'crunchy reality' halfway through it and the end left ashes in my mouth.  So sad...poignant, I guess one would say.  I read 'The Road' and 'Blindness' on reccommendation a few years ago...also chilling human-horror/disaster stories. I couldn't not finish them, but they don't ever leave the brain either.  I'm on to 'The Green Ember' now...such a different thing - it's like Watership Down and Nimh put together, so far.

Esme's 'Gifted and Talented Reading, Writing and Math' workbook came yesterday.  I had worried it had gotten lost in the mail.  But, it's here, and she paged through it and said it looked great.  The writing is high-end for her (that is where she struggles) but has good ideas for 'how to proceed'. The reading/English activities and the math are going to be great go-tos for her this year...things Mom couldn't easily dream up for her to work on when we come to a blank space. I enjoyed paging through the math puzzles myself before bed...she'll need some help understanding the question, but I know  she can figure out the math once the question is posed correctly.

I am an overplanner of sorts... I was sketching out idea trees at work yesterday during a break about each 'subject' she wants to study this year and what our 'pull out of a hat' type options are for each subject...I can't really turn that stuff off- overplanning etc.. I was trying to work out just what we should be working on as 'every day' stuff and how often the 'electives' should work in...eventually we usually have Esme direct that part herself...I do want to stress the Social Studies/History stuff as a bit more than an 'elective'...a two to three times a week activitiy/lesson sort of thing.  If she is really going to go for Spanish we need to schedule that at least once a week intently or more for practice through the week.  I think she will self-direct on all of the Science as she is interested, and we can throw the Art, P.E. and cooking lessons in wherever they seem appropriate.

Mark said she cooked a scrambled egg sandwich with minimal help (lots of supervision) the other day, and was very proud of herself.  She needed help cracking a tough egg and he pulled the hot pan off the stove and served the egg onto the plate - but she helped wash it in the sink with the brush.  She said the sandwich was good :)

We picked up a few Spanish dual language books while we were at the library.  We read one before bed.  I have been learning French for the past year or more...and now she wants to learn Spanish (her friend is learning Spanish in school).  That means Mom has to learn Spanish...a language I've tried to avoid really diving into over the years (I've done German and French...Latin and Japanese before...modern Greek with her last year). But, I've found her some good online resources and I'm using them, too. I know the fact that Spanish has multiple similar words for the same thing (mono, mico for monkey) is going to be a potential arguing point.