bit

We did those two flea market days in a row, and that was a bit much for us, social introvert wise.  I did some gardening yesterday, and will go out there again in a little bit to look everything over.   And today we did some shopping, and glad to be home.  

I've studied a little less of the Lithuanian the past day or so, give myself some time to see how much I've soaked in.  I did a bit more today than yesterday, and found myself getting about 1 in 8? of the 'non-super-easy' ones wrong - I wasn't counting the ones like 'galaktikus' for galaxy, but more the ones that are very specific to the language, like 'pamesti' (to drop/lose)  - not obviously borrowed words.  That is still pretty good for a week on it.  (and hundreds and hundreds of words)

 

I've added some Greek review the past few days, and continued with the Russian site (Busuu) and Spanish and French on my Duolingo profiles (with the Greek there, and on Greekpod101).  I dropped the Bulgarian except for a word or two here and there because I tried to join their site as a birthday gift and it wouldn't let me pay for less than 6 months.. and I didn't want to commit to that much money on it yet.  Instead, I'll buy myself a longer garden hose closer to my birthday.  We've also still got to pay for what the mail truck is in the shop for, and fix the kitchen faucet that has sprung a leak, but not a major one.

Today at the supermarket Esme brought me this little cooler thing that Mark wanted to use in the greenhouse for cold-stratifying seeds - and I didn't know what in the world they wanted it for when she came up to me carrying it.  I asked her 'Apparata se quoi?' loud enough that people turned heads next to me.  She knew what it meant (fairly easy - what is this apparatus? in pseudo-latin-french which my brain seems to operate in).  Then : I kept myself from saying the next thing that was not quite-English 'ya apres nostri a seguir' (it follows after us) and instead said the English translation from my brain of 'I guess it's coming with us then', with a note of resigned sarcasm.  That last bit isn't Latin, it isn't Catalan, it isn't French - but it has elements of all three.  

I really don't know what language my brain 'speaks' in before it translates to English - at one time I thought it had to be only French, because that was what was present in my childhood - but the answer lies somewhere between several languages - so I must have picked up more from reading, dictionaries and encyclopedias, (my dad had a set of language books from Simply Teach Yourself ...something in red leather-bound volumes, there were also math, accounting and other books in that series but I adored the multiple languages), other television? and so forth.  And the more languages I learn, the better I am at interpreting that what comes 'pre-installed'  isn't just nonsense, it actually does have roots in somewhere, and that it's grammar, of course, is absolutely horrid.

note : a friend looked at what I had written and said 'you were speaking a patois' - a pidgin, especially of French, that includes regional dialectical differences and/or adaptations to nearby languages, sometimes called a creole in other countries, but also referring to the 'country speak', 'colloquial' or 'rough way of saying things (what patois means)' vs. the refined correct grammar forms.  I like that, I'll take it.  

 I don't know what form of French my grandmother spoke, as she was French and Indian (Ojibwa from Rolla, ND, her parents did not live on the reservation, her mother was half or full Indian, from what I was told and remember (I was five when she died, and my mother told me some of it - so this is how I remember what I was told:) my great-grandmother's name was Bessie Gannon on my grandmother's birth certificate, and a gravestone I've seen - but didn't have any birth record for Bessie that we could find - and her father was many nationalities, in-and-out moving around, gambling and doing odd and long-haul type jobs - Grandma was third or fourth youngest out of ten children, several of the girls had already gotten married and moved away - so after Grandma was seven years old (and her younger sister four, and maybe another younger boy, and then the baby girl) their mom got sick and their father had been away for a long time, and all the children at home, right down to the 18 month old baby, were sent to an orphanage near Owatonna, Minnesota, very far away from their home.  The boys and the girls got split up.  The baby was adopted out (Grandma's sister, when I was a kid, found her and met with her).  

In the orphanage it is possible they learned Latin from the nuns? but she did tell me they were nuns, and they definitely spoke some German, and that she and her sister were in a German speaking household for a while but the lady gave them back because Grandma was stubborn and talked back, she said the lady called them 'dumkoff' (dumbhead) all the time, and that Grandma wouldn't stand for them beating her littler sister who still wet the bed, she made them beat her instead and she told me that once when she fought back the lady locked her in a closet and she screamed and hollered and beat on the door and after that I guess the lady decided Grandma was too spirited for her and both girls went back to the orphanage).  

Grandma's name was Vera, and her little sister was Inez, and the youngest I think was Priscilla by birth? perhaps Patricia.  The older girls were Nora and Eva and Ava and another name that sounded like Eva... and then there were several boys Arthur and Clyde.. Claude? and I can't remember the other maybe a William?  What I did find out I had written down in a notebook for Esme for the future - but I can't find it now.. it's somewhere around here with a bright turquoise cover and has all of my father's family's info  and my mother's father's family's info in it as well (which I found much more of).

On Baltoslav tools - I am playing the pictures game in multiple languages - it goes very quick and gives me a good random selection of words to test - and in Bulgarian, I am getting today maybe a score of 5 or 7 before I lose the three lives over 4 times, in Latvian, about 40, in Lithuanian also about 40 - both of those about 4 times played, Catalan 55 (high score, 2 times), in French 280 (one time played)!  I find it really interesting what French words I have not learned, like wild boar, or trace (it left no trace, not to trace something) etc..  they tend to be high tier ones you would only get in certain circumtances.  In Catalan I'm still getting some of the next tier down wrong - faucet, sparrow etc.

After that, did a comparison with babadum on the French and went to score 125 - with probably about ten mistakes in there on again (it doesn't show you how many mistakes, and there are no 'lives lost' there.  Again, it was mostly high level words that I had not heard and/or positively identified before - even in all the time I've studied French - but I felt the mistakes harder, and also felt the 'I can figure that out from it's parts' stronger, as well - on words that I had an idea about, but had not heard the combination before.  I also like that I knew a lot of the 'abstract' words in French that I have learned the Lithuanian word for on the same system, but how that feels different in my head now because I know the French from a different level, and understand that picture better now (since it is all pictures there, and no explanations).