It's cold. The window in the little car decided today was a day to stop working - and it's electric, and without whatever broke while it was sitting in the driveway overnight, it won't go up all the way and it won't stay up, either. The mechanic has ordered a part for it. My keyboard is acting funny in the cold, as well, all of a sudden. And because it is this cold - I really just want to go to bed and stay in bed until I have to go to work tomorrow.
Finished reading 'Lessons in Chemistry', (by Bonnie Garmus, fiction book) which I had set aside a few months ago - well, more like six months ago. But it was good to finish it.
Saw some language polyglot person in a post that said they learned 'conversational' level in 15 languages over the course of a year. Yea... probably not, especially looking at that list of languages they posted. However, my idea of 'what is conversational' is probably higher level than most people would think. I am thinking he means the absolute basics, hello, goodbye, how are you, where is the restroom 'survival' phrases.
I think 'toddler level language' - to be 'conversational' you should be able to speak simply about what you need, want and think about things - as all the questions, understand numbers, have a good handful of adjectives, place names (library, bank, rooms, park etc.) and other nouns. You should also understand at least half of what a speaker might answer back to any of your conversational / survival questions enough to get the information. But maybe they consider that a higher level?
I would say I am 'adequate' in maybe 6 languages, and that is a much higher level than what I just said, able to read newspapers and watch tv, along with being able to read more although I might still check a dictionary on an uncommon word or to check the right form of the word to use. I could say I am 'conversational' (my description above) in up to 11 or 12, and that I have a 'bare basic' of I know some key phrases and recognize even more words but my grammar definitely wouldn't be able to hold water in a conversation in about twenty different languages, total).
Although this has taken a lot more than 15 months - and many more resources than a single app or class course each - I'd say I'm at 8 years on focusing on the Welsh and French (2017 when I discovered Duolingo those were the two I focused on), scattered amounts of Japanese and German from many stops and starts, and 3 to 4 years on many of the others as I really began my push in 2021 for Czech and Romanian and restarting Japanese - then added the others as I continued and while I was taking that Comparative Linguistics class at the online university course.
That course had me look at Finnish, Greek, Irish, Latvian, Turkish, Zulu and Hungarian to get an idea of the structure differences of all of the different language families. I tried Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and Dutch to compare them specifically against Finnish and German. I beat my head on Spanish, all by itself, for three or four months exclusively and then found Catalan, and Portuguese were both easier for me (through French similarities) and still have trouble with responding in Italian, although I understand it okay, the Spanish and the French both get in the way there. I took a Russian A1 course this year because I was watching videos of a lady training big cats that she spoke to the in Russian. I also though it would help me with Cyrillic letters for learning Bulgarian, as an offshoot of getting fairly good with Czech. - but I can't say I'm conversational in that. I also took the first few levels of Chinese on Duolingo to support learning Kanji in Japanese when I moved from 'studying this a little' to 'actually understanding this and needing to go deeper now.'
I had a dream the other night that I was opening up a letter that said I was being published for a book that I have not yet written or even thought of. I 'remembered' the book in the dream and it was so complete and funny and it could work - and then it fell apart like sand through my fingers as I pulled myself awake. That happened once before with a detective story, as well - which I only got half of it down on paper before I couldn't remember it anymore. I guess we'll see if I can get started on this idea, but with it being cold and working six days a week - maybe I'll need even a bit more inspiration or enough time with a notebook to lay it out.
I had gotten Esme a Christmas present coming in the mail because last year I waited too long and missed it - it was out of stock for months, and then I finally got her one of the versions, but not the one she really really wanted (She still said she liked the version she did get). Well I got it early, and we decided to just give it to her early and let her enjoy it for the extra month instead of waiting for it under the tree and maybe it wouldn't even work (it was a game cartridge). It worked. She is happy. She has this weekend to play it and then Thanksgiving break next week for a few days, as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment