gfish: (Default)
gfish ([personal profile] gfish) wrote2006-11-09 08:58 pm

languages

Over the last few years I have developed the habit of teaching myself a language every fall. It's been an act of defiance -- as yet another frustrating part of my dilettante personality, I love linguistics and learning languages, but I utterly fail at retaining them. I took French for FIVE YEARS and I'm lucky to conjugate ĂȘtre these days. So I persist, but I hedge my bets with languages of little practical value (Esperanto, Old English). If no one else knows anything about the language, it isn't so obvious how little I've actually retained.

This year, in preparation for the Rally next summer, I was planning on learning some Russian. I'll need to at least be able to read Cyrillic phonetically for navigation purposes. Basic utility phrases like 'can you please weld my car back together' and 'your camel is very shiny' would also be useful. This year, a real, practical language for real, practical purposes.

Today I bought an book on learning Mayan glyphs. I suck.

[identity profile] sistawendy.livejournal.com 2006-11-09 09:21 pm (UTC)(link)
And IPA! I must learn all of the International Phonetic Alphabet! Not knowing how to pronounce all these transliterations drives me crazy.