(no subject)
Learning a language is a pain in the ass.
The thing is that there are, like, stages. Stage 1, you can understand/say simple things like "I like bananas." "I am a doctor." "I eat people." Stage 2, you can say more complicated things but you can't understand normal speech, people have to speak slowly and clearly at you for it to come across. Right now I'm at Stage 3... in my arbitrarily decided Stage System... where I can pretty much understand everything, even complicated stuff, or at least figure it out from context, but my speaking almost seems to have taken a drop. I think this is because my vocabulary has gotten pretty large but I haven't had the practice in using it yet. I'll want to say "I'm going to go to the beach this weekend and have some cheap beer and check out the surfer dudes," but in my head is the knowledge that instead of "beach" I could also say "sea," instead of "cheap" I could say "inexpensive," instead of "check out" I could say "scope out," and all of those little floating bits of knowledge jump into my head when I'm speaking and trip me up, because I'll lose confidence in my initial word choices. And also similar-sounding words that mean completely different things jump in... etc. It's easier to speak when you have a limited vocabulary because you have a smaller number of pieces to assemble into something, but when the pieces increase the combinations for arranging them increase exponentially, so you end up flailing around like someone with a 10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle trying to jam a piece that looks MOSTLY the same into the wrong slot.
Nothing to do but keep on chugging, I guess. Shoulda taken up Spanish instead.
The thing is that there are, like, stages. Stage 1, you can understand/say simple things like "I like bananas." "I am a doctor." "I eat people." Stage 2, you can say more complicated things but you can't understand normal speech, people have to speak slowly and clearly at you for it to come across. Right now I'm at Stage 3... in my arbitrarily decided Stage System... where I can pretty much understand everything, even complicated stuff, or at least figure it out from context, but my speaking almost seems to have taken a drop. I think this is because my vocabulary has gotten pretty large but I haven't had the practice in using it yet. I'll want to say "I'm going to go to the beach this weekend and have some cheap beer and check out the surfer dudes," but in my head is the knowledge that instead of "beach" I could also say "sea," instead of "cheap" I could say "inexpensive," instead of "check out" I could say "scope out," and all of those little floating bits of knowledge jump into my head when I'm speaking and trip me up, because I'll lose confidence in my initial word choices. And also similar-sounding words that mean completely different things jump in... etc. It's easier to speak when you have a limited vocabulary because you have a smaller number of pieces to assemble into something, but when the pieces increase the combinations for arranging them increase exponentially, so you end up flailing around like someone with a 10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle trying to jam a piece that looks MOSTLY the same into the wrong slot.
Nothing to do but keep on chugging, I guess. Shoulda taken up Spanish instead.