brain change
Languages used to be the easiest thing in the world to me. In high school I would look at a list of Russian words for a vocabulary test, right before the test, and then know them for good. Maybe in retrospect I learned them a certain way, like I memorized them rather than learning to use them, and then that happened later. Definitely learning things through writing caused the speech/understanding to lag, but not that much.
Now today. Last week I decided to stop shall I say wasting? yes wasting my time listening to NPR on my commute and went to the public library and got Pimsleur's Remarkably Expensive If You Buy it Mandarin Course. It's old fashioned, no mixed media here, just hear it/say it drills. I took a semester of Mandarin in college and remember maybe a hundred words but.
It is hard. Very hard. Like a tongue twister and a game of Simon and a round of Name That Tune rolled into one. I daresay I am bad at it. It's a different way of learning a language than ever I did but man, do I not feel like I'm catching on. Actually I feel like all the other people in my language classes who were like "Spanish is confusing" while I sat there like "gurl, please."
Sometimes I wonder if my brain is drying up more generally. I've been paranoid about it since my friend R forgot a few words and then fast forward a year and he's dead of glioblastoma. I don't think I have that or I'd be dead already but...I'm tempted to ask my mother when my father started forgetting names and pointing at things at the dinner table (it's not a degenerative thing, never progressed, keinahora) because I feel like that. I'm sure I'm psyching myself into it but someone will walk off from a conversation and I'll go blank for a minute on their name.
Saturday crossword is harder than ususal? I must be on the downward spiral!
Possibly I am just not that hot at tone contour languages, like a lot of people, but that aural pickup used to be my easy street.
I'd kind of like to think I'm just learning in a new way, casting aside visual training wheels and learning to do, as above, rather than learning a rule sheet and then painstakingly applying it to a million possible situations. It's like learning piano, which I keep comparing things to, but it is. I'm no longer trying to read sheet music. I'm trying to learn to play. It requires a kind of letting go that you can't talk yourself into because once you're thinking about it, you clutch up, and then you're REALLY not doing it.
The library was missing CD 4 out of 10, so I just had a serious ice bucket over the head with CD 5. Possibly I am doing these faster than I am supposed to be. At some point I'll have to do the only actual language test which is try to speak to someone. Way not yet though. Um there are also two more sets of 10. I hope the world really works like Splash where Darryl Hannah watches tv all night then speaks perfect fluent idiomatic English!
Now today. Last week I decided to stop shall I say wasting? yes wasting my time listening to NPR on my commute and went to the public library and got Pimsleur's Remarkably Expensive If You Buy it Mandarin Course. It's old fashioned, no mixed media here, just hear it/say it drills. I took a semester of Mandarin in college and remember maybe a hundred words but.
It is hard. Very hard. Like a tongue twister and a game of Simon and a round of Name That Tune rolled into one. I daresay I am bad at it. It's a different way of learning a language than ever I did but man, do I not feel like I'm catching on. Actually I feel like all the other people in my language classes who were like "Spanish is confusing" while I sat there like "gurl, please."
Sometimes I wonder if my brain is drying up more generally. I've been paranoid about it since my friend R forgot a few words and then fast forward a year and he's dead of glioblastoma. I don't think I have that or I'd be dead already but...I'm tempted to ask my mother when my father started forgetting names and pointing at things at the dinner table (it's not a degenerative thing, never progressed, keinahora) because I feel like that. I'm sure I'm psyching myself into it but someone will walk off from a conversation and I'll go blank for a minute on their name.
Saturday crossword is harder than ususal? I must be on the downward spiral!
Possibly I am just not that hot at tone contour languages, like a lot of people, but that aural pickup used to be my easy street.
I'd kind of like to think I'm just learning in a new way, casting aside visual training wheels and learning to do, as above, rather than learning a rule sheet and then painstakingly applying it to a million possible situations. It's like learning piano, which I keep comparing things to, but it is. I'm no longer trying to read sheet music. I'm trying to learn to play. It requires a kind of letting go that you can't talk yourself into because once you're thinking about it, you clutch up, and then you're REALLY not doing it.
The library was missing CD 4 out of 10, so I just had a serious ice bucket over the head with CD 5. Possibly I am doing these faster than I am supposed to be. At some point I'll have to do the only actual language test which is try to speak to someone. Way not yet though. Um there are also two more sets of 10. I hope the world really works like Splash where Darryl Hannah watches tv all night then speaks perfect fluent idiomatic English!