Comments | mythingperson: So much depends...

mythingperson

So much depends...

Jun 17, 2013 16:40

How would the world be different, if one greedy man - probably a goatherd - hadn’t decided to betray his people? In 480 BC, Ephialtes looked out at the amassed forces of the Persians blockaded at Thermopylae, and apparently thought he was on the losing side. He showed them a way around the Greek army, a narrow track through the mountains which cut ( Read more... )

causality is complicated, writing about money is hard, true stories about me, classics, this entry contains opinions, education, czar totally means caesar, ljidol, look back to look forward, history is neat, what if, i tag too much, exhibit b, yes i still had to google the topic, oh boy politics

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halfshellvenus June 18 2013, 06:22:37 UTC

I majored in music for my undergrad degree, though I minored in math and had a fair number of language credits, too.

That was one of the beauties of college, I thought-- to pursue your passion, and also to try new things once that pesky General Ed stuff was out of the way. Two trimesters of philosophy with a required health class as the third "wedge"? Totally worth it.

mythingperson June 19 2013, 19:59:09 UTC

:D I'm so glad you got to study broadly. What languages have you studied?

halfshellvenus June 19 2013, 20:12:27 UTC

German (because it was offered starting in 7th grade, so I took the opportunity!), and then Beginning Welsh (because it's my heritage, and how often does THAT opportunity come along?)

My past career in classical music radio exposed me to a lot of pronunciation rules and random vocabulary for other languages as well. But as a result, since Spaniards have so little presence compared to others, Latin and Italian are much more firmly "in there" and I am always making ridiculous pronunciation mistakes in Spanish. I have to come to a complete stop to say "Las Cruces" with the soft "s" sound in the middle instead of saying "KROO-chays." It's laughable!

mythingperson June 19 2013, 20:15:47 UTC

I took a few years of German, too! I fear I've forgotten more than I ever learned, though. Sigh.

Welsh is neat! I've never learned even a tiny bit of that one, and it fascinates me because it just looks so alien to my eyes.

And yes, those romance languages can be very pesky with pronunciation variations. My Latin background does not serve me well either when I fumble around with Spanish.

halfshellvenus June 19 2013, 20:28:40 UTC

My Latin background does not serve me well either when I fumble around with Spanish.
Exactly! It's useful for Italian... and frequently VERY wrong for Spanish.

Welsh has some trickiness in that it conjugates adverbs, and it has 1-2 tricky sounds, but I think it is much easier than Gaelic. Plus, once you understand the alphabet system, most of the spelling makes some kind of sense (despite what most 'outsiders' think). You don't have things like "bh" being present but silent, or "mh" being pronounced as "v" and such.

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