Hmmm. I didn’t really do so much studying this week, so to cover for that, I’m going to start by telling the exciting story of what happened to me in the locker room on Wednesday. I’ve been really tired lately and in the few hours of the day when I’m actually really awake, I’ve been prioritizing exercise over language learning. So, I went to the gym on Wednesday to run intervals on the treadmill. Usually, I just go home afterwards, but I’d been thinking it could be nice to use the pool too. Usually, I don’t use it at that time of day because there are always school classes there having swimming lessons and I thought it might be noisy and uncomfortable. Anyway, it turned out to be fine and I swam a little against the current in the wave pool and then went up to the sauna to see if it would have some kind of effect on my Finnish. It didn’t
Actually, it kind of reminded me of summer in New Jersey, but without the mosquitoes.
Then I went down again, took another shower and was back in the locker room when a new herd of school kids wandered in. They have to use the other end of the locker room, but their teachers came to the end where I was. At this point, I didn’t realize they were the teachers, I just noticed some adults come in to our end and I heard them speaking something that was clearly not Norwegian, but with other people also talking, I couldn’t hear clearly and I couldn’t recognize the language. Of course, I forgot all about getting dressed and just stood there, half holding my breath and with my ears straining to hear. What was it? Latvian perhaps? Then everyone left from that part of the locker room except me, an older Norwegian lady and one of the speakers of whatever language that was, who was having trouble with her locker. She kept waving her armband in front of it, but it wouldn’t lock. So, the older lady and I went over to look. The woman with the locker trouble said she was in a bit of a rush because she had to get out to her class. That’s when I first realized they were teachers and had come together with the kids. We decided the best solution to the locker problem was for her to move her stuff to another locker. As she moved her stuff, I decided that with the ice now broken, I could ask what language she was speaking. Guess what it was! …… da….da…..da……….. Southern Saami!!!!! They were from the Southern-Saami school not far from here. Well, you can imagine how excited I was. Surprisingly, the older Norwegian lady was nearly as excited as I was. We both started asking lots of questions and the Saami lady answered as many as she could, but then she had to rush out because the kids were ready to start their swimming lesson. I seriously considered putting my bathing suit back on and going out to the pool again to eavesdrop, but I was really tired and I figured I wouldn’t be able to hear anything anyway. It was definitely my kind of locker room talk though. And as you can imagine, my wanderlust list just got a little longer.
If I ever decide to learn a really rare language, Southern Saami would probably be a good choice. The “capital” of the Southern Saami region is our neighbor township to the north and while there are very few speakers of the language, most of them live in this general region. Actually, a large percentage of them were probably at the pool on Wednesday.
And now an actual update. I didn’t make much progress this week because I’ve been half-asleep most of the time. Eventually, I figured that I might as well try watching TV a bit when I’m too tired to concentrate, so I’ve been watching “Kommissar Rex” in German and “Aquí no hay quien viva” in Spanish. Other than that, I’ve done a little grammar work in both languages, a GLOSS lesson in Spanish, kept up with my Memrise work in Spanish for the April Vocab Challenge, did some Duolingo and FSI in German, worked on Spanish with LWT and had two Skype chats in Spanish. Spanish is activating nicely, but I usually find myself wishing I hadn’t scheduled a Skype lesson because I’m so tired. Once I get started talking though, it’s always lots of fun. My tutor is very impressed with my command of the grammar and my ability to express myself. My circumlocution skills are starting to kick in and I think that is one of the most important skills for fluency. Of course, I want to improve my vocabulary too, but even with a pretty good vocabulary, the ability to be able to look ahead in the conversation and quickly find a detour around any roadblocks, is a useful skill.
I didn’t touch my other languages this week. And I probably won’t get much done this coming week either. My circadian rhythm is still out of whack and the few hours a day I have with a functional brain are going to have to be used to get my stupid US taxes done.