Thank you, Beli.Beli Tsar wrote:Best of luck!
Spanish
We had a language meet-up here in the mountains on Saturday and the language was Spanish. Now, I'm fluent, so it was just basic practice for me. But my life partner is a very rusty intermediate speaker and it was a good kick-start for her. She came out of that motivated and is now doing Memrise and looking forward to the next session. We also agreed with the organizer that we would be interested in doing German or French sessions in the near future. Looks like we are starting a local languages group!
Yiddish
This weekend I attended a funeral for the husband of a distant cousin. He was a very kind person and had an incredibly rich history (he holds a land speed record he set in the 60s, worked on the Hubble Space Telescope, etc...) but the reason I'm adding him here is that he had an interesting language background I barely interacted with. Apparently, when he and his wife met, their first date ended singing Yiddish songs.
So yesterday, part of the ceremony was in Yiddish, part in Hebrew and 95% was, of course, in English. I learned that he regularly read a Yiddish newspaper, but I'm not sure which. If I remember correctly, we spoke in Yiddish once, but my command was so incomplete, so novice that with my embarrassment I remember it being a very short conversation. And there it is, the weight of embarrassment and the regrets of language loss.
So maybe Yiddish isn't off the table, I'll think about it and see if I want to get back to it in 6 months.
Shimaore
No active work of the guidebook. My daughter just landed in Mayotte. One of the first things was to send me a link to the one resource that seems to be online. I didn't tell her I already had it. I'm glad about her excitement, more about the move than the language opportunity.
Persian
Received another grammar book and was already a bit put off by the first sentence. The (un) necessary use of an advanced academic language in grammar books makes the reading a slough. I'm glad I have it but I'm sure it could be better written. More on that as I dive into the chapters.
It's Wheeler M. Thackston's "Introduction to Persian" and the nice surprise is that it has audio available here:
https://mll.sfsu.edu/introduction-persian
--- status ---
TYB: Lesson 5
Assimil: Lesson 16-17
Still the focus, still the direction I want to have. Looking forward to completing the TYB and Assimil books. I'm visualizing myself with a thousand Anki cards under my belt, hesitant but comfortable deciphering the script and ready to move on. Hmm, maybe I need to work on what I see as an achievement in 3 months?
I did have an extremely short conversation with a waiter on Friday - I was able to say that I liked my dessert very much. Thank you Assimil.